Why I'm replacing my smart home hub with a mini PC
It's time for me to dedicate an entire system to Home Assistant and it's a mini PC for lower power draw and exceptionally good connectivity.
It's easy to get carried away when building out a home lab, You have easy access to refurbished or used server-grade hardware. It sounds amazing to grab a dual-CPU behemoth of a system for running a few self-hosted services, but it's important to consider the costs outside of the hardware itself. First, there's the cost of electricity, which will quickly become your home lab's kryptonite with everything running 24/7. Then there are more expensive replacement parts, especially for ECC and server-specific components.
