Editorial Methodology

Last updated: June 18, 2026

TechFuel HQ publishes hardware guides for homelabbers and budget-PC builders. This page describes — in plain language — who produces the content, how it is produced, what is and is not verified first-hand, and how readers can challenge any claim. The intent is to make every article auditable. See the full colophon for the publishing stack and bench methodology.

Who produces the content

The site is owned and edited by Lowell K. Wood IV (byline LK Wood IV), based in St. Louis County, Missouri. Lowell is the publisher of record. Author identity and contact information are exposed in the JSON-LD schema on every article and in the About page.

Email: hello@techfuelhq.com

There is no other staff. The site is a single-operator publication.

Real-artifact policy

A small number of claims on the site rely on first-person evidence rather than vendor specs — for example, a Kill A Watt idle-wattage reading, an iperf3 throughput run between two specific NICs, a photo of a parts receipt, or a screenshot of a BIOS configuration. The site has a strict policy for these:

  • Default tense is past. Most of the 2024–2025 testing gear was sold or retired in early 2026 (full timeline on the Colophon). First-person measurement language in older articles refers to that period and is phrased in the past tense.
  • Present-tense first-person claims (“I measured…”, “on my bench…”) are allowed only when the article either (a) shows the underlying artifact inline — a photo, a receipt, a measurement screenshot, captured terminal output — or (b) links to a published TechFuelHQ-canonical dataset that contains the artifact. The current canonical first-party dataset is the ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC bench dataset, captured 2026-06-08–2026-06-09.
  • No artifact, no first-person claim. Articles that would need a first-person claim but lack the artifact use cited third-party measurements instead, attributed to the named publication (ServeTheHome, Phoronix, Tom’s Hardware, TechPowerUp).
  • Fabricating an artifact — staged screenshots, made-up wattage numbers, invented dmesg or journalctl output, fake receipts — is forbidden under site policy.

If an article’s evidence shifts from “vendor spec citation” to “first-person measurement” or vice versa, the article’s update log records the date and direction of the shift.

Source standards

Every factual claim that is not first-person traces to one of these:

  • Vendor documentation — release notes, specification sheets, official pricing pages, official product matrices.
  • Vendor announcements — release blogs, press notes, official forums.
  • Reputable third-party publications — ServeTheHome, Tom’s Hardware, AnandTech archive, Phoronix, LWN, vendor-independent benchmark labs. Forum posts and community wikis are used only for facts that have a clear authoritative provenance (release notes, license docs, official FAQs).
  • Standards bodies — JEDEC, PCI-SIG, IEEE, RFC documents, where relevant.

Sources are linked inline at the point of claim and aggregated in the Sources block within each article.

A claim that cannot be cited to a resolvable, real source is removed before publish. Articles do not carry uncited “rumor” or “in my experience” lines that lack an artifact.

AI in the workflow

AI tools assist with research aggregation, outlining, and first drafts. The editorial judgment — what to recommend, what to cut, what to verify, and the final wording — is the author’s, and every measured claim still passes the source standards and real-artifact policy above before it ships. The byline is human and accountable; the fuller toolchain is described in the colophon.

Monetization disclosure

Some retailer links in articles are affiliate links placed through affiliate programs this site participates in, and may earn a commission on a qualifying purchase at no extra cost to the reader. Others — including links cited as sources rather than as places to buy — are plain reference links that earn nothing. Display advertising via Google AdSense serves ads when enabled.

Some Amazon links are affiliate links through the Amazon Associates Program, which may earn a commission on a qualifying purchase at no extra cost to the reader. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Every article that contains an affiliate link carries a clear disclosure near the top. A commission never changes which product gets recommended — if a product is not the right pick for the use case, it does not get recommended, affiliate link or not. Full detail is on the disclosure page.

The site participates in Google AdSense for display advertising. Advertising never appears inside the body of an article in a way that disrupts reading flow, and editorial recommendations are made independently of advertiser identity.

Update cadence

Articles are revised when the underlying facts change — a new product release, a vendor price shift, a license-policy change, a new firmware or kernel that affects compatibility. Each article carries a “Last updated” date that reflects the most recent material revision. Cosmetic edits (typos, layout fixes) do not bump that date.

Corrections

Readers who spot an error are encouraged to email hello@techfuelhq.com with the article URL and the specific section in question. Confirmed corrections are:

  1. Made in-place in the affected article.
  2. Logged in the article’s update log with the date and a one-line summary.
  3. Acknowledged by reply email.

Material errors discovered after the fact are not silently overwritten. The site’s intent is to be auditable.

What this site does not do

To set explicit expectations:

  • The site does not publish vendor-paid placements disguised as editorial.
  • The site does not publish “review” content for products the author has not handled and for which no first-person artifact is shown — vendor-spec comparisons are framed as such, not as hands-on reviews.
  • The site does not chase hype cycles. If a product is unproven, the article says so.

Contact

Publisher: Lowell K. Wood IV Email: hello@techfuelhq.com Location: St. Louis County, Missouri, United States

Site policies referenced from this page: About, Disclosure, Privacy, Terms, Contact.