[X] My Assistant

So I formulated a thought with a single brain cell!
I wonder how many people here have servers at home
(IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/JhYvJTX.png)

There's my setup. Any questions just ask!

Total cost? Power bill? What do you run? Where do you get your hardware?

The single cable dangling kinda annoys me a bit lol

It's so pretty but I agree what your power bill look like and how are you keeping it cool my bother an I had a Hell of a time figuring out that part for our first rack

There are some thoughts / questions that always come when I see this kind of set ups.

How much power does it take?
Are 2.5 disks really worth using? They seem to have small space or high price compared to 3.5 disks.
Do you have damaged hearing from fans?

And... why? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) At some point it does not seem worth.

The single cable dangling kinda annoys me a bit lol

A lone dangling cable in home rack pictures is usually for internet. Historically attached to DSL or cable modem, because home rack size is in opposite proportion to internet speed. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

So I formulated a thought with a single brain cell!
I wonder how many people here have servers at home

I used to in one house long ago. Ran the broadband connection to the sever room and then had every room networked with multiple Ethernet ports. Also used it for a while for crypto mining way back.

Wifi 6 and above seem to work as well as I need to network now though.

I have some Raspberry Pi's that I got for free, a mini PC as router and a regular PC. Both PCs run Proxmox on bare metal and for routing I use OpenWrt in a VM. I mostly use archival software like TubeArchivist, LANraragi and ArchiveBox.

And... why? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) At some point it does not seem worth.

The most basic usecase is torrenting. You are way better off having a separate machine just for that so you could ratelimit it on the router level instead of trusting the torrent client to properly manage itself while fighting over machine resources with the browser.
What is a point measure for worth? Buying a specialized vendor-locked device is trading off initial cost for paying more down the line, which is never worth it if you can afford a server. And home server never gets to the scale for cloud infra (and its bills).

Total cost? Power bill? What do you run? Where do you get your hardware?

The single cable dangling kinda annoys me a bit lol

It's so pretty but I agree what your power bill look like and how are you keeping it cool my bother an I had a Hell of a time figuring out that part for our first rack

There are some thoughts / questions that always come when I see this kind of set ups.

How much power does it take?
Are 2.5 disks really worth using? They seem to have small space or high price compared to 3.5 disks.
Do you have damaged hearing from fans?

And... why? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) At some point it does not seem worth.
A lone dangling cable in home rack pictures is usually for internet. Historically attached to DSL or cable modem, because home rack size is in opposite proportion to internet speed. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Alright alright Ill answer your questions
POWER

- The rack during normal operation uses ~700W
- It only costs me ~$65 USD a month to run it with my price per kWh being 0.13
- Yes it is overkill and I love it.

Whats in the rack

From top to bottom
1. Dell Edge 3400 - Main router, runs opnsense, 32gb of ram, some random intel xeon bga chip
2. Cisco 3850 48POE switch - Used for powering cameras & the management backbone
3. Cisco Nexus N3K - FIBER switch used for networking all the servers at 10GB, connecting nearby switches - The "core"
4. Dell PowerEdge R7415 - AMD Epyc server, using Proxmox. More of a compute surge server, stays off most of the time. 64GB Ram and two 480gb ssd's.
5 - 6. Dell PowerEdge R630 - Core proxmox nodes, both running Xeon E5-2680 V4 & 64GB of ram. The workhorses of the rack. Loaded with two 800gb ssd's and 4 1.2tb SAS HDDs.
7. Dell PowerEdge R420 - Haha insert 420 joke
8. HP 1/8 G2 LTO 5 Tape Library - Used for tape backups
9. Dell PowerEdge R730XD - Storage server with 96TB of raw capacity all of which I need for my hentai collection Can expand it with 4 more 3.5" drives inside it
10. Dell PowerEdge R540 - Future Camera DVR, not ready yet
11. HP Piece of shit that deserves to be in hell
12. a random switch I use for testing.


Cooling

I got a floor AC providing cooling to keep the rack below 90

Noise

I already have hearing loss from my day job and honestly it is surprisingly quite for a server rack

2.5 vs 3.5 Disks
3.5" Disks are better for data density, archival storage ect
2.5" Disks are typically SSD's so better for flash storage

LONE CABLE
Im just lazy and its a patch cord to the test switch

Why?

I do this because I host my own cloud, I am my own VPN, I can host torrents, H@H servers, Media streaming, jellyfin my beloved. I have full control of my own network; And it is just cool having servers.

The total cost is at least over 2k but thats over several years.

Don't think I've ever set one up for torrents, only Minecraft or other MP games in the past. They fell out of use eventually after 2020 though.

I have a server but my server is just an ATX form factor PC

I do this because I host my own cloud, I am my own VPN, I can host torrents, H@H servers, Media streaming, jellyfin my beloved. I have full control of my own network;

I thought all that was just the minimum required system to run Windows nowadays, with the bundled spyware they call A.I. assistant or something. And also to handle modern games which require you to install spyware as kernel drivers. They call it Anti-Cheat or something. And people buy that crap and give a closed source thingamabob that literally comes from China full ring 0 admin access to their machine. A driver that keeps running the moment you boot the system no matter if you are playing the game or not and, IN THE BEST CASE SCENARIO, will burn CPU cycles, lower hardware life and increase your electricity bill.

So, that was what I thought all that was being used for. Not sure how exactly your hack helps you being your own cloud or your own VPN, but I am glad to know I'm wrong.

And it is just cool having servers.

Now this I can understand. Your money. Do what you want with it and, if makes you feel good, go for it.


PS: I've been so out of the gaming loop that only yesterday I found out that modern games require you to install drivers to play them. They say it is done to stop cheating. People who believe that are probably the same ones that believe in gun control. I came from a country that enforces gun control and, let me tell you, the bad guys are not much into that whole thing. Same thing with this kind of anti-cheat stupidity - hassle and waste of resources and, in the best case scenario, a super dangerous security issue for all non-cheaters, while the guys cheating can easily bypass it all in many ways.

This post has been edited by QuakeWorld: Sep 12 2025, 15:40

The total cost is at least over 2k but thats over several years.

That's quite low. Way lower than I expected tbh. I plugged all my components into PPP yesterday and they added up to 6995 USD.

I have a server but my server is just an ATX form factor PC

Same but with the number of HDDs I'm plugging in, maybe getting an extra case is a good idea.

The most basic usecase is torrenting. You are way better off having a separate machine just for that so you could ratelimit it on the router level instead of trusting the torrent client to properly manage itself while fighting over machine resources with the browser.
What is a point measure for worth? Buying a specialized vendor-locked device is trading off initial cost for paying more down the line, which is never worth it if you can afford a server. And home server never gets to the scale for cloud infra (and its bills).

I meant why a set up like this — with rack and many servers. Most home server things like torrent or VPN can run well on a standard or mini PC, which is more practical for most people.

Some people have a rack for a interesting reason like a very large data hoard or a special use case. Some like messing with the hardware. Some don't have a reason anymore and would probably do better in a SFF PC with large HDD added — less space, less power, less complexity.

2.5 vs 3.5 Disks
3.5" Disks are better for data density, archival storage ect
2.5" Disks are typically SSD's so better for flash storage

Right, I forget enterprise has SSD sled in that form factor.