This post
I'll go over experience about supporting my hobby of homelab by purchasing servers and other electronic components from marketplaces like Reddit, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace.
Motivation
I've always been interested in the capabilities of computers and their limits. In my own short lifetime of 15 years, I have observed a massive improvement in the capabilities of computers. As someone growing up in the 21st century, computers have always been a big part of my life but my journey with PCs started at the age of 7.
I started learning how to type in school by using typing tests, but I guess I just ignored the advice and guides that were given to me at the time and I still haven't learnt how to type properly. The computers that we used for these were blocky and slow, and were not reliable.
A few years ago, in 2021, I began to explore the world of PC building. My parents work in the tech industry and as such I have access to materials for such an endeavor. However, this was during the peak of the GPU shortage when scalpers sold GPUs for 2-3x their retail value. I was an avid gamer at the time and my current laptop was not able to perform well and the problem only got worse as time went on.
At this point, I started researching PC building and joined subreddits like PCMR and watched channels like LinusTechTips on YouTube. I became interested in anything PC building, watched releases of new components and had a goal of building my own PC.
Sourcing
I eventually accomplished my goal of building a PC in early 2023. However, during this time, I was also learning web development and ML and was interested in purchasing hardware for servers.
I already used Reddit frequently and participated in the community r/homelab which was a subreddit for home lab (home servers, networking, selfhosting). They had a sister subreddit called r/homelabsales which allowed people to post things they had for sale locally and meet with people in their area to sell components.
Meeting a stranger
While meeting a stranger on a platform that has a lot of stigma like Reddit could sound dangerous, we weren't idiots and chose to meet up at the public library. It turns out that the seller was a teenager as well. We had a short conversation after the sale and it was a nice experience.
My first server
My first server was a Dell Poweredge R320 with a couple of cpus and 4x2TB disks. I purchased it for $70 dollars, a massive steal. The storage alone would cost me around $100 and the R320 isn't too old.
Other purchases
The following months, I didn't spend that much money and got around 5 servers for a total of $20 to just experiment on. These servers were old and pretty much useless. I purchased a rack with a PDU and UPS from a guy in gig harbor for $100 which would easily cross a thousand dollars if I purchased it from an OEM.
My advice
Be careful but brave
I would suggest to take the leap and even if there aren't any postings in your area, send out requests to public forums for what you're looking for and you'd be surprised at what you'd find.
Try not to buy too much at a time as it can get addicting but instead take your time and learn everything about a device before moving on to the next one.
My homelab
Finally, I will go over what I am running on my homelab.
- NAS with qBittorrent and Radarr to discover new movies and download them for viewing on Jellyfin
- Frigate for localized NVR storage.
- Docker for various containers and webservers.
- Proxmox for VMs
My goal of writing this article is to inspire you to take the leap and meet people around you with similar interests! These skills carry over well to computer science classes and a successful career in tech. It can also be very rewarding and will make you less reliant on big corporations who probably sell your data.