Hardware

Buying guides and recommendations for mini PCs, drives, RAM, networking gear, and more.

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The best low-power mini PCs for a home server in 2026 — efficient, quiet and powerful enough for Docker, media and virtualization.

The best NAS hard drives for reliability and value — CMR drives rated for 24/7 operation in your home server.

The best SSDs for a home server boot drive, cache and app storage — reliable NVMe and SATA picks.

How much RAM your home server needs and the best memory to buy, including when ECC is worth it.

The best managed and unmanaged network switches for a homelab, including affordable 2.5G and 10G options.

The best UPS units to protect your home server and NAS from power cuts, with safe automatic shutdown.

Routers and gateways that play nicely with VLANs, VPN and self-hosted DNS for homelab builders.

Fast NVMe drives for OS, apps, databases and Docker layers in your homelab.

Affordable multi-gig switches, NICs and cabling to move beyond 1GbE for NAS transfers and backups.

Raspberry Pi and alternatives for low-power always-on services like Pi-hole, DNS and lightweight Docker.

Choosing a GPU or iGPU for Plex and Jellyfin hardware transcoding — including Intel Quick Sync.