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---
title: "Rebuilding My Homelab From Scratch"
source: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPYjJYQEFSg"
author:
- "[[Hardware Haven]]"
published: 2024-11-16
created: 2026-04-15
description: "Head to https://www.odoo.com/r/Sc6 to get a 15 day free trial or to get your first app for free!► Want to support the channel and unlock some perks in the process? Become a RAID member on Patreon o"
tags:
- "clippings"
---
![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPYjJYQEFSg)
Head to https://www.odoo.com/r/Sc6 to get a 15 day free trial or to get your first app for free!
► Want to support the channel and unlock some perks in the process?
Become a RAID member on Patreon or YouTube!
🔓 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hardwarehaven
🔓 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgdTVe88YVSrOZ9qKumhULQ/join
► Videos Referenced:
\* @CraftComputing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRXC8CzMpos
\* @TechnoTim - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4NCofJyOHE
\* @Level2Jeff - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-cdA50bpU
► Checkout items I used (includes affiliate links from which I may receive compensation):
🛍️ Dynalink Router: https://amzn.to/4fP1doj
🛍️ Minisforum MS-01:https://amzn.to/3O6tFWC
🛍️ Sodola 2.5 Gb Switch: https://amzn.to/4fPTuGx
🛍️ GeeekPi 10" Rack: https://amzn.to/3VfhJGn
🎥 Curious About the equipment I use to make my videos?
Click Here ► https://hardwarehaven.media/gear
\---------------------------------------------------
Music (in order):
"Hardware Haven Theme" -Me (https://youtu.be/FwD2mOYDPNA)
"CRENSHAW VIBES" - GARRISON (https://soundcloud.com/garrison-brown)
"If You Want To" - Me
"Sunshower" - LATASHÁ(https://soundcloud.com/best-music-pro...)
\---------------------------------------------------
Timestamps:
0:00 What if I could start over?
0:40 Odoo (Sponsor)
1:47 The Hypothetical
2:43 What IS a Homelab?
3:02 What makes for a GOOD homelab?
4:59 Key Components
5:39 Storage
9:12 Where it would go and UPS
10:33 Networking
13:45 Beyond that
19:01 What makes sense for me
## Transcript
### What if I could start over?
**0:00** · when I first started building out my home lab I had no idea what I was doing but I learned more over time and piece by piece my home lab slowly grew into what it is today but what if I could go back and just start over completely what would I build today with what I know now well that thought popped into my head recently and I thought it would be fun to go step by step through hardware and software and servers and networking and figure out what my ideal and affordable home lab might look like if I could just completely start over so let's get into it
**0:37** · \[Music\] if I were to redo my home lab I would definitely aim to make things a bit more organized and streamlined than they are now but if I were looking to streamline my business I would definitely want to use ODU the sponsor of today's video ODU is a comprehensive business management software suite designed to simplify every part of your company's workflow hopping around from one application to another can be really frustrating and ODU helps solve that whether it's CRM accounting sales or Inventory management
### Odoo (Sponsor)
**1:06** · ODU unifies everything on a single userfriendly Platform One of odu's best features is its adaptability you can select just the apps your business needs keeping things tidy and streamlined however the whole system is customizable and intuitive so that it can evolve to fit your needs as your organization grows it's also extremely affordable you
**1:24** · can self-host the community edition of ODU for free or you can opt for the Enterprise Edition which provides additional feat features and support add a Great Value Plus you can just use one app for free for life so if your business only needs one application you don't have to pay a thing if you're curious about how ODU can support and grow your business make sure to click my link down in the description where you can try it out for free for 15 days no credit card required now there's no way I would actually start from scratch I'm in a bit too deep at this point and the hassle just wouldn't be worth it also my setup
### The Hypothetical
**1:54** · works just fine even though it's a bit janky at times so I wouldn't actually be doing this unless something absolutely crazy happened like my house getting wiped out by a tornado in November oh wait no I live in Oklahoma so apparently apparently that's a thing okay so I guess that definitely is a possibility but I also want to take this hypothetical a step further and assume that I'm not running a YouTube channel anymore being a content creator drastically affects the decisions of my home lab both because at times for the sake of content I end up switching things in and out but also because making videos requires a lot of Storage
**2:26** · storage I otherwise really wouldn't need so for this video we're going to assume that the hardware Haven Channel completely fell off or something and I stopped being a YouTuber and also that my house got wiped out by a tornado this video is a bit darker than I thought it was going to be before we start talking about my ideal home lab what is a home
### What IS a Homelab?
**2:44** · lab I'm not going to dive super deep into it because my answer is pretty simple actually Brett over at radal I think is putting out a video right around this time talking about H labbing and uh for that I actually gave my definition which I think is really just hosting things hosting what whatever you want with whatever you want and however you want but what makes for a good home
### What makes for a GOOD homelab?
**3:04** · lab well really I think the answer to this is always going to be very specific to whoever's home lab it is and I think it comes down to three things the first is functionality and this is really just your home lab doing what you need it to do and this could be anything from having enough CPU resources to run 20 different Minecraft servers or maybe just enough CPU power to run home assistant or maybe you need a ton of storage for a 40 TB media library or a
**3:30** · ton of YouTube videos or maybe you just need a little bit of storage for a couple of backups or something maybe you don't even need it to do anything specific you just want it to be fun to Tinker with really functionality I think just comes down to whatever it is that you're trying to do the next thing I think that makes for a good home lab is reliability I mean having cool servers is great but it's not that helpful if they're down all the time once again the degree of reliability that you have with your home lab is going to come down to you for some people who are hosting services for not just themselves but for
**3:58** · family and friends or the general public it might make sense to have high availability and clusters or battery backups with long run times but for other people it really might not be that big of a deal if their server goes down due to a power outage or something and then for me the third thing to consider when trying to decide what a good home lab is is cost really this is just
**4:17** · trying to spend the least amount of money possible to get the functionality and reliability that you're looking for and this both includes the costs of any hardware or software but also the electricity costs for running your home lab now it's very possible that these things change over time you might realize you aren't achieving the amount of functionality with your home lab because you don't have enough CPU resources to run some Services you're looking at running or maybe you don't
**4:39** · have the reliability you're looking for now that you started hosting more things and you want to invest in a better battery backup or whatever or maybe you just want to buy more stuff because it's fun but I think realistically as long as you're sort of checking those three boxes I think you're going to really enjoy your home lab so with this idea of knowing what a good home lab would be
**4:56** · what would actually go in my home lab well when it comes down to what actually goes into a home lab it really comes down to four things you have compute power for services you have storage you have networking and then you sort of have a place to put it all like a rack or whatever I was kind of hoping I could like make these sound cool like the four s's of home labbing like Services storage switching and space or the four
### Key Components
**5:19** · C's of Home lab um compute capacity connectivity and containment I don't know but yeah you basically have the services you're running you have storage you you have networking to tied all together and then you have like your space like a rack or a closet or maybe
**5:35** · something like this little 10-in rack that I'm definitely going to be playing around with here soon so what would go in my home lab well I think I would start with storage like I said currently I need a lot of storage for tens of terabytes worth of footage and project files but if I wasn't doing YouTube I
### Storage
**5:51** · really wouldn't need a ton I have a small media library I have some photos backed up and then I would probably want some room to back up like my computer computer and my wife's computer and maybe a place to store some other stuff but I would still probably start with a Naas of sorts because I do need that storage and also while sometimes I like to run services on a different machine than my Nas it's definitely possible to run a Nas and run all of your services on that and that's a pretty easy way to sort of get started without spending a ton of money now I don't have like a set budget for this hypothetical home lab
**6:22** · but knowing me I probably wouldn't want to spend a ton I would try to be pretty budget conscious but if I was willing to spend a bit more money there's a really good chance I would actually consider starting off with a NAS from maybe like terramaster or maybe this 4B NAS from AAR not because I would use ter Master
**6:38** · as the software but because I could get something like this that would be pretty small and compact have multiple Drive Bays for some storage but then I could also install something like traz or un raon knowing me though I would probably be a little bit cheaper than that and also enjoy repurposing something so there's a really good chance the first system I would buy from my home lab would be some sort of repurposed desktop that I would turn into to a Nas part of the reason I would do this like I said is because you can save money by buying a used Dell Optiplex or something like that and I also enjoy repurposing
**7:08** · machines that are otherwise potentially going to find themselves in a landfill but You' actually be surprised sometimes by how little power a desktop system can draw for example I looked at this Lenovo p330 a little while back and without a graphics card running it only Drew like six Watts at idle which is pretty impressive now power's pretty cheap where I'm at so super efficient systems
**7:28** · aren't necessarily as important important for me so there's a really good chance I would go with something a bit older that's pretty cheap that I could also throw a few drives in just to sort of get started now I haven't done a ton of research into the specific things I would buy for this I don't have like a a build list or something but I did just
**7:43** · grab a few links really quick before I filmed this and I thought it'd be fun to kind of go through this and get a rough idea of what I might be spending so if I bought something like this Dell Optiplex here I could easily check in two drives or assuming I have a 3D printer at this point which let's be honest I would I could always print a bracket to out more hard drives but early on I could just start with two and this wouldn't draw a ton of power it would be pretty cheap like I think I could buy this system plus a pretty cheap SSD for like $70 or
**8:09** · so and I think with that I would probably install unraid and be able to have all of my storage but also run things like jelly Fin and home assistant and pretty much everything else that I run because really I don't run a ton of stuff in my home Lab at least not things that require a ton of CPU horsepower and
**8:25** · Ram or anything now obviously for my Nas I'm going to need some hard drives to actually put stuff on and I think I would end up going with some research from somewhere like server part deals to be clear they they have sponsored me in the past this video is not sponsored by server part deals but they seem to be a really solid company they have good hard drives they have a good testing process and good shipping and a good prices so yeah that's probably where I would buy a couple of hard drives from and I think earlier I looked up I could get like two 12 tab Western Digital drives for like
**8:54** · $105 each and I think that's the route I would go and just start off in like raid with one of those as a parody drive and then one drive to store all of my stuff and then I can add drives later on as I need to now obviously that desktop's going to need a place to go and assuming I'm still in this house it would most likely go in my little hul closet and it would probably just sit on the floor there's also a really good chance that next to that I would look at getting a UPS probably not anything crazy but
### Where it would go and UPS
**9:22** · something that would give me a good amount of uptime in case we lose power and I would also want to go for something that has a readout that can show me how much power my home lab is drawing so I think I found this one on Amazon which is just a slightly lower model than the Cyber power ups I have in my closet currently for like $190 or so
**9:41** · and I think that would by far be the most expensive thing I've bought up to this point but I think having a good battery backup is worth it that way you can at least make sure your machines shut down properly if the power goes out I don't think I would ever go with any sort of fullsize rack just because it takes up so much space that I don't have
**9:56** · and well most things you buy and put in a rack can cost quite a bit and I would be really tempted to fill it up so that would probably be a mistake I might be tempted later on to go with something like that little 10-in rack that I mentioned because it's fairly affordable and would be an easy place to put some networking in and maybe a couple little small computers or something and still have that ability to sort of like Tinker with stuff but it not be quite as expensive and massive as a full-size
**10:23** · rack now maybe at some point I would go with a small rack similar to what I have in my home lab currently just for like networking and stuff but honestly even something like that might be a little bit overkill for something like my needs now speaking of networking let's talk about that currently for my router I'm running this goofy box I made a while back it runs proxmox with a virtualized
### Networking
**10:42** · instance of pfSense as well as a few other network related services and it works great and there's a really good chance I would want to stick with open sense or pfSense or something like that and if I did I would be tempted to look around for some of those little mini fanless PCS that you can get on like AliExpress and such I like the idea of
**10:59** · something that's fanless since it would be on all the time and I just kind of wouldn't have to worry about it ever getting Dusty or anything but one of the problems with running your own router using open sense or pfSense or whatever is that once you move away from using the router that your ISP provides you don't have a built-in access point so you not only have to buy the hardware for your router but you also have to buy an access point or two and then you have to make sure you have like a Poe switch that can power that access point and so it starts to add up a bit and really there's not anything terribly wrong with using the router that your ISP provides
**11:28** · assuming you at least have the ability to adjust some settings which I do so there's a really good chance that I would just start off sort of how I did just using the router that my ISP provides and then maybe down the road I would buy something to run pfSense or open sense but there's actually a chance I would do something differently it's actually possible I might pick up a router like this one here from Dink and
**11:49** · don't freak out or anything I wouldn't actually use the software that's on this but it is possible with certain routers like this one to flash something like open wrt on it to where you can take a advantage of this little compact router that has a built-in Wi-Fi 6E access point I believe as well as essentially a built-in switch so pretty cheap I think this thing's like 60 bucks and then running something like open wrt you have the ability to configure settings to your heart's content and even install things like wire guard or I think you can run like adguard home so you could run some Network Services essentially on
**12:22** · your router always spend like 60 bucks and have a built-in wireless access point I'm actually going to be doing a video on this specific guy here trying to flash open wrt to it so that should be fun maybe stay tuned for that but I think there's actually a decent chance I might go for something like this just to save some money save some space and because it seems like it'd be kind of fun to do so that would be the router but what about switches well currently I have a 10 gig switch and then I have a couple other switches down here under my desk for 2 and 1/2 gig and a little bit of 10 gig and mostly the reason I use 10
**12:51** · gig is because I edit videos off of my Nas and realistically if I wasn't doing that I don't think I would need 10 gig so I would probably be happy with honestly one gig for a lot of things and then maybe just getting like a 2 and A2 gig switch to connect like my computer to my Nas and maybe my wife's computer to my Nas and then any other devices I
**13:10** · might pick up and decide to put in my little home lab closet all right I don't have the exact prices with me but I think at this point we've spent a little bit of money on our desktop PC and the hard drives to go in it we have a battery backup we may have bought a router or maybe just used the one provided from my internet service provider and then I probably picked up a little 2 and 1/2 gig switch and so I think at this point without Without Really hunting for any deals or anything just sort of grabbing some quick numbers off of eBay and Amazon and such I have a
**13:35** · pretty solid home mod that can do everything I needed to do for under like $600 and yeah there's a really good chance that would be my home lab I say that I would probably want to Tinker and be able to mess around with some stuff and so there's a really good chance the next thing I would buy would be another computer to be able to run some services on not necessarily because I couldn't run those on my Nas desktop thing but
### Beyond that
**13:59** · more so because I'd like to Tinker and try things out occasionally without breaking jelly Fin and having my wife not be able to watch Brooklyn 99 or whatever there's a really good chance I would go for something like one of these used Lenovo orell or HP little one lit form factor mini PCS because well they
**14:15** · have pretty decent performance you can get them for super cheap sometimes and you can even expand the functionality a little bit with these uh for example you can see I actually have a little 3D printed bracket here for what was a 2 and 1/2 gig adapter that would have plugged into the little m.2 e key slot for Wi-Fi so I could have this hooked up to my 2 and2 gig switch and be able to run proxmox and virtualize a few different VMS and
**14:38** · containers and such and mess around with things and if I break stuff on this it wouldn't affect my little desktop Naas that's running the more important stuff so yeah there's a really good chance I would end up going for something like this if I needed to add either a bit more compute power or just to have a machine to Tinker with now if I really wanted to go a bit crazy and spend some money and have something with a lot of CPU horsepower and a lot of features I'd
**14:58** · probably go with something like this minis for ms01 in fact I I would go with the minis for ms01 because this thing is sort of a beast this one is the I think the i93 900h or something like that model um I could be totally wrong but this thing has uh like three m.2 slots
**15:15** · uh it has a PCI slot right now there's a Nvidia GPU in there it has built-in 10 gig on the back this thing's kind of nuts it's kind of expensive at least this U beefier model is but I think they have like an i5 version now that's uh much more affordable I want to say it's like $600 or something like that honestly that would still probably be overkill for me and be more money than I would want to spend but if for some reason I did want to have the horsepower and the the ability to like plug a pcie
**15:41** · card in and have 10 gig um that would be a pretty sweet system to go with as well that doesn't take up a ton of space I don't have any need or desire really to run any sort of like cluster or high availability setup if I wanted to mess around with it I would probably just pick up some like really cheap thin clients I see on eBay all the time and even like Facebook Marketplace people are selling like three or five little
**16:03** · like wise thin clients or something that if I wanted to experiment with running like a kubernetes cluster or proxmox cluster I'd probably just pick something up like that that way it's really cheap and more so I just get to like play around with clustering rather than it actually being like a really high performance cluster and really past this
**16:20** · I feel like I'm just getting into like the wish list of like fun extras I think if I was going to get anything past what I've already mentioned it would be a little KVM of sorts like this little jet KVM which I'm also going to be doing a video on here soon it is a Kickstarter so you know fair warning but yeah this thing is uh super tiny and seems to be super cool I think these are like $70 once they go up for sale and um yeah
**16:40** · it's a great way that I could just like plug this into my little desktop Naas Home Server and uh be able to control it remotely which would be pretty sweet it wouldn't really be necessary for me but it would be a nice to have so for some reason something breaks and I'm gone I could just remote into it and then I think the last thing I would consider buying would be a second storage server to have a backup of my main storage server and you might be wondering why I put this last because you know it's important to have backups but I think for me I really don't have that much on
**17:09** · well I wouldn't have that much on this hypothetical Nas other than just like a media library that I could get back it would be kind of annoying to get all that back but it wouldn't be the that big of a deal and most everything else really isn't like that critical so I I probably would want to have a backup it just wouldn't be like the first thing I do if I did have a backup server I would probably buy some more drives from server part deals and then I guess I maybe could get like an HP Elite desk put two hard drives in it and then run like a virtualized Jas instance and that
**17:40** · second machine be like the machine that does all of my uh fun tinkering other services but I also run a backup storage server on it that that might be a way to sort of consolidate or maybe I just buy like a cheap Old Nas like I've looked at a few now like for example there was an old Netgear ready Nas that was a little bit of trouble to get working well to get running a modern operating system it was a bit of trouble but I was able to get it running Debian or tunaz or
**18:07** · whatever and um it wouldn't need to have that much horsepower just to be a simple backup storage server and even if it wasn't very efficient I'd honestly probably set it up on a power schedule that way it's not running 24/7 it would just you know kick on a few nights a week to run a backup and then once it was done shut itself back down and yeah
**18:24** · I think that would pretty much be it I say that there's a decent chance that like after I get all this set up I enjoyed getting it set up because well I enjoyed tinkering and messing with my home lab so maybe I would want to buy more stuff just to play around and add things because it's fun but if I was mostly just wanting to run my home lab to cover the things that I needed to do it would probably look as simple as an old desktop with a few hard drives in it maybe a pretty cheap router running open wrt a cheap network switch or two and then maybe like a little mini PC or another backup Naz and a UPS to power it
**18:56** · all and yeah I think that's pretty much it it's pretty simple it's not a lot but I don't really need my home lab to be a lot I don't think I would ever want massive full-size racks with you know crazy epic servers and pedabytes of storage 100 Gig networking like it to me
### What makes sense for me
**19:14** · that just kind of seems Overkill and like I would never actually use it so it just doesn't make sense for me and honestly I find more enjoyment tinkering with computers like this and finding ways to repurpose them and make them work for my home lab and repurposing them to do the simple things that I need them to do hopefully you guys enjoyed me talking about what my ideal but realistic setup
**19:36** · would be and I'd love to know what makes sense for you what's your ideal home lab or even your current home lab situation let me know down in the comments I always love to read those hopefully you guys enjoyed this little bit of a thought experiment I know it was a little bit of a different video but it was a fun idea and I kind of wanted to go through it and I thought it might be fun for a video so I hope you enjoyed it if you like this video and you like my other videos maybe consider supporting my channel becoming a raid member for as little as a dollar a month you get early access to adree videos now and I also
**20:04** · have some bonus behind the scenes content and some other perks so maybe consider checking that out that's about it for this one though so as always thank you guys so much for watching stay curious and I really can't wait to see you in the next one \[Music\]

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| [[wiki/concepts/_index\|concepts/]] | Atomic knowledge extracted from Claude Code sessions | 0 |
| [[wiki/connections/_index\|connections/]] | Cross-cutting insights linking 2+ concepts | 0 |
| [[wiki/qa/_index\|qa/]] | Filed answers to queries (saved with `--file-back`) | 0 |
| [[wiki/homelab/_index\|homelab/]] | Self-hosted infra: Proxmox install, IOMMU/PCI passthrough, hypervisor setup | 1 |
| [[wiki/homelab/_index\|homelab/]] | Self-hosted infra: Proxmox install, IOMMU/PCI passthrough, hypervisor setup, budget builds | 2 |
| [[wiki/web-agency/_index\|web-agency/]] | AI-assisted website building & selling: Claude Code, Nanobanana 2, Kling, LaunchPath MCP | 1 |
| [[wiki/dotfiles/_index\|dotfiles/]] | Linux terminal ricing: Kitty, Fish, modern Rust CLI tools, LazyVim, unified themes | 1 |

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| Article | Summary | Source | Updated |
|---------|---------|--------|---------|
| [[wiki/homelab/proxmox-install-setup-2025\|proxmox-install-setup-2025]] | Full Proxmox VE install from USB + repo switch + IOMMU/passthrough prep + popup removal | YouTube — ProHomelab | 2026-04-15 |
| [[wiki/homelab/homelab-from-scratch-budget-build\|homelab-from-scratch-budget-build]] | Budget-first homelab design: repurposed desktop NAS, OpenWrt router, UPS, tinkering machine — full ~$600 build path | YouTube — Hardware Haven | 2026-04-15 |

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---
title: "Homelab From Scratch — Budget-First Design"
aliases: [homelab-budget-build, homelab-rebuild, homelab-ideal-setup]
tags: [homelab, nas, networking, proxmox, unraid, budget, hardware]
sources: [raw/Rebuilding My Homelab From Scratch.md]
created: 2026-04-15
updated: 2026-04-15
---
## What Makes a Good Homelab
Three axes to balance — all relative to the owner's needs:
- **Functionality** — does it run what you actually need? (media server, home assistant, backups, VMs)
- **Reliability** — downtime tolerance depends on who depends on it; clusters/HA only worth it if hosting for others
- **Cost** — hardware + software licences + ongoing electricity; efficiency matters more in high-rate regions
## Four Core Components
| Component | What it covers |
|-----------|----------------|
| Compute | CPU/RAM for services (VMs, containers) |
| Storage | NAS, drives, RAID |
| Networking | Router, switch, access points |
| Space | Rack, closet shelf, UPS |
## Budget Build Path (ordered by priority)
### 1. Storage First — Repurposed Desktop NAS
- Used Dell Optiplex / Lenovo P330 as NAS host (~$70 with cheap SSD)
- Install **Unraid** or **TrueNAS** — both run services alongside storage
- Start with 2× drives (e.g. 12 TB WD from Server Part Deals, ~$105 each) in basic parity RAID
- Add drives later as needed
- Low idle draw: some Lenovo desktops idle at ~6 W without GPU
### 2. UPS — Buy Early, Not Last
- Get one with a **power draw readout** (useful for tracking electricity cost)
- CyberPower models ~$190 — most expensive single item in a minimal build
- Ensures clean shutdown on power loss; worth it even for a basic setup
### 3. Networking
- **Option A — Easy start:** use ISP-provided router; avoid buying access points and PoE switch upfront
- **Option B — Budget custom:** flash **OpenWrt** on a cheap router (e.g. Dynalink ~$60) — gets you Wi-Fi 6E + built-in switch + AdGuard Home + WireGuard, all in one box
- **Option C — Full custom:** fanless mini-PC running pfSense/OPNsense + separate PoE switch + access points (most flexible, most expensive, most maintenance)
- Switch: 1 GbE sufficient for most; add a 2.5 GbE switch only if editing off NAS
### 4. Tinkering Machine (Optional)
- Used SFF mini-PC (Lenovo ThinkCentre, HP EliteDesk) — cheap, expandable with M.2 e-key slot for 2.5 GbE
- Run **Proxmox** for VMs/containers — keeps experiments isolated from production NAS
- Prevents breaking Jellyfin when testing new services
### 5. Extras (Wish-List Tier)
- **Minisforum MS-01** — i5/i9 mini-PC with PCIe slot, 3× M.2, built-in 10 GbE; overkill for most but powerful
- **KVM over IP** (e.g. JetKVM ~$70) — remote console access when away from home
- **Backup NAS** — second cheap machine (old Netgear ReadyNAS, HP EliteDesk) on a power schedule; runs a few nights/week, not 24/7
- **Thin clients for clustering** — buy 3–5 cheap thin clients off eBay/Marketplace for Kubernetes or Proxmox cluster experiments
## What to Avoid (Unless You Have the Space and Budget)
- Full-size racks — expensive to fill, take up significant space
- 10 GbE throughout — only needed if editing video off NAS
- High-availability clusters for personal use — overkill unless hosting services for others
## Rough Cost Breakdown (2024 prices, no deal-hunting)
| Item | Approx. Cost |
|------|-------------|
| Used desktop (Optiplex/ThinkCentre) | ~$50–80 |
| 2× 12 TB HDDs | ~$210 |
| UPS with display | ~$190 |
| OpenWrt router | ~$60 |
| 2.5 GbE switch | ~$40–60 |
| **Total** | **~$550–600** |
## Key Takeaways
- Start with storage — a repurposed desktop running Unraid covers NAS + services in one box
- Buy the UPS early; it's the most expensive single item but protects everything
- OpenWrt on a cheap router beats both ISP-router-only and full pfSense rig for most people
- Keep tinkering machines separate from production to avoid breaking things for household users
- Avoid racks and 10 GbE until you have a concrete reason — they invite scope creep
- A backup NAS on a scheduled power-on is good enough for non-critical media; run it a few nights per week
## Related
- [[wiki/homelab/proxmox-install-setup-2025|Proxmox Install & Setup 2025]] — hypervisor setup once you have the hardware
- [[wiki/architecture/_index|Architecture Patterns]] — Docker Compose and multi-service design
## Sources
- YouTube: *Hardware Haven — Rebuilding My Homelab From Scratch* (2024-11-16)
`raw/Rebuilding My Homelab From Scratch.md`