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 contact@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

Most hardware figures published here — power draw, throughput, storage IOPS — come 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 vendor numbers. Vendor specifications are labeled separately from independent measurements.

TechFuel HQ launched in March 2026. The homelab work behind it predates the site by more than a decade, and most of that older gear was sold or retired in early 2026, before the first article was published. For measured work, the dated artifact defines the hardware and setup; a standing list of gear on hand does not.

I use “first-party” only for measurements that a linked artifact actually contains. The published record includes the ROG Astral RTX 5080 dataset, RTX 5080 LLM power-efficiency capture, Ollama vs LM Studio benchmark, and Home Assistant local-voice benchmark. Those artifacts also state their limits. The ROG page publishes the direct Astral runs, while its cross-generation index cites prior test-bench runs without a public cross-bench procedure. In the August 19 power capture, the active 400W stock or 448W manual profile is unresolved; the published dataset note reports 52–69W between runs, while the broader 52–71W week-long range does not have public raw captures. Other hardware claims are not treated as measured unless they link to a dated artifact.

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: contact@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 (no form; email is the direct line)

Last updated: 2026-09-26.