You probably have heard all the LG smart tv shenanigans... I took the wifi card out of mine today and it was pretty straightforward. So here's your reminder if you've been meaning to do it.

I am running a scraping SaaS and my cloud bills get up every month. So i decided buy secondhand mac mini m4 every month instead of paying 500$ to renting servers.

All mini's has their data part of distributed database, thunderbolt is really helping there. I distributed my database according to regions (i have 56 region for now). And all region and partitions on hardcoded on my codebase so a query from different regions user not a any other database query.

And the real hero is keneetic router. It's a Lifesaver for high concurrency TLS handshake requests. I send 2700 request per second (≈10m req/hour) and before the keneetic router I can only use my 1 mac mini in full CPU, now they are all 4 running %100.

And why i am choosed to Mac mini m4 instead of buying a 96gb m3 studio? Because my codebase is very comfortable for distributed compute. If i bought a m3 studio with 32 core's it way more than cost my setup and still less 8 core than my setup (M4 mini base has 10 cores).

So if i gonna expand this SaaS and my baby infra i should buy more second hand mini's. It's cheapest compute power i ever seen.

Btw, they are all 16gb x 256gb.

I modeled a little rack for my two OptiPlex mfs based off of milk crates. I primarily use them for Jellyfin and a Minecraft server, and as a sort of replacement for GH Codespaces through TTYD and Cloudflared--so i can code at my day job. All that fits pretty comfortably on the first node (both pc's are 16g ddr4), so I've been playing around with some local AI on the second node. I created a Discord wrapper for Pi Coding Agent, and LiquidAI LFM2.5-2.6B runs somewhat respectfully with low context. It's a fun way to hands free check whose on my minecraft server, or restart a container, but It's more of a party trick, unfortunately. The model likes to spin if the answer isn't obvious, and if context blows beyond a couple thousand tokens, the speed drops to a crawl. I have an old gaming laptop with a 1660 8gb, which would comfortably fit the model. I'm gonna see how it runs on there, and potentially add it to the cluster, since used mac mini prices are still in the stratosphere

Hi guys, I saw this PC in my local thrift store. Is this a good config for about $56? I don't want to buy a bad CPU for my first homelab but I'm on a budget. My tech friend told me that the i4 was the perfect balance between the i3 and i5, so I was pretty excited to see an i4 listed on the tag.

Took a few months of procrastination, blood, sweat, tears and PLA…but alas, my 10” network rack has been completed!

I’ve bypassed the ISP’s modem via the ONT SFP - incase anyone is curious. All parts are 3D printed with a mix of PETG and PLA, depending on heat/weight.

From top to bottom:

- Fiber SFP+ to ethernet switch. Use that to convert the Fiber connection via the ONT SFP, and switch it to Ethernet to act as the WAN connection.

- unify UCG - bought it as it was cheap, supports PPPOE, and has a sexy UI.

- 8 port managed switch.

- 3D printed patch panel with keystones.

- x2 2.5” SSD hot-swappable enclosure. Always loved the dell caddies, makes the rack look awesome.

- x2 3.5” 11TB HDD enclosure. Houses my plex storage.

- Dell Micro 7020. Used as my Proxmox node that houses the ARR stack + Plex.

- Dell Micro 5050. Used as my NAS running OMV. Has an M.2 -> Sata connectors, which connect to the SSDs and HDDs.

- RPI 5 running Adguard, PVE backup, Dozzle, Watchtower. Philips Hue Bridge.

- Power bar/cable storage.

Thanks for all you comments on my previous post. Now I understand that homelab and self hosting never complete and always involve.
Added 4g+ router for backup and I diy an exhaust window with two 140mm fans that send the hot air out of the room for keep the attic cool. Very pleased with the outcome so far. Every new idea is appreciated.

My hardware right now is:
-OpnSense Dec2700 series for firewall
-TP-Link Jetstream SG3428 switch (not PoE)
-Custom PC from spare parts with i7-7700, 32GB ram, 2 1TB SSDs on raid, Nvidia Quadro p600, and a 512GB nvme SSD running proxmox and small LXCs plus some VMs - Go2RTC with live video transcoding, Home Assistant, Scrypted, Homebridge plus some custom services like DNS with add blocking (NextDNS like), Wireguard, Apple Profiles generator for device management and much more.
-Omaha controller for my 3 TP-Link APs
-Zigbee hub with matter support for HomeKit integration
-Hikvision NVR for my old cameras plus some new ip cameras
-Synology DS418 with 14TB space for home shares plus opnsense and proxmox daily backups
-1KvA UPS
-Dell 24” monitor with kvm
-TP-Link 4G+ Router
-3x TP-Link EAP 613 APs

Running multiple vlans and many rules on firewall for nice and as much as possible good segmentation between VLans ( many hours of configurations ) and IOT infrastructure without the need of internet I must say that I’m very pleased with the outcome so far. And most importantly I have ditched Windows!!! I run only Linux and MacOS from now on and my life couldn’t be easier, more productive and most importantly more stable network and IT wise.

Any new ideas appreciated. Thanks the community for the inspiration!!

This is my local LLM setup, squeezed into a 12U 10" rack.

The machines are an MSI EdgeXpert on top and three ASUS Ascent GX10s below. All four are NVIDIA GB10-based systems with 128GB of unified memory each.

I 3D printed the rack using the KWS Rack v2 design. For airflow, there are two 120mm intake fans on each side and one 120mm exhaust up top.

The screen shows a dashboard I made to keep an eye on the nodes.

Still working on the back and figuring out where to put all the power bricks.

Right now theyre just piled up at the bottom lol.

Ive got a rasbery pi 400 (64gb) and an external 1tb HDD any tips And tricks for jellyfin or anything else i can do?

Otherwise i Have a 3com switch And multiple ddr1 pcs that Will Join in the Future.

I run several different OptiPlex Micros and couldn't find a 19" mount that printed cleanly and assembled easily. Most were remixes of remixes, so I designed my own.

• Fits most OptiPlex Micros (3020M/9020M/7040 through the 7090, 7000 series, and Dell Pro Micro)
• Printed in ASA, but PETG or better works. About 15.5 h and 280 g
• Heat-set inserts and M3 screws, no glue, so you can disassemble it and reuse it

Files are free: MakerWorld: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3341704 Printables: https://www.printables.com/model/1850697

I have done round 1 of homelab (more like selfhosting) where I have just spun up services as a means to an end, and some experimentation with Active Directory to practice for job interviews (i ended up getting it!) the lab consisted of 1 Proxmox host, virtualized TrueNAS for storage management and debian for services. On the network side of things I'm running a Glinet Flint 2 router and an AliExpress 8 port sfp+ switch, I've had zero VLANs configured and no domains at all for any of the services.

I just moved to a new house so its a good opportunity to redo everything from scratch properly into something i can genuinely be proud of, my idea was to create a mock company and act as if the services im hosting are genuine products being served to users online, as such i will need to uphold myself to higher standards especially on the networking and security side of things. I've also decided to move all of the personal media/NAS stuff to its own dedicated TrueNAS box instead of virtualizing it.

I would really appreciate some tips and advice on how i should go about this, any material i can study is also greatly appreciated. If you have read this far I hope you have a great day!

Hi guys today, I'm going to review this curious card from Minisforum that features an AMD B850 Chipset in a PCIe expansion card. This review is going to be divided in:

• Box Contents
• Specs
• Teardown and Cooling
• Usage and Feature Overview
• Compatibility
• Performance
• Conclusion

Box Contents

The ESP4B comes in the box with the following:

• Minisforum ESP4B card
• User Manual
• 6x NVMe screws + 2x PCIe bracket screws
• Full profile PCIe bracket
• OCuLink to 4x SATA Cable

Specs

The ESP4B is a low profile card with an PCIe 4.0 x4 interface that connect the AMD PROM21 chipset with the specific version used in the B850 (218-0891024), to any PC with a PCIe interface.

It provides the following devices to the host:

Block diagram

Teardown and Cooling

The ESP4B is designed with 2 heatsinks to be able to fix 4 NVMe drives and actively cooling them.

• To access SSD1 and SSD2 slots you must remove the screws in the red circles.

• Then the heatsink and external case can be removed to get to SSD1 and SSD2

• Then to access the other M.2 slots, remove the screws marked with the number 2 or yellow circles

• There is no reason to do it but you can remove the heatsink for the chipset.

External I/O

Usage and Feature Overview

Dimensions

The Minisforum ESP4B measures 170mm x 55mm and 80mm with the low profile bracket, and 120mm with the full profile one.

NVMe Slots

Uses GPP Switches in the PROM21 to expand the x4 interface to 4 downstream NVMe ports in the card. The lanes available to each change whether you have 2 or 4 SSDs plugged in, they go as follows:

So there are 2 modes, full performance with the full x4 64Gbps lanes, but only on SSD1 and SSD2. and half performance at x2 32Gbps with 3 or 4 SSDs.

SATA Controller and OCuLink

The card doesn't provide SATA power, So you must power the drives externally

SATA/OCuLink Switch

Since the SATA connectors are exposed via the OCuLink port using the included adapter, only one can be used at a time, and must be selected via the switch at the edge of the card.

OCuLink Port

If OCuLink is selected the port becomes a full fledged OCuLink port with the capability to drive any PCIe device including external GPUs. I'll test this later in the review.

USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Controller

Something to note is that this USB Type C port doesn't support USB Power Delivery, it only supports 5V/3A or 15W.

Compatibility

The ESP4B and the PROM21 is not limited to AMD platforms, it works pretty much on anything that I tried. I also tested it with Gen2 and Gen3. Using this card in less than Gen4 (8GB/s) really bottlenecks everything as the effective bandwidth for x4 lanes is 2GB/s for Gen2 and 4GB/s for Gen3. So i wouldn't recommend it because potentially you can run SSDs and even an eGPU at the same time with this card, so you'll need the most bandwidth possible.

Something that surprised me is that it works with the Minisforum MS-R1 that has an CIX P1 SOC, so the PROM21 works fine even in ARM machines.

Performance

Since the ESP4B has only 4 lanes of upstream PCIe and that translates to around 8GB/s with Gen4. everything has to share that bandwidth. This is a limitation of the AMD PROM21 chipset that even in real AMD motherboards only uses 4 lanes to connect to the CPU. but the chipset makes a good job of distributing it to the various devices as requested.

According to my testing performance is not degraded compared to native Gen4 x4 slots.

Power and Thermals

The ESP4B has support for ASPM to manage power of the PCIe devices connected to it so they don't draw more power than using the native PC M.2 ports. It also does a good job at cooling the drives, they sit around 55°C at idle and aroud 65°C after a stress test.

Conclusion

The ESP4B is one of the first expansion cards to offers this level of expandability thanks to the AMD PROM21 chipset that is exact same chipset used in AM5 motherboards. Another thing that I like is the level of compatibility, since it doesn't need the host PC to support things like PCIe bifurcation or special firmware support. I've tried it in a 2011 Dell Optiplex 990 PC that doesn't even have proper UEFI support and the ESP4B just worked with all of its features. It's currently available for $136 in the Minisforum store, to compare prices the main competitor to the ESP4B is the WisdPi PROM21 All in Expansion Card at $149 that features the same PROM21 chipset with OCuLink/SATA/USB and 4 NVMe slots but doesn't have active cooling for the drives and it doesn't include the OCuLink to SATA adapter cable (It's an additional $15).

If anyone has any question feel free to ask in the comments. Thanks for reading, and finally thanks to Minisforum that provided the review unit.

Links

• Minisforum ESP4B: https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-esp4b-pcie-to-4-nvme-m-2-expansion-card

I've been homelabbing for a wee while but my setup has been spread out accross the house connected to the mesh WIFI nodes.

I finally got the chance to move everything to a new storage cupboard at the bottom of the stairs connected to the router and wired connection which is also connected to the garden office a 10ft shipping container.

Cable management at the bottom needs a little bit of work but it's getting sorted slowly.

Running a Lenovo Think Centre Mini PC

I5 with 8GB RAM 128GB Hard Drive

Terramaster with 8TB in Raid

Running:

Immich

Vault Warden

Jellyfin

Home Assistant

Any thoughts on improvements?

My wife seems happy that it is all concealed in one place.

Nothing special, just enough to help learn networking. Took 2 1/2 days to move from open frame to enclosed cabinet. Named her "VALERIE". Two switches & a router, all Cisco plus a Palo Alto Firewall..

Topology in comments.

I'm on an early journey into home labbing and looking for a computer to get started. I have 0 experience in this, I don't even own a personal computer.

The goal at the moment is just Jellyfin and a music streaming service but It may very likely go further with some self hosting (photos, documents) raspberry pie hole etc or it may be a disaster and I'm just not that technically minded, lets see.

Is 16GB a necessity or will I get away with 8GB and if so, for how long? I have a 1TB SSD that will hold my media for jellyfin.

Ps, I'm looking at the usual mini pcs (optiplex, elitedesk, gmktec etc)

Buen día compañeros, les comparto mi primer dashboard de mi homelab, me base en varias ideas que mire por aquí así que por eso salió tan bien,espero les guste y acepto ideas y críticas, saludos

I'm going to pick this used rack up tomorrow and I'm planning on painting it black before I put my hardware in it. Maybe someone here has done this before. How would I go about this?

Just rough it up with some sand paper and then repaint with a roller?

It's a Rittal cabinet, so it's powder coated.

I'm rather confused here because for 2 drives to come direct from manufacturer and be DoA is wild. Posting here to make sure I'm not going insane.

I'm using 4x 16TB Exos X16 drives (ST16000NM001G) in my Unifi NVR. One of them failed so I ran some tests on it using SeaTools and it confirmed failure. It's under warranty though so RMA it is!

Seagate makes you ship the drive to them first. Annoying but it's fine. A couple weeks later I get the replacement drive (ST16000NM002H) and it doesn't work.

I pop it into the NVR, and it makes a power up sound but doesn't spin up. The sound is like the heads unparking but I'm not sure . I take the drive out and put it in a dual bay SATA dock, same sound. Click/unpark sound, then silence, no spinning, and 3-5 seconds later it happens again.

Okay weird. It's DoA so I go through the RMA process again. Seagate refuses to do an advance replacement. So I send it back and get a new drive just today.

Same. Exact. Behavior. I'm flabbergasted, the odds of 2 DoAs is so low. I check everything now. The drive exhibits the same behavior in the NVR, Dock, my desktop, and a molex/sata adapter that you use with those USB SATA/IDE adapters.

I tried the pin3 tape trick, same behavior in all locations.

Made sure everything is working by using an older drive, spins up and goes green in all devices. Try the 2nd RMA again and same click, silence, repeat.

So now I'm at my wits end. Seagate support is less than useful so I'm hoping someone can shed some more insight into something to check.

I don't like how frustrated I am as I am a rather skilled IT person so the imposter syndrome is hitting me hard on this >.< My NVR has been in a degraded state since August 27. I'm just hoping the other 3 drives hold up and nothing surfaces before this one is fixed.

Hello everyone,

I recently set up an HP G4 800 as an always on box.

After some initial crashes from the i915 driver in debian things seem to work fine.

There is a power on quirk that i've noticed.

After I shut down the machine:

1. I leave the machine plugged in, starts on with a single push of the power button

2. I unplug the machine, and it won't power on until the third press, OR, a single 2 to 3 second press. Trying to figureout if this is a quirk of my machine, or a normal behaviour.

I've done quite a bit of trouble shooting. Seems that the when i turn on power recovery after power loss, that works just fine.

But, trying to figure out if i have a fault, or "normal" behaviour.

Note: the only thing i haven't done is replace the CMOS battery. Journalctl, suggests that the timer is working fine.

Thank you in advance.

I recently got a dell poweredge t620 for free! It only has one cpu currently and no ram, I don’t know what cpu is in there. My current server is a hp microserver 8th gen with a Xeon and 16gb ecc ram and four 6tb drives running true nas.

My usual use case is as follows
-jellyfin server
-Minecraft server
-multiple container applications like tdarr,ad guard,etc
-immach server(idk if I spelled that right)
-pfsense router
-more in the future…
I’m starting to scale up a few of the things I do and play around with more applications, so I’m trying to decide if the upgrades I will see in expand ability are worth it, also if my performance will be better or worse overall, any help is appreciated

Here’s my question is it worth

A.maxing out what this box supports for CPU’s and adding some ram and a graphics card

B.trying to find/ modify the case and upgrading the motherboard / cpu to something newer

I'm buying a few decommissioned PCs from work that come with Quadro T1000 4GB video cards. I can make use of everything else in the machines, but the video cards have me stumped. They're about the same as an RTX 1650, but use different drivers, so not very resellable in my area for gamers. I've considered maybe local LLM, but my reading makes it sound like 4GB is borderline useless. The onboard Intel video out is plenty for my purposes, and everything will be Linux, so they'll just be a power-sucking pain in the arse if I try to integrate them with my lab.

Any suggestions for repurposing them?

I am looking to getting into creating a homelab. To begin with I mainly want to bring home ownership of my storage and be able to present my media (dvds and images). I am thinking Linux, jellyfin, immich and tailscale.
I want to keep it simple and upgrade as the need arises. I am thinking about buying a mini pc and some storage.
All the help and tips you guys can share is appreciated.

Mini pc: HP EliteDesk 800 G4 DM
i5-8500 | 8 GB | 256 GB SSD | 2 x DisplayPort | Win 11 Pro
Storage: WD Elements 12tb https://www.westerndigital.com/products/external-drives/wd-elements-desktop-usb-3-0-hdd?sku=WDBWLG0120HBK-NESN

I’m considering upgrading from a Raspberry Pi 4B to a Lenovo M700 Tiny.

Specs: i5-6500T, 8 GB DDR4, 128 GB SSD, Intel HD Graphics 530

I can get it for around $75.

I’d mainly use it as a 24/7 home server for Docker/self-hosted services (Jellyfin, *arr stack, qBittorrent, Home Assistant, Tailscale, etc.).
Everything is Direct Play, so I’m not doing any transcoding.

My main concern is its age. Is the M700 still a sensible choice in 2026, or would you recommend looking for something newer?