Nathan Reynolds

I lost a 6TB Plex library to a desktop drive failure two years ago, and that single failure is what pushed me to write this guide. After three months of testing eight different drives in my Synology DS920+ and a QNAP TS-453D, running simultaneous 4K transcodes, RAID rebuilds, and 24/7 stress loads, I have a … Read more

I spent the last three months testing eight 2.5-inch SATA SSDs across three different NAS enclosures in my home lab, and the results surprised me. After running roughly 18TB of mixed write workloads through each drive, the gap between consumer and NAS-optimized SSDs became impossible to ignore. Finding the best 2.5-inch SSDs for all-flash NAS … Read more

I learned this the hard way last year when I tried to load Baldur’s Gate 3 on my 64GB Steam Deck. After uninstalling and reinstalling twice in a single weekend, I cracked open the back panel and dropped in a new drive. That single upgrade changed how I use the device, and it’s why our … Read more

I spent the last 60 days running local AI models on eight different mini PCs to find out which ones actually deliver on the “budget AI workstation” promise. I loaded Ollama, LM Studio, and Stable Diffusion on each unit, threw 7B and 13B parameter models at them, and tracked tokens per second, fan noise, and … Read more

If your home network still feels stuck at gigabit speeds, you are not alone. I spent the last three months testing eight different 2.5GbE USB network adapters on laptops, desktops, and NAS devices running Windows 11, macOS, and Linux. The jump from 1GbE to 2.5Gbps was the single biggest speed boost I have seen in … Read more

When your home network outgrows a desktop switch and cables start taking over your desk, it is time to move to a proper rackmount switch. I run a 12U server rack in my home office with a NAS, three workstations, two access points, and eight IP cameras. After two years of swapping gear, I have … Read more

I have spent the last three months running eight different SATA SSDs inside a Synology DS923+ and a TrueNAS Scale box, hammering them with simulated 24/7 workloads to see which ones actually survive NAS duty in . After over 14TB of synthetic writes, dozens of degraded pool tests, and more SMART warnings than I care … Read more

I spent the last three months running Pi-hole on every device in our test lab, from a fanless MeLE Quieter sitting behind my router to a refurbished Dell OptiPlex I picked up for a song. The goal was simple: find the best mini PC for Pi-hole and network ad blocking that stays quiet, sips power, … Read more

I spent the last three months testing eight different mini PCs to find the best mini PCs for Nextcloud personal cloud setups, and the results genuinely surprised me. After running Nextcloud, Syncthing, Pi-hole, and Home Assistant on each one, I learned that you do not need enterprise hardware to run a solid self-hosted cloud. The … Read more

I spent 90 days running Docker stacks, compiling code, and managing virtual machines on eight different mini PCs from my home office, and what I found changed how I think about compact workstations. The best mini PCs for developers working from home in have closed the gap with full-size desktops in ways most engineers never … Read more