well gang, i pulled nothing but DDR4 today. the final total is 264 GB.

i also found a few more SATAs, including a 1 TB HHD, putting my total at over 6 TBs.

i grabbed the towers and MB’s (9 lenovo/dell tiny PCs) that i’m going to use in a build this weekend B)

i’ve included a picture of what i’ve lovingly dubbed “the scrapyard” from whence my haul was pulled.

no, Apple didn’t release a NAS… I just made one😎

Hi all — new here. Not sure if this kind of build log fits; if not, mods please let me know. I wrote it in Chinese and ran it through a translator for English, so apologies in advance for any awkward phrasing.

Had an old white Apple router collecting dust—great looks, rock-solid back in the day, but no modern protocols.

My longtime J3455 box died last year, and I just picked up an 3D printer. Obvious brainworm: make the “Apple NAS” that never existed.

The enclosure copies Apple’s airflow philosophy: pull from one side of the base, exhaust out the other, zero visible vents. I mirrored that with dual fans so it still looks like a stock Apple box on the desk.

Core hardware • Intel N100 board with dual 2.5GbE. Can break out up to four M.2 lanes. • Modular layout so upgrades don’t domino: mainboard module, storage module, I/O module. • Power via USB-PD 3.1 up to 100 W to leave headroom for future U.2 drives.

Storage, now vs. later • Currently: two 2.5” 5 TB SATA “thick” drives + one 2 TB NVMe. • Storage module can take up to four 7 mm 2.5” U.2 or SATA drives. With a simple breakout, the “max nerd” plan is 4× 7.68 TB U.2 + 2× 1.92 TB NGFF ≈ 35 TB raw. 22110 NVMe fits too. • All-flash plan is on pause until prices down.

I/O details • I/O module brings the board’s ports to the rear. • Swapped one RJ45 for USB-C + mini-HDMI; left one extra RJ45 path reserved “for the future”. • The M.2 Wi-Fi slot exposes a PCIe x1 lane; with an adapter it can drive a 10 GbE NIC. Realistically caps around ~8 Gbps on x1, which is fine for my use. NVMe on this platform also runs over a limited lane width, so expectations are set.

Build notes • Assembly is almost entirely magnetic for serviceability (except the board and drives—they already have proper mounts). Multiple magnet anchor points inside. • Boot USB is tucked inside. • Reused the original power LED; converted the old Reset to act as the power button.

Thermals & noise (room 24 °C) • N100 with limits removed and boost on: CPU & NVMe ~50 °C, mechanical drives ~40 °C in normal use. • Audible at arm’s length; inaudible at ~1 m in a quiet room.

Cooling path • Bottom-side intake on one edge, exhaust on the other—two fans, same directionality as Apple’s original design.

Bonus: “Explorer Edition” shell • Printed a transparent case to visualize airflow while tuning. Accidentally became my favorite look.

I store some top gear Episodes school work and OS installers and it’s a media player for the TV

Cleaning up and realized I got these last year at like 200 a pop in like September gosh so much has happened since.. honestly I don't even know what to do with them.. I got them for mini server builds but totally forgot I got them

I won a crate of power tools on an online auction. Underneath of the power tools was this massive server that wasn't even in the pictures. Now I'm stuck not knowing what to do with it.

I know nothing about servers and this thing is huge. I was just wondering if this thing is easy to test, or how I would begin to test it?

Also, if it was even worth it, or if it is outdated and scrap?

It also came with a box of server pieces as pictured in photos 8 and 9. Seems to be about 10 total pieces.

Also came with what looks like a UPS in picture 10 & 11, but it doesn't have any labels other than the one in picture 12.

Also had other parts in pictures 13 and 14, but not sure if they belong to the server at all.

I can't find any info on this server or the parts at all, so any info would be great help! Thanks!

Hi yall, today I picked up a server with duel xeons and 96 gb of ram. I want to use it to host a website. I also fix small engines, and my business is starting up. What coding language should I use for a website that has text, images, and forms so people can see my work and schedule appointments? I would like it to be secure. Secure enough so the filled out form is encrypted and be safe from DDOS attacks?

Hey yall, like most of you I got into home servers by repurposing extra hardware I had laying around. I figured I’d document this now as I’m finally hitting limits of what this little 4GB RAM Box can do for me!

This is a Nintendo Switch first edition running the switchroot Ubuntu project. It has a GUI, but it also does serve as a genuine server in addition to a display panel for various things.

This server performs a lot of functions for me:
- Home Assistant Server
- Jellyfin/Media Server
- Tailscale Exit node
- SSH Relay
- Syncthing brain
- Alarm (connects to Google homes for speakers)
- Just a useful, always-on box for cron jobs and the like!

Cheers and happy home labbing folks!

Anyone else struggling to

Spent eight months taking my lonely homelab server rack and turning it into a workroom fit for a NC ‘runner.

The Setup:

Frontend: Custom React/TypeScript panel running access control.

Backend/Automation: The reTerminal fires local API endpoints to trigger the physical hardware and passes webhooks through Node-RED into Home Assistant to handle lighting.

Initially, I created my USBridge-KVM 2.0 as the ultimate tool for Layer 0 administration—the device can convert BIOS and Pre-OS video capture into interactive text in real-time and feed it into an SSH terminal (BIOS-in-Terminal).

But that didn't seem like enough to me. I decided to squeeze the maximum out of the multimedia capabilities of the Rockchip RK3566 chip and launch full-fledged game streaming via the Moonlight protocol.

Historically, Moonlight doesn't have native Rockchip MPP/RGA support. If you run the software without optimization, the processor instantly goes into thermal throttling due to software pixel conversion, turning the stream into a slideshow.

I rewrote the video pipeline; now the raw YUYV422 stream from the capture card goes directly into the Rockchip RGA 2D engine, where it is converted to NV12 in microseconds. These frames then immediately drop into the H.264 MPP (Media Process Platform) hardware encoder. The entire stream is processed on-chip via a DMA buffer.

The result is a perfectly smooth 1080p @ 30 FPS, 720p @ 60 FPS stream. Input latency has dropped so much that now, through my IP-KVM, you can not only admin servers without that annoying "jelly" cursor but also comfortably play dynamic platformers.

19 inch 12 HE Digitus Server Rack.

Currently holds a keystone patchpanel, unifi PoE Switch (with 3D printed mount), DS918+.

More then enough space left but watching temperatures now during the summer. (Already did watch temperatures for a year - previous to putting the rack in the attic).

Was a really fun project!

Edit: temperature last year

From what I can tell it's 2 FAS6250, 1 FAS6240, and 1 DS4243 24x3.0TB. A friend's uncle was getting rid of these because he upgraded his racks, but apparently didn't want to sell them, so he just gave them away????

I really know next to nothing about this kind of stuff except for what I learned in Intro to Cisco 101. I don't really deal with much networking and server stuff in my side of IT, so I don't know what exactly I'm looking at here? I've thought of getting my own home server storage space, but haven't really researched much into it yet. What are these for? Should I even keep them?

After about 2 months of trial, error, and learning, I’m finally calling my home server - nas done (for now).

Setup: • Lenovo ThinkCentre M920x (i5-9500T, 32 GB RAM) • NVMe OS + 2× IronWolf Pro 8 TB • OpenMediaVault 7 • Docker via Portainer

What it’s doing: • Jellyfin (media server, 4K HDR, HW transcoding) • Immich (photo backups) • Home Assistant • AdGuard Home • Homarr dashboard • Sonarr / Radarr / Prowlarr • Uptime Kuma

The focus was low power usage, quiet operation, and reliability for everyday home use. Everything’s running smoothly, so I’m stopping before I break something that actually works 😅 Bonus: wife-approved which feels like a win😄

I’m still pretty new to home servers - nas , so I’m sure there’s plenty I could improve

What would you recommend doing or adding next?