Guides
The concepts behind a good home-server build - what the specs mean and how to choose with confidence.
How to choose a home-server mini-PC
The specs that actually decide a homelab mini-PC - the iGPU for transcoding, the NICs, idle watts, and the slots that let you add a Coral or a GPU - and the ones that don't matter.
Read →Coral vs Hailo vs Intel iGPU for Frigate
Which detector to run Frigate object detection on - a Google Coral, a Hailo-8, or your mini-PC's Intel iGPU via OpenVINO - and how many cameras each really handles.
Read →Intel QuickSync by generation: which iGPU transcodes what
Which Intel iGPU generation to buy for Plex/Jellyfin transcoding - UHD 630 vs N100 UHD vs UHD 770 vs Iris Xe vs Arc - with codec support, 4K stream counts, and AV1 decode vs encode.
Read →Sharing one GPU across VMs and containers: SR-IOV, vGPU, and the easy way
How to share a single GPU between multiple VMs or containers on Proxmox - the container shortcut, Intel iGPU SR-IOV, NVIDIA vGPU (and the vgpu_unlock route), plus which hardware actually supports it.
Read →2.5GbE vs 10GbE: which does your home server actually need?
When 2.5GbE is enough and when 10GbE is worth it for a home server or NAS - real throughput, what saturates a link, SFP+ vs 10GBASE-T heat and power, and the mini-PC options for each.
Read →ZFS on a mini-PC: what actually matters
Running ZFS on a home-server mini-PC - how much RAM you really need, the ARC cache, why SSD pools love ZFS, the truth about ECC, and the mini-PCs that make good ZFS boxes.
Read →Cutting a mini-PC's idle power: the settings that matter
Why your home-server mini-PC idles at 25W instead of 8W, and how to fix it - C-states, ASPM, powertop, the NIC and SSD culprits, and what to leave alone. With the power-cost calculator.
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