LK Wood IV — Author Archive

About the author

Lowell K. Wood IV (byline: LK Wood IV) writes the homelab, PC build, GPU, networking, and self-hosting guides on TechFuel HQ from St. Louis, Missouri. Thirteen-plus years across homelabs, PC building, servers, networking, and coding, with a focus on cost-of-ownership, power consumption, and the configurations that hold up after the first weekend. He also works as a Nationally Registered Paramedic (NREMT) — the photo on the About page shows the patch.

Articles published in 2024 and 2025 drew on hands-on work with a homelab built up over that period. Most of that gear was sold or retired in early 2026 (see the Colophon for the full timeline). Articles published from June 2026 onward synthesize cited third-party benchmarks — ServeTheHome, Phoronix, Tom’s Hardware, TechPowerUp — plus hands-on use and original first-party runs on the gear still on hand: the current daily-driver rig (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, ASUS ROG STRIX B650-A, 64GB DDR5-6000, ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC, NZXT Kraken 360, EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 GT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus, Gigabyte AORUS FO48U), with the ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC dataset as the most data-heavy example. Every recommendation and byline is signed off by Lowell K. Wood IV. Full publishing methodology is on the colophon page.

Contact: hello@techfuelhq.com Location: St. Louis County, Missouri, United States More about the author: About TechFuel HQ

All articles by LK Wood IV

Articles below sorted by publish date, newest first. Each entry shows date, category, and a one-line summary.

Networking

• The 2026 Homelab Firewall & Router Stack: pfSense vs OPNsense vs MikroTik vs UniFi — 2026-05-08, Networking — pfSense Plus, OPNsense 26.1, MikroTik RouterOS 7, and UniFi 4.1 compared: throughput, IDS, multi-WAN, and where each one falls down.
• 10Gbps Home Networking on a Budget: A 2026 Guide for Homelabbers — 2026-05-06, Networking — Real 2026 prices, watts, and driver gotchas. Three 10GbE tiers, four switches compared, plus a verdict on who should skip 10G.

Homelab

• Proxmox vs TrueNAS vs Unraid Storage Backends 2026: ZFS, btrfs, and the IOPS That Matter — 2026-05-07, Homelab — ZFS vs btrfs vs ZFS-on-Unraid: RAIDZ vs mirrors, NVMe SLOG, ARC and L2ARC tuning, and real homelab IOPS.
• 2026 Homelab Gear That Beats 2025’s Picks: Pricing, Power, Benchmarks — 2026-05-04, Homelab — Mini PCs, NAS boards, switches, and SFF servers that outperform 2025’s favorites. Real prices, real watt draw, real benchmarks.
• Best Mini PC for a Homelab 2026: MS-01, NUC, SFF — 2026-05-01, Homelab — The best mini PC for a homelab in 2026 by budget: MS-01 for 10GbE, ASUS NUC 14 for low idle, used OptiPlex under $200.
• Turn an Old Gaming PC Into a Server (2026 Guide) — 2026-05-01, Homelab — Step-by-step turning a 2018-era gaming PC into a Proxmox VE 8 homelab server. BIOS, install, GPU passthrough, idle wattage.
• Proxmox vs TrueNAS vs Unraid 2026: Which to Run — 2026-03-28, Homelab — Proxmox VE 8, TrueNAS Community Edition 25.10, and Unraid 7 compared — license, ZFS, Docker, clustering, and a clear pick per use case.

PC Builds

• The $1,500 RTX 5060 Ti Mid-Range 1440p Build for 2026 — 2026-05-06, PC Builds — A real $1,500 build with RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, Ryzen 7 7700, 32GB DDR5-6000, 2TB Gen4. May 2026 prices, parts list, and 1440p benchmarks.

GPU Reviews

• RTX 5060 Ti vs RX 9060 XT: The Honest 1440p Showdown for 2026 — 2026-05-06, GPU Reviews — 16GB vs 16GB. DLSS 4 vs FSR 4. RT vs raster. Real 2026 prices, 1440p FPS in eight games, and a verdict by use case.
• RTX 5060 vs RX 9060 XT: The Budget GPU Showdown — 2026-04-07, GPU Reviews — Real benchmarks, real prices, and an honest verdict on RTX 5060 (8GB) vs RX 9060 XT (16GB). Which to buy in 2026.

Tutorials

• How to Self-Host a Local LLM on a Single RTX 5060 in 2026 — 2026-05-06, Tutorials — Run a private LLM on a $300 RTX 5060. VRAM tradeoffs, software picks, setup, real tokens/sec, and an honest verdict.

Self-Hosted

• Best Self-Hosted Apps 2026: 12 That Replace SaaS — 2026-05-01, Self-Hosted — The 12 best self-hosted apps in 2026: Immich, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Jellyfin, and 8 more. Compose files, hardware needs.

Tools

• Homelab + PC Build Budget Builder — 2026-05-04, Tool — Sort GPUs, NAS, and networking gear by budget and what you actually need. Real 2026 prices, real watt draw, honest verdicts.

Verification

This archive page exists so that anyone — readers, search engines, AdSense reviewers — can verify that articles signed LK Wood IV are written by a real, named person who is responsible for what they say. The same author identity appears in the JSON-LD schema on every article and on the colophon.

Last verified: 2026-06-09 by LK Wood IV.