Build guides
One honest voice across the whole stack. Each guide walks a build end to end and points you at the focused sites for the gear that actually matters.
Build your first NAS
A plain-English walkthrough of building your first NAS in 2026: how many bays, which drives, DIY vs prebuilt, the software choice, and the mistakes worth skipping.
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Build a Plex box
How to build a Plex or Jellyfin server that transcodes smoothly: why the GPU matters more than the CPU, how much storage you need, and the cheapest path that actually works.
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Build your first homelab
How to start a homelab without wasting money: one mini PC, a hypervisor, the network that ties it together, and what to actually run first.
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Build a Frigate camera box
How to build a local, private security-camera recorder with Frigate: the AI accelerator that does the detection, PoE cameras and network, and storage sized for continuous recording.
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Run a local LLM at home
How to run ChatGPT-style models on your own hardware, privately and with no subscription: how much memory you need, VRAM vs unified memory, and the software to start with.
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Choose your NAS operating system
TrueNAS vs Unraid vs Synology DSM, compared honestly: which NAS OS fits your drives, your budget, and how much tinkering you actually want to do.
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Build your first home router
Why and how to replace your ISP box with a router you control: OpenWrt vs OPNsense, the hardware to run it on, and VLANs to isolate the gear you do not trust.
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Run Home Assistant on your home server
How to run Home Assistant on hardware you already own: where to put it, which install flavour to pick, the radio dongle that actually matters, and choosing devices that work locally.
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Build a photo and video editing setup
How to build an editing setup that keeps up with your footage: the camera, a colour-accurate monitor, the rig that scrubs 4K without stuttering, and storage fast enough to work from.
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