📚 Buying Guides
Power, noise, rack depth and what to check before you buy.
We're writing our first buying guides now. In the meantime, these are our latest homelab hardware guides:
Best Hard Drives for NAS 2026: Price per TB in the Drive Shortage (CMR Only)
WD Red Pro, WD Red Plus, Seagate IronWolf Pro or recertified Exos? The best NAS hard drives of 2026 ranked by real price per TB, warranty, workload rating and noise — and why SMR drives don't belong in a RAID.
Best PicksBest Home NAS 2026: UGREEN vs Synology vs TerraMaster, Priced With the Drives
In 2026 the hard drives cost more than the NAS. We rank the best home NAS boxes — UGREEN DXP4800 Plus, Synology DS925+, DXP2800 and more — by real total cost, networking, transcoding and software.
Best PicksBest Homelab Rack 2026: 10-Inch Mini Racks to 25U, Fit-Checked by Depth
The best homelab server racks of 2026 — StarTech 4-post open frames, enclosed cabinets, wall-mount racks and 10-inch DeskPi mini racks — matched to the gear you actually own, with the depth math that keeps a server from not fitting.
Best PicksBest Homelab Server 2026: Mini PC, Tower or Used Rackmount? Ranked by Real Idle Watts
The best homelab server for most people in 2026 is a 10GbE mini PC, not a used rackmount. We rank five home servers by what they run, what they cost to keep on 24/7, and what the RAM shortage did to prices.
Best PicksBest Mini PC for Homelab & Proxmox 2026: 6 Picks Ranked by Ports, RAM and Idle Watts
From a 6 W N150 box to a 16-core 10GbE workhorse: the best mini PCs for a homelab and Proxmox in 2026, with real idle-power figures, NIC details and the barebone-vs-configured math the RAM shortage changed.