Ready-made recommendations
Recommended builds
Browse curated hardware decisions by scenario and region: the recommended build, why it wins, the alternatives and the upgrade path. Know your own goal instead? The Planner decides from a quick pick of workloads, budget and priorities; Describe builds the full architecture from your life story.
49 builds
Category
Plex home serverA home server built for Plex streaming, file storage and backups — balanced for media, price and expandability.
Low-power homelabAn energy-efficient always-on homelab for containers, Home Assistant and backups that won't spike your power bill.
Quiet NASA near-silent NAS for file and photo storage — acoustics first, without sacrificing capacity or speed.- NAS for 40 TBA long-term NAS with 40 TB usable capacity, parity redundancy and room to grow.
Server for 10 virtual machinesA balanced virtualization server that comfortably runs 10 VMs, containers and test environments.
AI homelabA performance-focused build for local LLM inference, image generation and AI experimentation.- Homelab for beginnersThe simplest good starting homelab — Docker, file storage and self-hosted docs, at a friendly price.
Home Assistant hubAn efficient, silent hub for Home Assistant, automations and IoT — built to run 24/7.
NVR camera serverAn always-on NVR for IP camera recording and object detection with long retention.- Jellyfin media serverA home server for Jellyfin with hardware transcoding and media storage.
- Docker services serverA home server for Docker services, containers and databases with sensible headroom.
- Used hardware homelabThe smartest homelab you can build from used hardware — maximum value per euro.
- Energy-efficient 24/7 serverAn always-on server tuned for minimum power draw while running Docker and smart-home services.
- Silent Plex transcoding serverA silent build that can transcode multiple 4K Plex streams in real time.
Family cloud & photo backupA family server for photo backup, file sync and Nextcloud, with mirrored redundancy.
Homelab for gaming & VMsOne powerful box that serves both gaming and virtual machines — performance first.- Arr media automation serverA home server built for Jellyfin streaming with the *Arr automation stack (Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr) — hands-off downloads, transcoding and multi-user streaming.
Music streaming serverA home server built for self-hosted music streaming (Navidrome) plus your ebook and audiobook library — quiet, efficient and always on.- Immich photo serverA home server built for Immich photo backup with on-device ML tagging — large mirrored storage plus a GPU for face and object recognition.
- Local LLM chat serverA home server built for private LLM chat (Ollama + Open WebUI), local code completion and LoRA fine-tuning — big VRAM, lots of RAM.
- Llama 70B home serverA high-memory build for serving 70B-class local LLMs — multi-GPU territory, honestly specced.
Stable Diffusion workstationA tower build for local image generation with 12GB+ VRAM, plus photo storage.- 1440p gaming hostA gaming host for 1440p high settings with GPU passthrough, plus game servers.
- PC for Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440pThe cheapest build that holds about 60 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p Medium, from the game's official requirements.
- Counter-Strike 2 at 240 FPSA competitive 1080p build aimed at ~240 FPS in Counter-Strike 2 on low settings, where the processor matters most.
- Budget PC for Elden RingThe cheapest build that runs Elden Ring at about 60 FPS in 1080p Medium.
- Baldur's Gate 3 in 4KA 4K build sized for about 60 FPS in Baldur's Gate 3 at Medium settings.
- AI coding cornerA budget build for local AI code completion with a 14B model, plus dev environments.
Local voice assistant hubA small always-on hub for local voice control (Whisper + Piper) tied into Home Assistant — no cloud, quiet and efficient.
Home network security setupA small always-on box for segmented home networking — router, firewall, WireGuard VPN and VLANs with 2.5GbE throughout.
Ad-blocking DNS serverA tiny always-on server for network-wide ad blocking (Pi-hole/AdGuard) behind a reverse proxy with uptime monitoring.
Self-hosted password manager serverA tiny always-on server for Vaultwarden password management with WireGuard remote access and encrypted backups.
Paperless document serverA home server built for Paperless-ngx document scanning with OCR search, Nextcloud sync and versioned backups.
Self-hosted email and chat serverA home server for Nextcloud productivity with self-hosted email (Mailcow/Mailu) and Matrix chat — your own cloud.
Kubernetes homelab serverA home server built for a k3s cluster with LXC containers and throwaway dev environments — lots of cores and RAM for lab experiments.
Self-hosted Git and CI serverA home server for Gitea code hosting with self-hosted CI runners plus Ansible and monitoring — your own GitHub.- Cloud gaming streaming hostA powerful host for streaming games over Sunshine/Moonlight with a dedicated GPU — low-latency play on any screen in the house.
Cold archive storage serverA high-capacity archive server for data that must be kept long-term — dual-parity protection and room to grow.
Minecraft game serverAn always-on mini server for Minecraft — quiet, efficient, with automated world backups.- NAS for video editingA high-capacity NAS tuned for video editing — fast network, room for footage, and safe redundancy.
- Frigate NVR with CoralA detection-first NVR for Frigate with Coral TPU acceleration — real-time object detection plus retention.
- 4K video editing workstationA desktop for Premiere and DaVinci Resolve — a GPU that decodes and grades 4K, plenty of RAM and a fast cache SSD.
- Blender 3D workstationA GPU-render desktop for Blender Cycles/OptiX — VRAM for the whole scene and the speed to iterate.
- CAD workstationA desktop for SolidWorks, Fusion and AutoCAD — fast cores for modelling and a card for big assemblies.
- Photo editing PCA PC for Lightroom and Photoshop — fast cores, RAM for high-resolution files and an SSD for the catalog.
- Home studio PC (DAW)A quiet desktop for Ableton, Cubase or Logic-style DAWs — low-latency cores and SSD room for sample libraries.
- Office and school PCAn affordable desktop for documents, browsing, video calls and homework — integrated graphics, no frills.
- Developer workstationA desktop for coding and compiling — many cores, RAM for parallel builds and containers, fast NVMe.
- Emulation PCA PC for Switch, PS3 and older console emulation — the per-core CPU speed emulators live on.
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