$500 Home Lab Challenge FINALE

Loved it! Great job guys.

Love this set up! Really want to see a follow up on the shelf w/ SSDs.

you had the server we wanted, not what we we need in a beginner homelab! but serously lets get some more channels in on the challenge!

Honestly both kinda meh for $700.

Here are a couple of ideas for HomeLab challenge Season 3… in no particular order of importance, popularity or sanity :)

- All participants start with the same exact hardware and let’s see who comes up with the best use of said hardware. By “use” I mean it is actually useable in an everyday sort of way, not just barely runs.
- 2 or 3 hardware tiers for above. 1- Not super up-to-date desktop ( 8th or 9th gen i3? ), 2- something new and dedicated under X dollars, 3- How about a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W?
- Panel of 3 judges… or maybe 5 if participants also score each other
- More than 2 participants. Colten and Brett are awsome, but how about Jeff also entering the ring?

And most importantly… PLEASE don’t make us wait a year and a half for next season!!! :)

I feel you did win. I felt you gave someone a flexible homelab for someone starting out in IT.

I truly appreciate the jank and as someone whose homelab sits well above your powerdraw I may be biased but I would say you derserved the win :D

The $700 Home Lab challenge... ;)

You won by a landslide. Your system is a 100 times more capable and more stable

And then there's my homelab drawing 35w or so at 100% load

Colton with the most boiled chicken and rice solution wins. Unfortunate to say the least.

Geerling is wrong. You had WAY more for $500.

You won fair and square, and I adore your setup,


BUT, it should be added the price of electricity into the bill or into the point system, and not the instant power, but the price of running those setup for a year or two(counting probably a good 90/10 ratio for idle/workload)

It's obvious that Colten won! It was a given from the start!

“Despite hard drives failing left and right.” 😂

Jeff’s wrong. Don’t @ me

100% jank Winner.

I think I would happily of watched another video on each build covering the set up on the apps/services

I think that you put all new batteries in that UPS to get it running.. 😂

saviour of anime collections

My home lab is mobile and can be power with a travel ups. It promox, TrueNAS scale and two solid Raspberry clusters with HA and redundancy. I also have M4 mac mini cluster for LLM workloads over thunderbolt.

It was very close 😂but we are defining what's important for homelabs it's brilliant fun guys

You both missed the opportunity to name your videos "Homelabinator II: Judgement Day"

You’re always a winner in my eyes!❤

Colten's setup is more reasonable, but I feel like Brett's is more fun. Like if I'm actually hosting services that I need to use, and troubleshoot is things go wrong Colten's build makes more sense. But if I just feel like tinkering I'd go with Brett.

Colten: "I built a 1997 Honda Accord"

Brett: "I built a 747 strapped onto a ocean-going super tanker carrying a '72 Pinto on the deck"

Brett won hard time! Way better setup, more rj45 patches :D

now please sell me the 8700k/mobo combo🫡

You deserved to get the win. Your system was so much better.

Love when techies get together! I totally agree that any home lab really is subjective to the builder especially when starting out. I think Brett's setup is what we ask start out with but I think we all envision out first build like Colton's. Great job guys!

Not half bad!!!

Loved it !

I freakin frackin love this overkill build. It’s the home lab equivalent of dating a supermodel… but she’s 45 yo now and a bit overweight, has a bunch of kids hanging on but still sexy as hell.

It's been two weeks already? 😭

I think your "Lab" won hands down.
As I keep saying, a "Lab" isn't for running your home/production workloads.
A "Lab" is for testing, breaking, and learning. Your lab has way more learning opportunities.
The only thing I would have done differently is your networking.
An old enterprise switch would have pushed your power even further out of whack, but you knew you wouldn't pick up that point anyway.
For ~$25-40 you could have a 32-48 port "core" switch to play with that will have multiple 10G or even 40G ports, from one of the 'big boys' like Brocade or Arista.
That would open up the Networking education path too.

Anyway, I look forward to #3.

I prefer more your setup, it looks more like a data center.

correction you had 700$

Yes, I think YOU won. The disk array was what ticked the win button for me.

This was a lot of fun to watch.

The longer UPS life makes such a big diff.

texas pulling the big gun

MK4S,…..nice

but whats the electric cost?

So cool, I love it! ❤ Please please do a 3rd round! 😍 Still both systems have their own flair and charm 😎 Yet I need to admit that I would also have voted for the more power-saving solution, but I'm biased as I live in Europe (pretty high electricity prices).

For season three, you should add Jeff Geerling, making it a three-way competition and getting another judge. Having different perspectives and ideas always keeps it interesting.

i dont get it
the netapp is 1k, not less than 500
maybe i need to watch more than 28 seconds of video

Guys great video!