Home lab for Security, AI and Freelance projects
This home lab has been build to host the coming Nabla company projects and services.
Goal is to test integration of Security and AI services and experiences attacks performed on my domains.
One physical Mini-ITX system running TrueNAS Scale: dependable ZFS storage plus a homelab host for apps, home automation, security tooling, and compute-heavy tasks—including AI-style workloads when you need them.
- ZFS & datasets Pools, snapshots, replication
- Homelab host Apps, VMs, internal services
- Security stack Tooling & monitoring
- AI & compute AM5 headroom for models & jobs
After seven years of good service, my FreeNAS server died. The goal is to extend the setup beyond a NAS alone: a homelab on TrueNAS Scale, with applications for domotics such as Home Assistant, plus security and AI tooling, as listed below on this page.
Bill of materials
Reused
- Case: previous iXsystems chassis, should be 170 mm × 170 mm, mini-ITX format
- PSU: previous 200 W power supply (I made a desing mistake, PSU do not fit MSI 8 pin CPU moetherboard)
- Kingston SKC600MS mSATA SSD — 256 GB TLC 3D NAND. 83 €
- Storage: 4× Western Digital Red WD30EFRX — 3 TB each, SATA 6 Gb/s
New purchases
- MSI MPG B650I Edge WiFi — Mini-ITX AM5, DDR5, PCIe 4.0, M.2, Wi‑Fi 6E (Ryzen 7000 desktop). 174.67 €
- ORICO mSATA SSD enclosure (USB 3.0, 5 Gbps) — toolless adapter for 50×30 mm mSATA SSDs, up to 2 TB. 17.99 €
- Noctua NH-L9a-AM5 — low-profile CPU cooler for AMD AM5. 49.90 €
- AMD Ryzen 7 7700 — 3.8 GHz, 32 MB L3. 212.75 €
- Crucial DDR5 64 GB 5600 MHz — CL46 (CT64G56C46U5; also 5200/4800 MHz). 679.00 €
- PSU: ATX 500 W power supply (Aliexpress never delivered a PSU fitting into my frame). 50.00 €
Total price 1 184.31 € Sum of motherboard, enclosure, CPU, RAM, CPU cooler and PSU.
Room to add later
- Another 64 GB RAM — DDR5 UDIMM, form factor 288-pin DIMM / UDIMM (desktop unbuffered modules). When shopping, do not mix up SO-DIMM (laptop format) or RDIMM (registered server format): they will not fit this board.
- NVMe SSD — extra M.2 NVMe drive for fast pool or cache-style storage (pick a model that matches your board’s M.2 specs and planned use).
