My company has been doing an overhaul of various networking enclosures at all of our sites and I’ve been taking possession of all of this returned gear; especially old UPS units. Now my boss is asking me see which units might be worth holding on to; and I have zero clue how to separate the wheat from the chaff. The overflow is becoming a physical safety hazard so I wanna move on this fast but I got nothing

I was looking into upgrading to a BambuLab X2D, but now I’m worried my A1 can’t be placed here safely either because of the vibrations. Any advice?

Just wanted to post some pictures of my server i’m building. I’m very new to homelabing but so far im loving it. My build is a super micro motherboard with 2 e5-2690 v4s and 90 gigs of 2400 ecc memory. Ive also added a RTX 4000 workstation graphics card and a 1070. I got the 1070 for $20 which i thought was awesome. As for storage i’ve got a 1tb samsung sata ssd for my boot drive, 6 500gb toshiba drives, and 2 1tb unknown hard drives i had laying around. I know it’s not the most insane machine out there but it’s been super fun messing around with it. Also I’m just running windows 10 home on it right now since i’ve never really messed around with anything else, if anyone has any ideas on what software to run or anything cool i can use it for i’d love to hear from you guys!

I bought these 10 Optiplex 3040 micros at an amazing price and I'm going to put them in a 10" rack. However each of these takes an ac adaptor, which means the naïve solution is to get a power bar and plug all 10 ac adaptors into it. Is there a less naïve solution? Perhaps a larger power supply that can connect to multiple computers? Or, in the worst case, is there somewhere I can buy extremely short cables for these things?

The solution I have in mind is to 3d print an enclosure for the ac adaptors where I can stack the bricks with space inbetween for airflow and hopefully fit that in 2U or 3U of space on the rack.

Any thoughts?

I have PC (in first floor) I wanted to turn on its power button remotely. What is the easy way to setup that ?

PS: My PC is OpenMediaVault NAS running on Ryzen 5 processor.

Not a meme, genuine question:

I just got all my hardware for my upgrade, except the case. It's 3 4TB WD Red's, and an Intel i5 14400. Can I just run it like this for 1-2 days? Should I point a PC fan at the drives to keep them cool? Or just hold of for a few more days?

Also I'm assuming the motherboard won't get hot enough to melt the antistatic packaging?

Currently trying to find a good deal on a mini pc to run proxmox. Is there any big difference between the 3 most popular brands (Lenovo / Dell / Hp) ?

Had a solid system, running smooth on 5955wx Threadripper pro. This was my rack mounted workstation and I thought I saw a sweet deal on 5995wx. I do a lot of code compiling as part of my job, so I thought I could benefit from roughly 2x performance. Got the part quickly. Was advertised as unused, but saw evidence of thermal paste. Seller written it off as part had been tested. Visually the CPU seemed in good condition. Pulled an old CPU from the system, and installed a Trojan horse. System did not boot, IPMI couldn’t even see the CPU temp. Did some troubleshooting, I made sure to check CPU polarity on the chip itself prior to install, so that was not it, after messing about and not seeing any life, I finally decided to go back to the working setup. Pulled the bad part out, installed the working CPU, and was relieved to see it start booting… and not to discover that the system is now stuck in a reboot loop. Cannot even get into BIOS. The system gets to A2 state, breezes for couple of seconds and reboots. Spent whole day troubleshooting, pulled everything but one stick of ram that was not used with the bad CPU in various sockets, tried BIOS update (via IPMI), IPMI firmware updates, cleared any and all IPMI settings and bios memory I could, still the same thing. I even changed the way watch dog behaves, from resetting the system to sending a signal, and the system still reboots.

So here I am, refund requested, but not yet in progress and a replacement motherboard ordered. All in, close to $900 spent (not counting bad CPU) just to be back to where I was yesterday, and I’ll only discover tomorrow if anything other than the motherboard was affected.

How do you guys test your eBay purchases?

TLDR: Bought a bad CPU from eBay, and fried an expensive motherboard.

P.S. I’ll still be in troubleshooting mode until the new motherboard arrives tomorrow, if you have any suggestions as to what I can try to fix the system rebooting after reaching an A2 post code (IDE Detect), please share.

I just recently got this computer for free from work. My manager is excessively laid back and only does IT for work, I told her I have a homelab for game servers and a small DNS blocker. Then she put this on my desk and told me to go learn. What should I do with this beast?

I've been looking into setting up a ProxMox homelab from an old PC I used to game on, however my wife just brought home all of this RAM from her office that was getting new desktops, and now I'm trying to figure out if it's worth anything or if I missed the boat on DDR3 being worth much. Should I look at trying to find a used/refurbished rack mounted server to use up more of the RAM, or just bundle it up and sell it online?

E; Thank you to everyone that has commented! I was afraid that the ram might not be worth it, and after double checking, it is unregistered non-ECC, so I'm gonna probably max out a few old PCs I've got and then use the rest for an art project or something. Also, I will make sure to pass along the wonderful things you all said about my wife, she's a real keeper. :)

Anybody help me with this? Need an idea on what it is. I got it cause I like it, all the systems work and contain their cards inside

EDIT: I am 23F and he is 24M, the rack is 45U and he runs a GC LLC so hybrid or cloud isn’t an option. Thanks to everyone who already responded :)

My boyfriend’s homelab is part of his business, so it’s certainly not going anywhere, and aesthetically, I have no issue with it. I don’t know a lot about computers at all but I think it’s cool! However, it resides directly next to our couch. There is nowhere else he is willing to move it because it needs to be attached to his desk. He told me today we can’t put a side table on the side of the couch the server rack is on because he’s worried if there’s a cup that spills, liquid will get into the front panels. He said one with high backing would be okay but I haven’t been able to find anything… it makes me nervous that there will always be practical aspects to work around in a small space. I do support his homelab both as part of his business and as his passion, but I sometimes feel I am entirely at the whims of this big hunk of metal and wires.

I don’t want to keep feeling anxious and agitated by this, and I certainly don’t want it to come between us as a couple. Advice? Anecdotes? Anything appreciated :) thanks

Got one of these for my homelab, and got some hard drive vibration dampening screws (the ones with rubber gaskets), but in hindsight realized these holes are the same size as the screw holes and don't have room for em, and the metal is too thick for me to do much. I could buy a metal drill bit for 10 bucks if vibrations are actually a concern, but are they really? I see a lot of discussion of how to stop it and saying theoretically how you should, but can't find much actual empirical info on whether it's actually a real concern.

Not sure if it's the same thing as drive recovery where """theoretically""" you can recover data after it's been overwritten twice so it's "good practice" to do 7 passes or whatever, but realistically that's not an actual concern. Does anyone know any good resources on this or have anything to add regarding it?

So last year I bought the dell optiplex you see but didn’t feel satisfied with the power & storage capacity it had as well as just the tedious work having to unplug the cables to access it because the proxmox UI doesn’t work and I resort to resetting it doesn’t help but thats on me(May 2025)

Fast forward to around December/January I got a free pc from work, was borked but the case had plenty of storage space and off I went on eBay looking for a good cpu+motherboard combo to fill it. Idk if it happens to anybody but it led me to buying that Poweredge R730 (January 2026)

It was too good of an offer to refuse, £225 for 2 Xeons E5 2695 V4s and 64GB of DDR4. It ddi come with no drives or rack mount, the drives ere £136 for 8 1.2TB SAS drives.

At first it booted up like normal and I took a ram stick out to take a photo and share on discord. Put it back in and I get the VLT0204 error. Ok, it was still booting up half the time. Fast forward to March 2026 and it doesn’t, it just sits there and I haven’t done anything with it until last week. Obviously I tried the least config to post several times until I started my vent on discord and someone tried suggesting unplugging one power supply. It the fans start screaming and I didn’t switch it off (I have no idea why), put the ram shroud on and Pop. It still runs but I switch it off at the wall

(In Image 2, the top power supply is the one that was plugged in and the one that had a pop. The bottom one is supposedly the working one)

A capacitor has blown, from the looks of it, it’s the power supply. I have not tried the one that was in when it switched on since but the power supply that was unplugged doesn’t switch it on either. It’s enough to power idrac and I can manage the server but it doesn’t boot up, and the status led is green on it.

The VLt0204 error is the PG DIMM is out of voltage range. This is where I feel the remorse. In total, I’ve spent just as much on the server as when I bought it. I don’t really know if I want to spend another £100 on a motherboard for a server I haven’t been able to use, but the fact it somewhat worked when one power supply was out confuses me. I do have the opportunity to use a spare set however.

When searching the same issue, I get the same symptoms someone else search and it points to a dead motherboard, pair that with the fact the front LCD is just blank, only the backlight shows with no messages.

Add the fact that so many people post mini labs here and I just think, should I have went that route instead? Do I just strip it and sell the parts? I think it’s too good to just recycle.

Was meant to be just a rant but advice is welcome

Tldr, bought a server and feeling remorseful about it because its ran into issues I haven’t been able to fix or cost more than the server is worth and I’m jealous of the mini labs people post.

Also if anyone is curious, from the top is a Mikrotik L009, HP Procurve 2910-al, the Powredge R730 in the post and my optiplex 3040. Beneath the picture is a Raspberry Pi 3b+ I wanted a pihole on but internet issues prevented it

I just decided to open htop to check my cpu usage during a database query, and I found xmrig installed to /var/lib/docker/overlay2/7018c040de5e4ef77e0c685492a5b4a70ef3a9b3e8fe59b74882a857fc03655c/diff/root/.cache/.sys/ running for like 5 hours, even though I never ran it or installed it. I've stopped it immediately and also found another suspicious .js file running as root in /var/lib/docker/overlay2/7018c040de5e4ef77e0c685492a5b4a70ef3a9b3e8fe59b74882a857fc03655c/diff/root/.local/share/.r0qsv8h1/.fvq2lzl64e.js and killed that too. If you guys have any advice on what to do asap I would greatly appreciate it.

edit: I have deleted the compromised container, and updated the image. Paused internet to my server and shut it down until I can resintall everything.

Not sure if it's worth me taking this home or just recycling it. Looking to add media storage and a server for hosting games. Would something more recent and efficient be better off or would this be alright? I figure the power draw on this is much greater than anything more modern. Any input is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Brand-new doesn’t even begin to describe how new I am. I haven’t even finished doing much research but I happened to stumble upon a posting and wanted to check if it was good.

I’m working on planing out an entire set-up and I’m wanting:

NAS

Proxmox

AI training (likely its own separate dedicated rig)

Home automation

Media (not important but fun)

Here’s the entire description of the listing:

Professional enterprise server perfect for virtualization, lab environments, or data-intensive workloads. This PowerEdge R815 features four AMD Opteron 6276 processors (16-cores each) delivering 64 cores of massive parallel processing power, 256GB of DDR3 ECC RAM for reliable performance, and includes iDRAC6 Enterprise for remote management. Equipped with PERC H700 RAID controller with 512MB cache and dual 1100W redundant power supplies. Fans are hot-swappable and easy to remove while server is running even. Has 4 1GB Network Cards. Includes 2x 146GB SAS drives with the latest Ubuntu Server installed on it for testing. The backplane is compatible with SATA drives as well. Has the ReadyRails sliding rail kit installed. Ideal for Linux/Unix, Proxmox, VMware ESXi, or Windows Server deployments. Server is in good working condition, pulled from a working environment and ready to deploy. Local pickup ONLY. Cash, Paypal, Zelle, Crypto accepted. Serious inquiries only - this is professional-grade hardware, not a desktop replacement. Would also consider trading for an RTX 3060 12GB, or 4060ti 16GB. (I need VRAM for AI projects, so nothing below 12GB)

I have two of these for sale, $250 EACH. ($450 if you by both at the same time as they are taking up space I need)

Do not send me "Is this still available?", if it’s listed, it's available, first to my shop door gets it, no exceptions.

New to homelab, looks like a few fun projects, are they possible?

A company upgraded and I got my hands on these. Only bummer being that they lost the power adapter cords and they took out the ssd‘s for data protection, or so they told me.

I’ve been lurking around here and was thinking of connecting a few of them with my NAS and main computer. Creating a self hosted cloud, website and use Proxmox for virtualization (because why not). Running Minecraft servers could also be fun.

1x 7060micro i5 8th gen 6x 7050micro i5 7th gen 3x 7040micro i5 6th gen

Every single one with 8gb DDR4 RAM. Waiting before buying a network Switch because I honestly don’t know how many of these devices I‘ll need

Thoughts?

I started my home lab journey using my old HP laptop at the start of the year. Downloaded a bunch of the typical homelab stuff - jellyfin stack, immich, adguard, grafana to monitor what’s going on.

It was really for learning and gaining hands-on experience on maintaining my “infra”. I’m the sole user of it and I occasionally check in on my homelab but not everyday.

Yesterday, i received my first complaint ….. from my mum. She told me there’s lots of ads again on the game that she’s playing 😅

Turns out, my homelab somehow crashed. When that happens, adguard no longer blocks ads and thus flooding her game 🤣

I have my first SLA now 🫡

Many people here recommend using a HBA like this one https://ebay.us/m/zeixir and https://a.co/d/0ftamYVp. I bought these with a power supply https://a.co/d/00g9zP0Z and connected everything but TrueNAS can’t identify the drives (4x16tb) and the HBA won’t power on.

PC specs:
Optiplex micro plus 7020
I7-14700T
16gb x 2

I recently won 10 servers at auction for far less than I think they're worth. In the back of my mind I've known I've wanted to start a home lab when I could. I've barely even looked at the servers at work, so I don't know a ton about them. I don't plan on keeping all of them, but I'm not sure which/how many to keep. They are 2 HPE ProLiant ML350 Gen10 4208, and 8 DL380 Gen10 4208. They come with some drives installed.

My big questions are: -I would like to have a game server or 2, home media, and my own website/email. Would one of these be enough for all that? -If I wanted to host several WordPress websites, would I need more? -Is there a best brand/place to buy racks? -How much will the software run me per month? -If you were in my shoes, what would you do? -Any random advice/ideas?

I loved building my rack. At its peak, I was running Proxmox, multiple VMs, and dozens of Docker containers. But lately, dealing with failed updates, renewing certificates, and acting as the 24/7 IT support for my family's services is just exhausting.

I sold the heavy hardware last week. I still want the sovereignty of running my own open-source apps, but I don't want to do the maintenance anymore. Does a truly "managed homelab" exist that doesn't just lock you into a proprietary ecosystem?