Hardware | PC Components, Guides & Reviews

The $20 Server — What Extreme Budget Computing Teaches CS Students

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Computer science • 8 min read

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The $20 Server — What Extreme Budget Computing Teaches CS Students

# The $20 Server — What Extreme Budget Computing Teaches CS Students The most educational server in the room is usually the worst one. Give students unlimited cloud credits and they can launch machines all afternoon without learning much about limits. Give them a battered $20 office desktop with 4…

Techie Mike • 18 Jul 2026

Proxmox VE in Production — What Running It 24/7 for Over a Year Actually Teaches You

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proxmox • 8 min read

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Proxmox VE in Production — What Running It 24/7 for Over a Year Actually Teaches You

# Proxmox VE in Production — What Running It 24/7 for Over a Year Actually Teaches You The moment an outage interrupts something you actually use every day, your homelab has stopped behaving like a toy. That is the cleanest definition of production I know. I have been running Proxmox VE 24/7 for…

Techie Mike • 15 Jul 2026

Homelab Burnout: Sustainable Self-Hosting When the Hobby Starts Feeling Like Work

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linux • 7 min read

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Homelab Burnout: Sustainable Self-Hosting When the Hobby Starts Feeling Like Work

# Homelab Burnout: Sustainable Self-Hosting When the Hobby Starts Feeling Like Work Browse [r/homelab](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/) for long enough and you will regularly find people questioning whether their homelab has become more work than fun. People are not tired of technology itself. Th…

Techie Mike • 13 Jul 2026

Beyond Ollama: 3 Homelab AI Tools Worth Trying Next

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developer tools • 12 min read

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Beyond Ollama: 3 Homelab AI Tools Worth Trying Next

# Beyond Ollama: 3 Homelab AI Tools Worth Trying Next Ollama is the tool I recommend when someone wants their first local model running tonight. It is simple, fast to understand, and good enough for a lot of homelab jobs. Pull a model, hit an API, wire up Open WebUI, done. I already covered that fu…

Techie Mike • 10 Jul 2026

Homelab Network Design: Building Your Own Miniature Data Centre at Home

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hardware • 13 min read

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Homelab Network Design: Building Your Own Miniature Data Centre at Home

# Homelab Network Design: Building Your Own Miniature Data Centre at Home My homelab started flat. One subnet. Every device — the Proxmox host, the Docker containers, the media server, the WiFi light bulbs — all splashing around in the same 192.168.1.0/24 pool. It worked. Until it didn't. The mome…

Techie Mike • 07 Jul 2026

Right to Local Intelligence: Why Running AI on Your Own Hardware Matters

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AI coding assistant • 8 min read

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Right to Local Intelligence: Why Running AI on Your Own Hardware Matters

# Right to Local Intelligence: Why Running AI on Your Own Hardware Matters A manifesto hit the front page of Hacker News last week with a title that stopped me mid-scroll: "[Right to Local Intelligence](https://righttointelligence.org/)." Around the same time, Jamesob's [guide to running SOTA LLMs…

Techie Mike • 05 Jul 2026

High School to Homelab — A Student's Linux Journey

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linux • 7 min read

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High School to Homelab — A Student's Linux Journey

# High School to Homelab — A Student's Linux Journey Last week, a high school student posted on [r/homelab](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/). i5-6500T. 40TB NAS. ThinkPad X13 running Proxmox. Looking for advice on his setup. The best way to learn is to try and fail.…

Techie Mike • 23 Jun 2026

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hardware • 7 min read

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The Minimal Homelab That Actually Works

# Am I Overcomplicating This? — The Minimal Homelab That Actually Works Scroll through r/homelab for ten minutes and you'll see server racks that look like data center colocations. 42U cabinets. Enterprise switches with SFP+ cages blinking amber. Dual Xeon boxes drawing 400 watts.…

Techie Mike • 17 Jun 2026

Chuwi Minibook X vs BMAX Pro 8 — Budget Homelab Pick

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Computer components • 10 min read

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Chuwi Minibook X vs BMAX Pro 8 — Budget Homelab Pick

# Chuwi Minibook X vs BMAX Pro 8 — Which Budget Homelab Machine? You're building your first homelab on a budget. Maybe you want to run Docker, try Proxmox, or host a few self-hosted services. You've heard about the Chuwi Minibook X — it hit over 400 points on Hacker News. And the BMAX Pro 8 is a pr…

Techie Mike • 03 Jun 2026

Running AI Models on Old Hardware — A 10-Year-Old Xeon

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hardware • 8 min read

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Running AI Models on Old Hardware — A 10-Year-Old Xeon

A post hit the front page of [Hacker News yesterday](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48353348) with a title that made a lot of people stop and stare: *"[A 10 year old Xeon is all you need.](https://point.free/blog/gemma-4-on-a-2016-xeon/)"* It racked up 685 points. The author ran **Gemma 4 (26B…

Techie Mike • 02 Jun 2026

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IGCSE ICT • 10 min read

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Main Computer Components Guide ICT

# Main Computer Components Guide ICT Your desktop computer is made up of several computer components working together. If you're studying for IGCSE ICT (0417), you need to know what each part does and how they connect. In this post, I'll walk through every main component you'll be tested on. Here'…

Techie Mike • 21 Feb 2019