I replaced enterprise gear with a $50 compact PC, and my power bill thanked me

A home lab enthusiast shares their journey from enterprise-grade servers and an AMD Threadripper (150W idle) down to two $50 compact PCs — a Dell Vostro 3268 and Fujitsu Esprimo D556 — running Proxmox as a two-node cluster. The setup handles Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Frigate (with 4x 2K cameras), Home Assistant, and more, while dramatically cutting power consumption. The key takeaway is that most self-hosted workloads don't require powerful hardware, and affordable compact PCs are often more than sufficient for a capable home lab.