Contrary to popular belief, home labs don’t require a lot of investment. Containerization distros, for instance, can deliver solid performance on SBCs, while Proxmox and OpenMediaVault pair well with budget-friendly systems and outdated PCs.

But once you’ve dipped your feet into the wondrous world of home servers, your barebones setup might start appearing rather unimpressive. Before long, you'll succumb to the curse of wanting new hardware for your experimentation lab. So, here’s my curated list of the best home lab equipment that, despite being optional, can bring some quality-of-life improvements to your setup.

5 Spare mini PC

Or an SBC/NAS

Outdated PCs can serve as the crux of casual home labs and can handle a surprising number of virtualization projects, provided you don’t go wild with overprovisioning the hardware. That said, you’re better off relegating certain projects to separate computing rigs. For example, you could technically virtualize a backup server for your VMs and containers, though one botched experiment is all it takes for you to lose your virtual guests and their snapshots.

Likewise, a monitoring container is borderline useless if it goes down with the rest of your home lab. If you’re building a robust firewall for your home network, it’s better to stick to an SBC or mini-PC, as it's possible to bring down your Internet connection should you mess up a DIY project while hosting the router OS on your home lab.

• Khadas Mind

  CPU

  Up to Intel Core i7-1360P

  Graphics

  Intel Iris Xe graphics

  Memory

  Up to 32GB RAM

  Storage

  Up to 1TB SSD, free M.2 2230 slot

  Motherboard

  Custom

  Ports

  2x USB Type-C, 2x USB Type-A, HDMI

  $649 at Khadas $550 at Amazon

• Raspberry Pi 5

  CPU

  Arm Cortex-A76 (quad-core, 2.4GHz)

  Memory

  Up to 8GB LPDDR4X SDRAM

  Operating System

  Raspberry Pi OS (official)

  Ports

  2× USB 3.0, 2× USB 2.0, Ethernet, 2x micro HDMI, 2× 4-lane MIPI transceivers, PCIe Gen 2.0 interface, USB-C, 40-pin GPIO header

  GPU

  VideoCore VII

  Starting Price

  $60

  $80 at CanaKit $90 at Amazon (8GB)

• Radxa X4

  Storage

  M.2 M-key slot, eMMC storage (optional)

  CPU

  Intel N100

  Memory

  Up to 16GB LPDDR5

  Operating System

  Most x86 operating systems, Windows 11

  Ports

  3x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB 2.0, 1x 2.5GbE RJ45, 1x audio/microphone AUX jack, 40-pin GPIO

  Display

  2x micro-HDMI

  $80 at Arace $65 at ALLNET China

• LincPlus LincStation N2

  CPU

  Intel N100

  Memory

  16GB DDR5 (soldered)

  Drive Bays

  4x M.2 SSD, 2x SATA drives (2.5-inch)

  Ports

  1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 2x USB 2.0 Type-A

  OS

  Unraid

  Dimensions

  210x152x39.8 mm

  $309 at Kickstarter

4 KVM switch

Great for multi-PC setups

Most home lab devices don’t require a dedicated keyboard, mouse, or display connected to them 24/7, as you’re likely to use them in a headless manner after the initial OS setup. However, considering the experimental nature of home labs, an input device and a monitor can come in handy when you need to troubleshoot a failed project.

If you’ve got as many devices in your home lab as I do, a KVM switch becomes a crucial part of the setup. True to its name, a Keyboard Video Mouse switch lets you connect a single set of peripherals with all your devices and cycle between them at the press of a button.

3 Rack

Rat’s nest and home lab are two sides of the same coin

Cable management can be a grueling process when building your gaming desktop, but it’s an absolute nightmare in a home lab. Rather than just organizing the wires inside your PC, you’ll have to manage the power and Ethernet cables outside your server. Throw other SBCs, mini-PCs, and IoT devices into the mix, and you’ve got a rat’s nest to organize.

Thankfully, a server rack can take care of your cable management woes, especially when you have a dedicated network stack in your home lab. Mounting your battalion of home server devices onto a rack also makes the setup more space-efficient, as you don’t have the paraphernalia spread out all over the basement.

2 Network switch

Preferably one with VLAN support

Although a router with a couple of RJ45 ports will suffice for a makeshift server, a network switch is always better when you want to build a dedicated computing lab. If you want to arm your server, NAS, and other rigs with faster NICs, you’ll have to invest in a switch of comparable speeds.

Likewise, home labs with multiple devices can benefit from the massive port collection, and you can even put your spare Ethernet connections to good use by setting up link aggregation on your NAS. Then you’ve got switches with PoE support, which let you leverage Power-over-Ethernet provisions to reduce the number of cables in your living space. For security-conscious folks with multiple IoT gadgets in their computing stack, a VLAN-compatible switch is a godsend as it lets you isolate the insecure devices from the rest of your home lab equipment.

• NETGEAR 8-Port 10G Multi-Gigabit Ethernet Unmanaged Switch (XS508M)

  $630 at Amazon

• Sodola 8 Port 10G Web Managed Switch

  $150 at Amazon

1 UPS

Don’t let blackouts dampen your tinkering spirit!

Whether you’re hosting mission-critical applications or backing up all your virtual guests, sudden blackouts can throw a wrench in your operations. NAS devices, in particular, suffer the most from random outages, and a little bad luck could result in corrupted drives and irrecoverable storage pools.

As such, an Uninterrupted Power Supply becomes a necessary investment if your location is prone to outages. Many UPS models also feature inbuilt brownout safeguards to protect your painstakingly acquired hardware from getting damaged by sudden spikes in the power supply. Not to mention, double-conversion UPS can filter the random fluctuations from your home energy supply and deliver clean power to all your home lab devices.

Outfit your home lab with cool accessories

Aside from the options I’ve discussed so far, I’ve got some other cool devices that deserve a mention on this list. Graphics cards can be useful for demanding workloads, including AI text/image generation, video transcoding, and gaming (though you’ll have to pair your GPU with a decent processor for the last one). If you’re concerned about bit-rot affecting your data archival servers, I recommend grabbing a couple of ECC RAM sticks. Finally, a 3D printer can be fairly useful if your home lab involves extensive use of microcontrollers and SBCs.