Nathan Reynolds

Running an Immich server means your photos and videos are finally yours again, but turning that library into a beautiful 4K slideshow on your living room TV is a different challenge. After testing dozens of setups over the past year, I have found that the best 4K media player for an Immich slideshow is one … Read more

I built my first homelab in a closet with a used Dell PowerEdge R710 I picked up for $80 on eBay. Five years and four server upgrades later, I have learned what separates a good used PowerEdge from a money pit. The best used Dell PowerEdge for a homelab delivers enterprise-grade reliability at a fraction … Read more

Building a homelab without IPMI means crawling behind the rack every time something breaks. I learned this the hard way after my first home server sat headless in a closet and locked up during a BIOS flash. That’s when I went looking for the best AMD motherboard with IPMI for a homelab, and I never … Read more

A Zigbee garage door controller is a small smart relay or sensor module that talks to your existing garage door opener over the Zigbee wireless protocol, so you can open, close, and monitor your garage from an app or hub like Home Assistant, SmartThings, or Hubitat. We spent 45 days testing 8 different Zigbee-based options … Read more

I’ve spent the last three months testing mini PCs in my home lab, and I can tell you the demand for a quality mini PC with dual 2.5GbE ports has exploded. Home lab enthusiasts, pfsense users, and NAS builders all need faster-than-gigabit networking without paying for full 10GbE equipment. A 2.5GbE connection gives you 2.5 … Read more

Building a serious home data center used to mean spending tens of thousands on enterprise hardware. That changed when refurbished rack servers hit the market. I started my own homelab three years ago with a single Dell PowerEdge tucked into a closet, and our team has been testing rack-mount servers ever since. If you searched … Read more

Running a rental home means balancing tenant privacy with property protection, and nothing beats the peace of mind that comes from a fully self-hosted NVR setup you actually own. After testing eight different hardware components across Frigate, Blue Iris, ZoneMinder, and MotionEye setups for 90 days, our team has narrowed down the gear that delivers … Read more

I built my first Jellyfin box out of an old Dell Optiplex I pulled from a recycling bin, and it taught me something important: the best budget build for a Jellyfin media server does not have to be new, flashy, or expensive. Jellyfin is free, open-source media server software that streams your movies, TV shows, … Read more

I spent the last six months testing compact servers in my home lab specifically to find the best home server for a self-hosted password manager. I ran Vaultwarden, Bitwarden-compatible clients, Passbolt, and KeePassXC on each one, checking boot times, sync speeds, Docker performance, and how easy each box was to lock down behind a reverse … Read more

I learned the hard way that one external drive is not a backup. After a portable SSD died during a wedding job, I lost three weeks of client images. That moment pushed me to build a real home server for my photography backups, and I have been testing NAS gear ever since. This guide shares … Read more