About TechFuel HQ

Who runs this site

TechFuel HQ is run by Lowell K. Wood IV (byline: LK Wood IV) from St. Louis, Missouri. Thirteen-plus years of homelabs, PC building, server and game-server hosting (Garry’s Mod, then Arma 3, then Squad, on a stack of repurposed desktops in a basement), networking, and coding — now applied to writing the homelab and self-hosting guides I wish I had read when I started.

I also work as a Nationally Registered Paramedic (NREMT) on ground EMS — I do both. The patch in the photo above is from that work, and it’s the reason for the editorial habit on this site: never recommend gear I haven’t verified, the same way you never chart a vital you didn’t take.

I answer every email I get at hello@techfuelhq.com.

What this site is for

Most homelab and self-hosting content on the open web is either content-farm filler or vendor-paid product placement. The goal here is straight-talk hardware recommendations, real cost-of-ownership math, and configuration patterns that hold up after the YouTube hype cycle ends.

No sponsored articles. No vendor samples in exchange for coverage. No paid placement where the recommendation gets shaped by who is paying. A recommendation is made on the merits, full stop.

What the site covers

• Proxmox, TrueNAS, and Unraid — operating-system tradeoffs for homelabs
• Mini PCs and small-form-factor builds (MS-01, ASUS NUC line, used OptiPlex / EliteDesk Tiny / ThinkCentre Tiny)
• 2.5GbE and 10GbE on a budget — used Mellanox cards, DACs, MikroTik switches
• Self-hosted apps that meaningfully replace SaaS — Immich, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Jellyfin, Paperless-ngx, Home Assistant
• Repurposing older hardware (gaming PCs, retired workstations) as servers
• Power consumption, idle wattage, and total cost of ownership — because electricity is not free

How recommendations are sourced

From June 2026 onward, hardware figures published here — power draw, throughput, storage IOPS — are aggregated from named third-party publications and primary documentation, cited inline at each claim. The sources I lean on most are ServeTheHome for homelab, storage, and networking coverage, Phoronix for Linux and storage benchmarks, Tom’s Hardware for general hardware, and manufacturer spec sheets and standards documents (Intel ATX guides, JEDEC, OpenZFS) for first-party numbers. Vendor spec-sheet figures are always labeled as such, separately from independently measured results.

Hardware guides published in 2024–2025 drew on hands-on work with a homelab built up over that period, and most of that older homelab gear was sold or retired in early 2026. What remains on hand is the author’s current daily-driver workstation — a Ryzen 7 7800X3D on an ASUS ROG STRIX B650-A with 64GB DDR5-6000, an ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC, an NZXT Kraken 360, an EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 GT power supply, a Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe, and a Gigabyte AORUS FO48U display. Reviews and first-party data about that specific rig — most prominently the published ROG Astral RTX 5080 dataset — are hands-on. For hardware not currently on the bench, figures are aggregated from the named third-party publications above and cited inline at each claim, rather than implying a personal test of gear the author does not own.

No vendor samples are accepted. Gear is covered on its merits, never in exchange for coverage. If that ever changes, the article will say so at the top.

Editorial principles

• Vote a recommendation. Hedging is for politicians.
• Cite real sources. Made-up benchmarks are worse than no benchmarks.
• Update articles when the underlying facts change. Note the update date.
• Attribute every benchmark number to a named, linkable source, or leave it out.

See the full editorial methodology for source standards and corrections policy.

Contact

Email: hello@techfuelhq.com Location: St. Louis County, Missouri, United States Site author: Lowell K. Wood IV (LK Wood IV)

Editorial standards and policies

For the full standing rules every article on this site follows — sourcing, dating, AI workflow, banned phrases, excluded topics, corrections process, advertising disclosure, AdSense state — see the Editorial Standards page. That page is the standing reference; the methodology page covers the more technical fact-checking workflow.

Trust pages

• Editorial Standards — the standing rules every article follows
• Methodology — fact-checking and source-verification workflow
• Author page (LK Wood IV) — byline and bibliography
• Colophon — site stack, AI pipeline disclosure, history
• Disclosure — advertising and standing disclosures
• Privacy policy — data handling, cookies, GDPR/CCPA
• Terms — site terms
• Contact — email and contact form

Last updated: 2026-06-10.