I started my home lab with a full-size PC, and now I can't imagine using anything else
…An old ATX tower is one of the best beginner home labs money can buy, and it's often overlooked as a starting point. Related 5 of the best devices you can…
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The only PC components I never regret spending extra on
…gaming, and OLEDs were far too expensive back then. Last year, though, I finally switched to a 34" ultrawide QD-OLED monitor from Alienware, thanks to a deal I spotted on Dell…
I played Animal Crossing on my Steam Deck without an emulator, and it runs better than Dolphin ever did
…It reads your ISO for assets and runs as a standalone Windows executable, no virtual console required. I tried it on my Steam Deck OLED , and to be blunt, this is a…
I thought I needed a NAS, then I used this device for Plex instead
…the job done Since most movies and TV shows stream at 5-50 Mbps, depending on the quality, I can get away with adding an old-school HDD connected via USB 3…
A $65 handheld emulator beats anything Nintendo currently sells for retro gaming
…It's a relatively solid deal, and the majority of the gaming giant's most iconic titles are part of the growing collection. On the other hand, with a third-party handheld…
I turned an old Android phone into a home server, and it’s more useful than my Raspberry Pi
…Instead of buying a voice assistant that spies on you, you can mount your old phone to the wall, and it's now a touch-screen dashboard and a privacy-focused microphone…
Most NAS owners waste their USB ports on external drives when they should be using them for this instead
…USB-powered drives One random disconnection, and your data goes poof Unlike the SATA ports and M.2 slots hardwired into your NAS, its USB interfaces have some deal-breaking flaws that…
NVMe is faster on paper, but your actual workload probably doesn't care
…one of those upgrades you’re just supposed to want. Every time I checked SSDs , the faster numbers were always associated with NVMe drives , and SATA started to feel like the older…
A used Mac Mini could be great for your home lab, but take a look at regular mini PCs first
…macOS doesn't give you any ability to run a hypervisor, ZFS, and wake-on-LAN support is pretty flaky. These are all potential dealbreakers, especially in the context of the Mac…
The best NAS distro is getting better at virtualization, but you shouldn't use it exclusively for that
…For example, Proxmox has dozens of virtual guest management options, and they’re a lot easier to tweak than the ones on TrueNAS. Sure, passing GPUs to VMs and LXCs is a…