Hardware

Hardware

This is the current pile of computers responsible for richay.au, my homelab, storage, Plex, gaming and whatever other nonsense I’ve decided needs its own machine this month.

I used to treat this page like a giant parts receipt. That was useful for about five minutes and then immediately went stale, so this version is more about what each machine is, what it does and why I still have it.

Last updated: August 2026.

Homelab

Main Proxmox Server

  • Motherboard: Gigabyte Z590M Gaming X
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-11600T
  • RAM: 128 GB DDR4-3200
  • GPU: Intel Arc A310 ECO 4 GB
  • Proxmox storage: 2 × 2 TB NVMe
  • VM / LXC storage: separate 2 TB NVMe
  • Hypervisor: Proxmox VE

This is the main compute box and runs basically everything that isn’t bulk storage: VMs, LXCs, Docker workloads, monitoring and Plex.

The Arc A310 is there almost entirely for Plex hardware transcoding. It’s tiny, doesn’t use much power and saves the CPU from getting flogged every time something needs converting.

I deliberately came back to a larger single Proxmox host after experimenting with clusters. For my house, one efficient T-series machine is simpler, faster and uses less power than keeping several nodes awake just so I can admire redundancy I rarely need.

Backup TrueNAS VM

  • 5 × 16 TB HDD
  • RAIDZ2
  • 500 GB SSD cache

I still run a TrueNAS VM on the Proxmox host, but it is backup storage rather than my main NAS. That distinction is important — restarting Proxmox no longer means taking my primary storage down with it.

Main TrueNAS

  • Motherboard: ASUS PRIME H610I-PLUS D4 Mini-ITX
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-14100T
  • RAM: 64 GB DDR4-3200 (2 × 32 GB)
  • Boot: 120 GB SSD
  • Storage: 4 × 18 TB HDD
  • Pool: RAIDZ1
  • OS: TrueNAS

This is the main bulk-storage box. Media, files and the rest of my general storage live here rather than inside the Proxmox server. It now uses an ASUS PRIME H610I-PLUS D4 with the i3-14100T and 64 GB of DDR4. The bulk Steam library has since moved onto its own separate gaming NAS.

Keeping compute and storage separate ended up being one of the best changes I made. I can restart, rebuild or completely fuck up Proxmox without taking the main NAS down with it.

The other bonus is power management: storage can behave like storage, compute can behave like compute, and I’m not keeping a pile of drives spinning just because one random container needs restarting.

Gaming / Steam TrueNAS

  • Role: dedicated Steam / game library NAS
  • OS: TrueNAS
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • Networking: 2.5 GbE
  • Storage: 4 × 6 TB HDD
  • Pool: RAIDZ1
  • Cache: 128 GB SSD

This is my old NAS repurposed into something much more fun: a giant network Steam library. The 4 × 6 TB RAIDZ1 pool gives me plenty of bulk game storage, with the little 128 GB SSD still hanging around as cache.

Most of the games I don’t need sitting on local NVMe live here and are shared to my gaming machines over SMB. The main desktop, sim PC and updater VM can all see the same library over the 2.5 GbE network.

A Windows VM keeps Steam running and babysits updates in the background. Steam does not start automatically on my gaming PCs, so when I actually decide to play something I open Steam and — ideally — the bloody 80 GB patch has already been dealt with.

I wrote the whole slightly-unhinged setup up here: Using a TrueNAS SMB Share as a Steam Library.

Gaming

Main Desktop

  • Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-I GAMING WIFI
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-12600KF
  • RAM: 32 GB DDR5-4800
  • GPU: INNO3D RTX 3080 TWIN X2 OC 10 GB
  • OS: Windows 11 Pro
  • Storage: local NVMe storage for Windows and games

Still my main desktop. The RTX 3080 hasn’t magically become shit just because NVIDIA discovered how much people are apparently willing to pay for GPUs.

I keep local NVMe storage for games where latency actually matters — especially FPS titles — while a much larger chunk of my Steam library now lives centrally on TrueNAS over the network.

Sim Racing PC — Evatech Vanta TG X3D Mini

  • Case: Antec FLUX M Compact ARGB Black mATX
  • Motherboard: MSI B850M Gaming Plus WiFi 6E mATX
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D — 8 cores / 16 threads, up to 5.2 GHz
  • CPU cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 dual-tower air cooler
  • RAM: KLEVV FIT V 32 GB (2 × 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL28
  • GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5080 Windforce OC 16 GB
  • Primary storage: Kingston NV3 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe
  • Additional storage: spare 2 TB 2.5-inch SSD
  • PSU: MSI MAG A850GL Gold PCIe 5 — 850 W
  • OS: Windows 11 Pro

This is the dedicated machine at the other end of the house for the sim rig and triple-monitor setup.

The 9800X3D + RTX 5080 combination is hilariously more appropriate for triple-screen sim racing than trying to make the gaming laptop do everything forever.

It’s connected back into the rest of the house over 2.5 GbE, so it can use the dedicated gaming NAS / shared Steam library while keeping local SSD storage available for the games where I actually want it.

Gaming Laptop

  • Model: Lenovo Legion Pro 7 16IRX8
  • CPU: Intel Core i9-13900H
  • RAM: 32 GB DDR5-5600
  • GPU: GeForce RTX 4070 8 GB
  • OS: Windows 11 Pro
  • Storage: 1 TB + 4 TB NVMe

This used to do a lot more of the portable/sim-rig heavy lifting. It’s still a ridiculously capable laptop, but now that the sim setup has its own desktop it gets to go back to being a laptop instead of pretending it’s a permanently docked gaming tower.

Other Useful Hardware

Raspberry Pi 4

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.4, currently useful for the small network jobs where running an entire server would be ridiculous.

It’s the sort of box I can use for Tailscale, DNS/network experiments, PXE-related stuff or anything else that needs to stay tiny, cheap and low power.

JetKVM

One of the better bits of test-bench hardware I somehow managed to own before realising how useful it was.

JetKVM gives me remote video, keyboard and mouse access to whatever random PC I’m testing, including BIOS/UEFI and fresh OS installs. It means I no longer need to keep stealing a keyboard, mouse and monitor cable from another machine every time something lands on the bench.

Very clever device. Would have been even cleverer if I’d remembered I owned the bloody thing earlier.

Previous / Spare / Experimental Hardware

I still own most of this stuff. It isn’t production anymore; it’s mostly sitting there collecting dust while I occasionally look at it and think “I should probably sell that”. There is probably a fairly irresponsible amount of $$$$$$$ sitting in this section.

Minisforum MS-01

  • CPU: Intel Core i9-13900H top-spec MS-01 configuration
  • RAM: 96 GB DDR5 SODIMM
  • Networking: 2 × 10 Gb SFP+ + 2 × 2.5 GbE
  • Expansion: 3 × M.2 NVMe-capable slots + low-profile PCIe slot
  • GPU while in production: Intel Arc A310

This was basically the best MS-01 configuration you could throw together at the time, and it was an absolute little monster.

With the i9, 96 GB of DDR5, dual 10 Gb SFP+, dual 2.5 GbE, multiple NVMe slots and a real PCIe expansion slot, it was almost comical how much homelab hardware Minisforum managed to cram into such a small box.

It spent time as my main Proxmox host with the Arc A310 handling Plex transcoding and enough RAM to run basically whatever VMs/CTs I felt like throwing at it.

I moved away from it because I started chasing lower total power usage and experimenting with clustered N100 hardware — not because the MS-01 was bad.

And no, I never sold it. It’s still here. Collecting dust. Probably worth enough money that I should stop pretending I don’t know where it is.

Minisforum N100P Cluster

  • Minisforum UN100P / N100-class nodes
  • Intel N100 processors
  • 16 GB RAM per node
  • NVMe / SSD storage
  • Proxmox VE

I used these while experimenting with lower-power clustering, RKE2 + Longhorn, Docker Swarm and Ceph.

The power consumption was brilliant. The performance compromise was less brilliant.

They proved that I could run a tiny low-power cluster. They also helped prove that I didn’t actually need one.

I also never got rid of these. So somewhere in the house is still a small pile of N100 boxes waiting for either another stupid experiment or for me to finally turn them back into money.

Why I Moved Away from the Cluster

The cluster setups were great experiments, but my priorities changed.

  • My local power/network outages reduce the real-world benefit of having several tiny nodes.
  • More nodes means more networking, storage replication and little things to maintain.
  • One efficient T-series server gives me substantially more performance when I actually need it.
  • A separate NAS gives me the important separation I wanted without needing a whole compute cluster.

Basically, I went from one box, to lots of boxes, then eventually back to one smarter box plus proper separate storage.

Full circle — but at least now I know why I’m doing it this way instead of just accidentally ending up here.

The Short Version

  • Proxmox: one efficient main compute server
  • Main TrueNAS: separate general/media storage
  • Gaming TrueNAS: dedicated 2.5 GbE Steam SMB library — 4 × 6 TB RAIDZ1 + 128 GB cache
  • Backup storage: separate from the primary NAS data
  • Plex: Intel Arc A310 hardware transcoding
  • Gaming: RTX 3080 desktop + Ryzen 7 9800X3D / RTX 5080 sim PC + Legion RTX 4070 laptop
  • Test bench: JetKVM so I can stop crawling under desks

The goal now isn’t maximum complexity or maximum redundancy. It’s enough performance, sensible backups, low idle power and as little maintenance as I can get away with.

If you want to see what all this hardware actually runs, head over to my Self-Hosted page.