Most "homelab build" posts online are a 42U rack with a thousand dollars of networking gear in it and a five-figure electricity bill in the attic. This is not that. This is the four-machine, one-shelf, under-150-watts-at-the-wall configuration that covers 95% of what a household homelab actually needs. Cost: under $1,200 new at time of writing.
Everything below is running in my closet right now. Full stack cross-reference: The self-hosting stack I actually use in 2026.
The four machines
| Role | Model | CPU / RAM | Storage | Idle power | Price (new, 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main host | Minisforum MS-01 | i9-13900H / 64 GB DDR5 | 2×2TB NVMe + 1×8TB SSD | 35 W | $745 |
| NAS | Jonsbo N2 + J4125 board | Intel J4125 / 16 GB | 4×8TB Exos HDD | 22 W | $320 |
| Edge router | GL.iNet Flint 2 | IPQ6000 / 1 GB | (OpenWrt) | 8 W | $109 |
| WiFi AP | Unifi U6-Pro | Qualcomm / 512 MB | (firmware) | 7 W | $169 |
Total at the wall: 72 W idle, peaks around 140 W. That's about $9/month in electricity at my rate. Total capital: $1,343. Subtract the WiFi AP if you use the ISP router's AP: $1,174. Under $1,200 for the useful stack.
Why the MS-01 is the right main host
I looked at three options for the "compute box":
- Build a custom mini-ITX server. ~$1,100 for equivalent specs. More flexibility, more noise, more desk.
- Used enterprise 1U. Dell R220 or similar. $250 used. Fan noise is unacceptable in a residential apartment.
- Minisforum MS-01. $745. Dense, quiet, thunderbolt + dual 2.5GbE + PCIe 4.0 x8.
The MS-01's two killer features are the PCIe x8 slot (for a real network card or an HBA later if I ever want to pool disks) and thunderbolt on the front (for an eGPU if I ever change my mind about hardware transcoding). Neither is available on typical mini-PCs, and both are available on enterprise 1Us that would be unbearable in a closet.
It idles at 35 W with 12 services running. That math is what sold me.
Why the NAS is separate
I could have put the 8 TB drives in the MS-01. I chose not to. Two reasons:
- Blast radius. When I reboot the main host for an upgrade, the NAS is still serving SMB. Separating storage from compute is a cheap reliability win.
- Noise discipline. Four 7200 RPM Exos drives spinning up in a mini-PC are audible across the apartment. The Jonsbo N2 has proper airflow + vibration dampening. I hear it when I open the closet, never otherwise.
The J4125 in the NAS is underpowered for serious workloads. That's fine — it only runs TrueNAS, SMB, NFS, and a ZFS scrub cron. 16 GB of RAM is enough for 32 TB of RAIDZ1 with room to spare.
Why the router is Flint 2 instead of pfSense
Previously: pfSense on a protectli mini. Great hardware, great software, also a PhD in firewall rules every time I wanted to change anything. The Flint 2 runs vanilla OpenWrt, handles 1 Gbps WAN at line rate, and the web UI is sufficient for 95% of what a household network does. For the last 5% I SSH in.
It has a second 2.5GbE port I use as a trunk to the managed switch in the closet. It carries IoT VLAN traffic separately from main LAN traffic. That's the only "enterprise-y" thing in the setup.
Watt-per-workload rankings
This is the interesting number. Not "which machine is fastest" but "which does the most work per watt." I ran a synthetic benchmark: transcode a 1080p movie, index 10,000 files, apply face-detection to a thousand photos, over a cold start. Measured wall power over the full run.
| Machine | Workload time | Avg power during run | Energy (Wh) | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MS-01 (i9-13900H) | 14 min | 85 W | 19.8 | 🥇 fastest, most efficient |
| Old Dell R220 (Xeon E3-1220v3) | 42 min | 62 W | 43.4 | Baseline |
| Raspberry Pi 5 (cluster of 4) | 88 min | 28 W × 4 = 112 W | 164.3 | 🥉 very slow, very thirsty per unit work |
| Jonsbo N2 NAS (J4125) | 61 min | 31 W | 31.5 | Surprisingly competitive per-watt but slow wall-clock |
Headline takeaway: the i9-13900H is more than twice as fast as the Xeon and uses less energy to finish the job. The Pi cluster is romantic but actually loses to everything on a real workload. The NAS chip is fine for its intended scope.
What I wouldn't buy again
- Any rack-mount 1U server in a residential apartment. Fan noise is real.
- Consumer-grade "NAS" appliances from the big three brands — Synology, QNAP, etc. They lock you out of real ZFS, their hardware is overpriced, and their firmware is a treasure map of vulnerabilities.
- A Raspberry Pi cluster as a "real" homelab. Fun learning project; poor at doing actual work per watt per dollar.
- Anything with a GPU, for this workload. I have zero services that meaningfully use one right now.
If you have less budget
Under $500 total, you can still build a competent homelab:
- Main host: Beelink EQ12 ($240, N100, 16 GB, 500 GB NVMe). Not the MS-01 but gets you 80% of the way.
- NAS: Skip; use an external USB drive on the main host, back up to B2. Not ideal but fine under 500 GB of data.
- Router: ISP router. Not ideal; run Tailscale for remote access anyway.
Total under $350. Will it be as good? No. Will it run Home Assistant, Jellyfin, Immich, and the arr stack for a household? Yes, comfortably.
For what runs on top of this hardware: The self-hosting stack I actually use in 2026.
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