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Overcoming Hardware Hurdles: My Journey from Rented Servers to an ITX Homelab
Hi LET Community,
It's been a while since I was actively interacting here, so I wanted to share an update on what I've been working on recently.
A while back, I rented a dedicated server for hypervisor use and reached out here for advice. However, I quickly discovered that renting wasn’t sustainable for a couple of major reasons:
- Geographic Latency: I live in Asia, and aside from hypervisors, my projects now also focus on flight simulator streaming. With most available solutions based in the US, latency became a significant hurdle.
- Hardware Degradation During Colocation: I experimented with using some community members’ hardware for colocation. Unfortunately, the hard drives began to wear out one after the other—first SDA, then SDB, SDC, and finally SDD—causing the cost of replacements to exceed my original server expenses.
These challenges led me to consider a different approach. Instead of building a large homelab (which requires ample space), I thought, “What about an ITX build?” After thorough research, I became confident that a compact ITX solution could meet my needs.
My Project Needs:
- Moonlight Streaming
- NextCloud
- Jellyfin
- A few Linux/Windows VMs
My Small Homelab Server Specifications:
- Motherboard: ROG STRIX B650-I
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
- Cooler: Thermalright AS120-X67
- Case: Lian Li Q58
- Power Supply: 750W SFX
- GPU: ASUS Dual RTX 4070 Ti Super OC 16G
- Storage: Two GM7 4TB M.2 drives, plus an MX500 500GB boot drive
- RAM: 96GB
- Networking: GL.iNet MT6000 + MX4200v1
Initially, I tried running Proxmox, but the flight simulator didn’t respond well to PCIe passthrough—I was getting only single-digit FPS. While LXC proved to be a handy workaround, after several experiments I eventually settled on using Windows for Moonlight streaming and VMware Workstation for my hypervisor needs.
A practical bonus is that I no longer need extensive network debugging, as I simply route everything through Tailscale. I also continue to maintain an OVH server for offsite backups.
However, if I can finally solve the flight simulator performance issue, I'd be more than happy to revisit Proxmox because, frankly, Windows just isn’t ideal for this purpose.
Thanks to all the LET members that inspired me.
