I want to learn and would appreciate some help.

[Currently Studying]

I am very new to networking, but I am having a lot of fun since I replaced my Spectrum router with a Asus RT-86U Pro. I have tried both Merlin and stock firmware out. I've learned PfSense, Skynet and Diversion through the router and had a great time. Now I have the desire to make a Home Lab of my own.

I have an old gaming pc that runs well. Its got a 3700x, 2070 Super, 16GB RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD and has Windows 11 Pro installed. From what I understand, this isn't the right device to achieve my goals. Its going to use way more power than specialized devices. But, if I install a dual 2.5Gbit NIC and run everything through VM's it could function as a learning platform?

My ultimate goal is to learn. Very close to that, I'd like to have a hardware firewall, the ability to block ads and have DNS over TLS enabled before it hits the Spectrum Modem - all network wide. If it helps, I have a Spectrum 1Gbit plan and it seems overprovisioned to 1.25Gbps once I plugged it into the router's 2.5G WAN port.

TLR Probably a common question "I've got a decent gaming PC but I want to do more Home Lab Stuff".

Any guidance is appreciated and thanks for reading what is probably a common question to those who get the itch.

 

[RMerlin]

TLR Probably a common question "I've got a decent gaming PC but I want to do more Home Lab Stuff".

I've been revamping my homelab these past few months myself, spent a lot of work this past week on the multimedia/docker side of things.

You could start experimenting with the hardware that you currently have, but if you want a long term solution, I would indeed recommend getting something less power hungry. For reference, here is my own setup.

Hardware:
I bought an Intel NUC 11 on Amazon a few months ago. A few great things about it:

1) Since it's an older model, it's easy to find at a very affordable price. An Intel 11th gen is still more than enough for most homelab setups. Pop an NVME SSD in it and 32 GB of RAM. No need to spend twice as much for a 13th or 14th gen one, you will most likely NOT need that kind of CPU power
2) Even when under load it's still very quiet (I have the Intel i5 model). Very surprising in fact, compared to the Asus Mini PC it replaced that would get insanely loud whenever CPU load started to rise. I suspect Asus skimped on the thermal interface in it, like they too often do with their products...
3) 2.5 Gbps NIC - that's not granted these days, but it should be on any such setup.
4) If you really need to add more storage to it, it offers Thunderbold
5) It's really small, and takes no space

Now, since it only has one NIC, it might not be suitable to run a router. But for anything else, it's a great option, I really love it. Also you cannot easily RAID disks with it (tho I considered going with a dual TB enclosure for a while), so having backups of it is important. Reinstalling + restoring backups with Proxmox VE is fairly trivial overal.


Software:
I installed Proxmox VE on it (I was previously a long-time Xen/XCP-NG user with my past systems). It's fairly easy to work with even if you are a beginner at virtualization. My own setup is:

- One Win11 VM (for my remote employee)
- One Linux VM (for my docker containers, largely the usual *arr stack to manage my TV shows)
- A Pihole LXC container (I use it to block ads/malware on my mobile devices)
- A changedetection.io LXC container, which monitors various websites and notifies me over email when, for example, a new BIOS is released for my motherboard, or an updated firmware is available for my Yamaha AV receiver
- A Homepage container, which generates a "dashboard" for all my dockers/vms/container, largely used as a bookmark page for all their web interfaces


A few nice things with virtualization/containers:

- You can easily backup the VM/container to a NAS, and experiment as much as you want with it. If you truly break something, just restore the backup.
- Experimenting with software available as a docker container is very easy - you spend little time on the installation part, and can jump straight into the configuration/experimentation part. Software update is just one or two steps (depending on whether you always pull the latest image, or you manually select the image version to pull).


Beside that, I also do have a NAS, which contains all my files, backups for my machines as well as my NUC VMs, and a Plex Media Server to stream to my TV. I finally finished ripping all my DVDs last week, took me years to finally find the will to finish it. Whether to go with a complete solution from QNAP or going down the DIY route is up to you. Personally I went for a QNAP, since my data is too precious for me to start tinkering with whatever platform I'd use to host/manage it.

My next project will probably be to have a look at Home Automation. Even tho I don't have any need for the automation part itself, would be nice to have a central location to manage my Govee smart light, my two smart powerbars and my smart air purifier within a centralized application.

 

[tgl]

Just a minor comment --- I have two Intel NUC mini-PC boxes of different generations. I do like them, but unlike @RMerlin 's experience, I find that both of them spin up their fans to annoying levels whenever I put more than trivial CPU load on them. So don't assume that that entire product line is quiet. Mine are a BOXNUC8i7BEK1 w/ i7-8559U CPU (2019) and a RNUC13ANHi70000 w/ i7-1360P (2024). Perhaps i7-series vs i5-series CPU is the critical difference, I dunno.