Nathan Reynolds

I’ve been building gaming rigs and tinkering with Steam Decks for over a decade, and 2026 has been one of the wildest years I can remember for NVMe SSDs. AI infrastructure demand has pushed drive prices up 15 to 25 percent compared to last year, and 4TB+ models keep disappearing from stock. That’s exactly why … Read more

When we started testing storage for our home lab and small business clients, the difference between a consumer SSD and a true enterprise SSD with power loss protection showed up almost immediately. A single unexpected power cycle on a prosumer drive corrupted two Ceph OSD databases we were running. That weekend cost us 14 hours … Read more

I spent six weeks testing 12 U.2 SSDs across two home lab racks running Proxmox, TrueNAS, and a small Ceph cluster, and I learned something the spec sheets never told me: not every “enterprise” drive behaves the same way once you point ZFS at it. After burning through roughly 47 terabytes of synthetic workloads plus … Read more

If you’ve ever tried to clone a 50GB Docker image onto a spinning hard drive, you already know why developers need the best portable SSDs available today. I spent the last 60 days testing 8 portable SSDs across real coding workflows: compiling large Rust projects, spinning up Docker containers, syncing Git repos between my MacBook … Read more

Multi-VM workloads demand serious horsepower packed into a tiny footprint, and after testing 8 of the latest mini PCs across Proxmox, VMware ESXi, and Hyper-V, I have clear recommendations for . Running multiple virtual machines on a single compact box used to mean accepting sluggish performance, but the new generation of AMD Ryzen and Intel … Read more

When I set up my first backup server in 2019, I bought a full-size tower that consumed 180 watts at idle and sounded like a small jet engine. Today, the same workload runs on a mini PC that draws 12 watts and sits silently on a shelf behind my monitor. That shift is why I’m … Read more

I ran a silent mini PC next to my bed for two years before writing this guide. The first one had a fan that whirred at night like a mosquito, and I had to learn the hard way that not every “quiet” mini PC lives up to the promise when it sits three feet from … Read more

Setting up a self-hosted VPN used to mean buying a noisy desktop tower that pulled 80 watts around the clock. After three months of testing eight different mini PCs as WireGuard gateways in my home lab, I can tell you those days are over. The best mini PCs for VPN and WireGuard gateways today sip … Read more

I built my first security camera NVR setup six years ago using an old desktop tower that sounded like a jet engine, and I have spent hundreds of hours since testing quieter, smaller alternatives. Today, the best mini PCs for security camera NVR software can run 24/7 with low power draw, stay silent in your … Read more

When I set out to find the best mini PCs for small business servers in , I spent 60 days running file shares, Docker containers, and Proxmox clusters on eight compact machines in our test lab. The short answer: yes, a mini PC is a genuinely good server for a small business with 1-20 employees, … Read more