Home lab buying guides
Home lab gear, compared on the specs
Mini PCs, NAS boxes, networking hardware, and the services that keep them backed up and reachable. Every comparison is built from published specifications, vendor pricing pages, and aggregated public reviews — never from paid placement.
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Latest guides
- Mini PCsVPS vs Home Server Cost: When a Mini PC Pays for Itself
A DigitalOcean Droplet vs a mini PC at home: how much hardware each VPS plan's monthly fee pays off in 36 months, from 512MiB to 16GiB, after electricity.
- Home lab networkingBest Wireless Access Point for a Home Lab: Budget the PoE
An access point rated at 11W can still take 30W of a PoE switch's budget. Six home lab APs compared on the PoE standard they ask for, not just what they draw.
- Home lab networkingBest 10GbE Switch for a Home Lab: Check Your Ports First
An eight-port SFP+ switch is not eight RJ45 10G devices. On MikroTik's own guidance it is four. Five 10GbE switches compared by what your machines plug in with.
- Home lab networkingBest PoE Switches for Homelabs (2026): Watts, Not Ports
How many devices can a PoE switch power? Five homelab PoE switches compared on makers' figures: one to four PoE+ devices each, half their PoE ports or fewer.
- Home lab networkingBest Network Switch for a Home Lab: Watts Per Port
Gigabit smart switches are rated at 2.5W to 3.7W; add 10G and it is 11W to 36W. Eight home lab switches compared on power, VLAN limits and link aggregation.
- NAS drivesBest High Capacity HDD for NAS: Fewer Drives, Less Power
24TB usable at 7.2W on two drives or 13.6W on four: 17 NAS hard drives from 8TB to 26TB compared per terabyte, and how many to buy for 24, 48 or 72TB.