A personal look into assembling a practical home lab rack with everyday items and solid hardware.

If you’ve ever been curious about how to set up a practical home lab rack without breaking the bank or filling a storage room with fancy, expensive gear, then this story might resonate with you. My “home lab rack” journey started with some repurposed household furniture and a handful of reliable hardware to create a setup that’s both functional and a bit unique.

Starting With What I Had: The Base of My Home Lab Rack

The base of my home lab rack isn’t from a high-tech store. Instead, it’s made by bolting together two Ikea Lack tables—yes, those simple, affordable tables that so many of us have at home. On top of that, I stacked two solid wooden bedside tables from a previous bedroom setup. This mix of everyday furniture forms a surprisingly sturdy foundation, proving you don’t always need a traditional server rack to get started.

Diving Into The Hardware

Here’s what’s on the rack, from bottom to top:

• Mid tower PC case: Powered by a Ryzen 3900X CPU, equipped with 48GB RAM and a few drives, running Proxmox. This is the powerhouse of the setup.
• 17-inch laptop: A PCSpecialist Recoil III, with an Intel 9750H, 32GB RAM, and several SSDs, also running Proxmox. Compact but capable, it complements the bigger rig nicely.
• Mouse and keyboard combo: Keeps control straightforward for the mid tower.
• Network gear: A 2.5GbE switch alongside a Zyxel internet router (not my favorite, but it gets the job done).
• Raspberry Pi 3b+: Running Pi-hole to help keep ads and trackers at bay on all connected devices.
• Storage array: A Ugreen DXP 6800 Pro with six 8TB 5.4k rpm drives in RAIDZ2, plus two SSDs. A quirky touch—chair gliders are wedged between slots as a temporary, but effective, solution to occasional drive vibration.
• Mesh network setup: One of three TP-Link Deco X50 units for strong, seamless Wi-Fi coverage throughout the space.

This combination provides a mix of performance, storage, and networking, all held together in a rack that started life as furniture more suited to a living room than a server room.

Why I Chose This Setup

You might wonder why all this was cobbled together with what feels like random household objects. Honestly, it’s about making the most of what I had without spending extravagantly. Plus, repurposing those ikea tables and bedside units gave a satisfying, DIY vibe to the whole project. For many, a traditional server rack feels too bulky or costly, but this blend of furniture and tech offers something more accessible.

Using Proxmox on both the tower and the laptop means I’m flexible with virtual environments and various services. The Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole adds a nice layer of network-wide ad blocking without extra subscription costs. And that storage array? Plenty of space to experiment safely with data redundancy using RAIDZ2.

Tips If You Want to Build a Similar Home Lab Rack

• Look around your home for sturdy, reusable furniture to form your rack base.
• Prioritize the hardware that fits your needs but don’t overlook compact solutions like laptops or single-board computers.
• Set up networking that matches your internet speed and devices; a good switch can make all the difference.
• Don’t be afraid to get creative with mounting and vibration damping—like those chair gliders. Innovation often comes from little hacks.
• Use open-source or free virtualization platforms such as Proxmox to maximize your hardware’s potential.

Building a home lab rack doesn’t have to mean buying the most expensive equipment or racks. With a bit of creativity and practical choice in hardware, you can craft a setup that’s uniquely yours and surprisingly efficient.

For inspiration and more detailed information about Proxmox, check out the official Proxmox website, and to understand more about RAID configurations, this article from How-To Geek is a great read. If you’re interested in mesh networks, the TP-Link Deco X50’s official product page provides helpful specs and setup guides.

So, if you’re thinking about starting or upgrading your own home lab, remember: it’s all about adapting what you have and making tech work for you, not the other way around.