What I Run

The actual parts list. Not a wishlist and not a sponsored build. Every item here is in service right now, and where something gave me trouble it says so.

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Storage

Two NAS units. One serves everything, one exists only to catch the first one failing.

Synology RS18017xs+

Main NAS. Media, Docker volumes, NFS exports to the whole fleet.

Bought used. This is a rackmount enterprise unit and it is loud. It ate a PSU and a set of fans and the replacement fans are louder than the originals. Drives now sit 45 to 54C where they used to sit 42 to 45C.

Used enterprise gear. Not sold new on Amazon in any form worth linking.

Synology DS620slim

Dedicated Proxmox Backup Server target. Nothing else runs on it.

A backup target that shares hardware with the thing it backs up is not a backup target. LACP bonded to the switch.

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Seagate ST4000LM024 4TB 2.5 inch

Six of them, filling the DS620slim.

2.5 inch drives because the DS620slim only takes 2.5 inch. Check that before you buy a slim chassis.

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Samsung 860 QVO 2TB

SSD read cache in the RS18017xs+.

QVO is QLC. Fine as a read cache. I would not run it as primary storage.

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The Proxmox host

One box running roughly 30 containers and 11 VMs.

MSI RTX 4090

PCI passthrough into the GPU VM. The host never touches it.

Passthrough is why that VM cannot live migrate. Worth knowing before you plan a maintenance window around it.

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128GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM

Upgraded from 64GB in July 2026.

The physical install broke the RTX 4090 passthrough until the host was reconfigured. A RAM upgrade is not always just a RAM upgrade.

Server ECC RDIMM, bought used in bulk. Amazon pricing on this is bad and the listings are unreliable.

Aquantia AQC107 10G RJ45 NIC

Two of them. One for storage, one added in August 2026 for client traffic.

Swapping a card renamed the interfaces and broke a bridge. Check your interface names after any NIC change.

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Network

Six VLANs, including one with no internet route at all.

UniFi Dream Machine Pro

Gateway, firewall and the source of truth that feeds NetBox.

The zone-based firewall lumps every VLAN into one Internal zone with a blanket allow by default. Tagging VLANs is not isolation. You have to write the rules.

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UniFi USW Pro Max 16

Main switch. 16 ports, a couple of 2.5GbE, two SFP+.

Both SFP+ ports were already taken by the gateway and the NAS, so a 10G upgrade had zero free ports to land on. Count your high-speed ports before you buy the card, not after.

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UniFi U7 Pro Max

Wi-Fi 7 access point.

The primary gaming box runs on USB Wi-Fi with its wired NIC unplugged. That is a choice worth revisiting before you blame the AP for anything.

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Gaming

The box the games actually run on. Separate from the workstation.

AMD Ryzen 7 9700X

SOAT-GAME01, running Bazzite.

Its integrated Radeon is doing real work here, which turned out to be a problem. See the GPU below.

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AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT

Discrete GPU in the gaming box. Drives a 4K Philips panel at 120Hz.

The 55 inch TV is plugged into the CPU's integrated graphics while this card sits with three unused DisplayPorts. The TV is capped at 60Hz as a result. Check which GPU a display is actually on before you accept its refresh rate.

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3D printing

One printer, on its own VLAN with no route to the internet.

QIDI Plus 4

Heated chamber, Klipper based. Prints ASA without warping.

Read the security teardown before you put it on your network. It ships as a small end-of-life Linux server with a published default password.

Read the security teardown → Find it on Amazon →

PETG filament

Everything at the prototype stage. Cheap, forgiving, dimensionally consistent.

Overture and eSun for heavy iteration. Polymaker PolyLite when consistency matters.

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ASA filament

Final parts. Heat resistant to about 100C, UV stable.

ASA shrinks more than PETG, roughly 0.4 to 0.7 percent against 0.2 to 0.4. A part that fits in PETG can come out tight in ASA. Do a final fit check in the real material.

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Workstation

The desktop. Claude Code moved off it onto a headless box in August 2026, but this is still the daily driver.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

16 cores, 32 threads.

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AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

Display and gaming. Power capped by a systemd unit at boot.

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Gigabyte X870E AORUS XTREME AI TOP

Motherboard.

Has the spare PCIe lanes and NIC headroom that made adding a second 10G card painless.

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