I am computer tinkerer interested in building a home lab

Communities DIY Corner
1

I want to turn one of my extra computers into a home lab. I am looking for some suggestions on a best route. I have the following computers.
A home built full tower
AMD FX 6100 cpu
16 GB ram
AMD Radeon HD 6800 1 GB
Samsung SSD 850 Evo 250 GB
1.5 TB Seagate HHD

Predator G 3610
Intel i5 2320 cpu
6 GB ram
GeForce GTX 950 2 GB
5512 HDD

HP Z4 G4
Xeon W-2123
64GB
Nvidia GP108
512 GB SSD
1 TB HDD

Which would be best what parts should I use in which one?

2
  • Use the HP system as the new home lab.
  • Swap out the GPU’s of the AMD FX and Predator systems
  • Sell the Predator system
  • Use the money from the sale to expand storage in the HP system.

In that order.

3

Neither are super great for a modern home lab, to be honest. The main reason is because the power draw of all those systems are abysmal and in 2025, you can get four times the performance at a quarter of the power (or sixteen times the performance at the same power).

My recommendation; for a home lab setup, you want three things:

  1. A stable server that provides storage and persistent services (webserver, NAS et cetera). This is mostly so that you get a feeling for what it takes to keep a server running 24/7, and bragging rights of having a domain pointed straight to your living room. This could be a Raspberry Pi, but I really recommend you look into a proper x86 NAS build here for ~$500-$750 :slight_smile:
  2. A separate network with it’s own router (recommended that you invest in an OpenWRT-capable consumer router to learn the ropes). ~$250
  3. A beefier lab server setup that allows you to run proper virtualization tasks. ~$1.25k-$1.75k

Now, 3 does not need to be super-ultra beefy - I recommend a 7900 build or 9900X build these days, and 64 GB of RAM is overkill. Unless you really want to go to town, a 12 core with 24 threads is plenty, and power wise it draws a maximum of 150W or so, more of course if you also want to explore GPU stuff. Adding in network and the small server/NAS, you will never exceed 300W and 200W will be challenging to push past, though not impossible.

The budget for these three machines, brand new in total, is ~$2k-$2.5k, plus whatever storage you purchase. Does this make sense? Well…

The HP server will draw ~400W when powered on. The other two are half that. Every Watt on a 24/7 system equates to 8.76 kWh per year, so shaving off 200W from the 24/7 server equates to 1700 kWh per year. If you pay $0.15 per kWh in electric bills, then that is $250 saved per year. You decide if that is worth the cost to go with something more modern. Your money, after all. :slight_smile:

4

IMO you missed the point: the OP doesn’t have that amount of money to spend and has to make do with the options listed. The OP probably doesn’t live in the Western world, could be Asia, Africa or the America’s other then USA/Canada. In Switzerland, 2.5k USD isn’t a lot, but elsewhere, that amount can easily be larger then a year’s wages :money_with_wings:

5

If you live outside the EU/US, electricity bills are probably going to be worse. But sure, is up to OP to decide if it is worth it.

Paying $400 a year for your homelab isn’t exactly fun either though…

6

personally, if its mostly a nas with light other duties. Ive been quite happy with the ugreen nas sync family. the OS leaves a bit to be desired, but you can just install truenas/unraid/proxmox* if you really want to.

7

In terms of absolute value, the US and western EU are among the most expensive electricity markets on the planet, I believe. So it’s usually the opposite of what you’d expect.

8

@wertigon 's calculations still stand.

Each watt drawn from use, adds up to 8.76kwh per year.

So, total sytem electricity draw, * kWh price, * 8.76, is what it will cost in real, understandable figures, every year, in electricity alone

One can choose to be informed, and still choose to run existing hardware inefficiently, instead of scrapping everything, after being informed.

If, perhaps, OP can sell stuff, and buy more efficient low energy parts/systems, then OP will save money overall

But, perhaps $30/month ““wasted””, by choosing to use existing hardware, is a simpler path to start on, and over time, switch to a less wasteful (energy/money wise) system, as actual needs have been assessed.

Or, in fact, OP may simply tinker with a Couple VM’s running docker/jellyfin/pihole/adguard, but loose interest and simply decide to not persue it.

I am not sure the power draws of the systems, but I like to tinker with several VM’s in a home lab, and the HP seems the most capable, of those systems to run them.

I personally worked out a similar assessment like wertigon, and decided a newish system, with mostly flash storage 24/7 was worth it for me, with removable HDD’s that don’t run all the time, for cold storage, and rotating backups.

But to each their own, and more modern, efficient components, may also give better performance, like SSD’s etc

Edit: on the other hand, hardware costs and availability may vary by region, along side energy costs, so replacement equipment, especially Ram right now, may also have an effect on price…