BMrunbaremetal

Gear I use

The exact parts behind the builds. For each one there's abudget pick, the one I actually run, and anoverkill option — so whatever your budget, there's a choice that fits. If I haven't used something like it, it's not on this page.

Affiliate disclosure: links marked* are affiliate links. If you buy through them I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what I recommend.

Prices are rough ballparks, last sanity-checked Aug 2026 — DDR4 and NAND are unusually volatile right now, so tap through for the live price.

The box the whole channel runs on

No rack, no noise, no cloud bill. Pick your budget — one small mini PC does all of it.

Budget~$150
Intel N100 Mini PC (16GB) *The cheapest way in. Runs Proxmox and a handful of light services while you learn — not big local models, but a real first homelab node.Check price on Amazon →
★ What I run~$350–450
Ryzen Mini PC — 8-core, 32GB, NVMe, 2.5GbE *The whole channel runs on a Ryzen mini PC in this class — Proxmox host, local LLMs, n8n, the lot. No dGPU, no rack, ~15W idle. This is the sweet spot.Check price on Amazon →
Overkill~$550+
Ryzen Mini PC — 64GB / 2TB *Same box, maxed out. If your budget stretches, 64GB / 2TB stacks more VMs and bigger models without ever thinking about headroom again.Check price on Amazon →

Networking that punches above its price

Cheap 2.5-gig that behaves like enterprise gear. No Realtek roulette.

Budget~$15
USB 2.5GbE Adapter *No free PCIe slot? Plug-and-play 2.5-gig over USB. Not as clean as a real NIC, but it gets a mini PC onto the fast network in 30 seconds.Check price on Amazon →
★ What I run~$20–30
Intel I225-V 2.5GbE NIC *Dirt cheap, real 2.5GbE, rock-solid — passes through cleanly to a VM and behaves like the enterprise Intel NICs it borrows from. This is the one I run.Check price on Amazon →
Overkill~$40–60
10GbE SFP+ NIC (Intel X520/X710) *When 2.5-gig is not enough and you have a switch for it — used enterprise 10-gig cards are shockingly cheap and move NAS traffic like it is local disk.Check price on Amazon →

Storage — fast tier + bulk tier

NVMe for the working set, cheap spinning rust for everything else.

★ What I run~$220+
2TB NVMe SSD (Gen4) *The fast tier I run: VM disks and model weights live here. 2TB is the sane floor — NAND prices are ugly right now, so buy what you need, not extra.Check price on Amazon →
Overkill~$450+
4TB NVMe SSD (Gen4) *Double the fast tier for a fat local-model library and more VMs — one drive, no juggling what lives on NVMe vs the spinning disk.Check price on Amazon →
★ What I run~$120+
6TB 7200RPM HDD *The cheap-per-terabyte tier I run: bulk media, photo originals, local backups. Keeps the fast NVMe free. 7200RPM keeps it usable, not just an archive.Check price on Amazon →
Overkill~$220+
14TB 7200RPM HDD *Media-hoarder tier — the cheapest dollars-per-terabyte you can buy. One of these holds years of Immich photos and *arr libraries without blinking.Check price on Amazon →

Memory — the real homelab bottleneck

RAM runs out long before CPU does once you stack VMs and models.

Budget~$180–260
32GB DDR4-3200 Kit (2×16GB) *The real floor to start — enough for Proxmox plus a few VMs. Note DDR4 has roughly doubled in 2026 (AI demand + EOL), so even the entry tier is not cheap anymore.Check price on Amazon →
★ What I run~$380–480
64GB DDR4-3200 Kit (2×32GB) *What I run and the comfortable floor: stack VMs and models without watching the RAM meter. Buy the cheapest reputable DDR4-3200 — skip the RGB tax. It stings at 2026 prices, but it is the single upgrade you feel most.Check price on Amazon →
Overkill~$800+
128GB DDR4-3200 Kit (4×32GB) *Run everything at once — a dozen VMs, a big model, and still headroom. Only worth it if you actually fill 64GB first; most people never do, and at 2026 DDR4 prices this tier is a real commitment.Check price on Amazon →

Willing to spend more?

Silent, tiny, and sips power — when cheapest-per-core is not the goal.

~$599+
Mac mini (Apple Silicon, base) *When silent, tiny, and ~5W idle matter more than cheapest-per-core, Apple Silicon’s unified memory chews through local LLMs while sipping power. Not what runs this channel — the Ryzen box does — but the one to reach for if near-silent and low-watt win over price.Check price on Amazon →
Overkill~$999+
Mac mini (M4 Pro, more unified memory) *More unified memory = bigger local models running entirely on-chip, fast, and near-silent. The nice-hardware pick if the homelab is also your desk machine.Check price on Amazon →

Off the homelab

When something has to face the internet, it never touches the home network.

from ~€4/mo
Hetzner CloudWhen something has to face the internet, it goes on a cheap Hetzner box — never the homelab.Visit →
$6/TB/mo
Backblaze B2Off-site backup target for the homelab. S3-compatible, dirt cheap egress.Visit →
~$10/yr
Namecheap DomainsWhere the side-project domains live.Visit →

The software it all sits on

Free and open-source. The foundation under every build. No commission — I just run them.

Proxmox VEFree, open-source hypervisor. The foundation every build here sits on.Visit →n8nSelf-hosted workflow automation — the Zapier replacement this channel keeps coming back to.Visit →