Thanks so much for sharing this! I think reading through it helps refocus the question I guess I should have asked, which is "Which vendors do people trust more in practice, recognizing that at some point recursive paranoia has to end unless one has the time and skill to try to build literally everything on their own?" And as a question of probabilities, it feels a bit more manageable to try to make a call and move on. I'm sort of thinking of this thread as a way for me to calibrate my current probability estimates with people who know more than I do and have likely thought about this question more than I have. But the reminder that there isn't really going to be any certainty regardless of what I decide is well-taken.

Thanks for this! It's a good impetus for me to think a little more holistically about my network security versus overfocusing on the router. I'll have to do some more reading on overall networking best practices.

Thank you for this! Honestly maybe it's just been all of the Youtubers I watch but I constantly feel like I have no idea about how to make things work (and also, to be fair, basically everything I wrote is just me reading what other people who seem to know what they're talking about think and then trying to fit all the pieces together. I sort of feel like a money at a typewriter in that way.) Really appreciate you commenting though! It's given me a little more confidence :)

Thanks for this! The jet engine sound level and higher power draw were both what made me a little wary of used enterprise stuff (plus jumping from never having a home server straight to rack mounted felt like flying a little too close to the sun). And thanks also for the epyc rec; based on other comments it sounds like maybe pairing that with dual 3090s is the most cost effective option (especially because I fear you're right on prices not being adjusted downward; not sure if the big hit Nvidia took this morning because of DeepSeek might change things but I suppose that ultimately unless underlying demand drops, why would they drop their prices?) Thanks again for taking the time to respond!

Thank you! I think I am just at the "Valley of Despair" portion of the Dunning-Kruger effect lol, but the good news is that it's hopefully mostly up from here (and as you say, a good finished product is infinitely better than a perfect idea).

It's not released yet, but I've been keeping my eye on the Open Printer project by Open Tools. You can sign up to get email updates on their Crowd Supply page.

Edit: Sorry, just seeing the no Wifi/Bluetooth, so this might not be the best fit (but it does aim to be fully open source, so maybe in the spirit of what you're looking for?)

Thanks for this! Agree that coreboot is definitely the requirement that, if dropped, would open up the most other options. So far it sounds like folks are mostly willing to have some faith in stock firmware, which is great as a sanity check for me. Appreciate your response!

Sorry, imprecise wording on my part, I meant build as in build/code from scratch, not build from source!

This is a great point and one I sort of struggled with tbh; I think you're right that if I built it out as a gaming PC I would probably use Windows (not to say I am not very excited about the work Steam is doing for Linux gaming, it's just hard to beat the native OS). I was leaning toward a Linux build for the server form though just to try to embrace a bit more FOSS (and because I am still a little shocked that Microsoft could propose the Recall feature with a straight face). Maybe I could try a gaming setup that uses some flavor of Linux as a base, though then I am not sure I take advantage of the ability to use the AI stuff easier. Will definitely think more on it though, thanks for raising this!

This is exactly the sort of tradeoff I was wondering about, thank you so much for mentioning this. I think ultimately I would probably align with you in prioritizing answer quality over context length (but it sure would be nice to have both!!) I think my plan for now based on some of the other comments is to go ahead with the NAS build and keep my eyes peeled for any GPU deals in the meantime (though honestly I am not holding my breath). Once I've proved to myself I can something stable without burning the house down, I'll on something more powerful for the localLLM. Thanks again for sharing!

No I think we're aligned! I am not trying to say the "build literally everything" from scratch is a viable alternative. You could go all the way down the rabbit hole of building a compiler, your own programming language, a smelter to refine the metals you need to try to cobble together your own hardware. But of course that is not realistic, which was what I was trying to get at in my comment. Basically, given that it is not feasible to do everything by yourself, at some point it seems you have to decide to trust something to be a functional human and not devolve into solipsism. So the question I am asking is, what are your own evaluations of what is trustworthy? Do you trust coreboot more than AMI? Protectli versus Qotom? It seems to me that we have to make these sorts of evaluations, versus believing that because there is some risk to everything that those risks are all equal. Apologies if I am not being clear though.

Thanks so much! I'd seen Hunsn mentioned in a few places as well, so glad to hear that it's working well (and thanks especially for the memory ballooning tip, I'll try to remember that when I inevitably run into issues later).

Thank you! I actually don't even need to install with the offline installers to launch the game; if I just navigate to where it was installed by Heroic and manually click the executable it will launch properly. I just wanted to get it working through the launcher to hopefully be able to run multiplayer (and maybe have a slightly easier time with mods?) And honestly, it's just been driving me nuts not to be able to get around this sandboxing in some way. But appreciate your help!

Thanks so much for sharing! I just poked around for the Ironwolf 8TB drives I was thinking of an it unfortunately looks like they're sold out for now (as are the 8TB WD Reds it looks like), but I'll definitely keep an eye out for them here (and honestly maybe explore some different size options honestly; the drive costs I was seeing on other sites was more than I expected, but wasn't sure if that was just the new normal; glad to have another option!) And thanks so much for the awesomeselfhosted list!! I don't think I'd seen everything collected in one place like that before, that will be super helpful!

Yes, I'm US-based, and you make a great point that it's not as though US brands are inherently trustworthy either. That's why I'm leaning towards an open source (or as open source as possible) firmware, with the understanding that we're stuck with some proprietary blobs at the moment. I suppose I am thinking about it more from a harm reduction lens versus trying to find a bullet-proof solution.

Thanks, will do!

Wow, that sounds amazing! I think that GPU alone would probably exceed my budget for the whole build lol. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing! Will probably try to go this route once I get the NAS squared away and turn back to localLLMs. Out of curiosity, are you using the q4_k_m quantization type?

Thanks for flagging this! I'd just passively absorbed second hand the mining rig fears, but you're totally right that it's not as though a regularly used overclocked gaming GPU isn't going to also be subject similar degradation (especially if the miner is intentionally underclocking). I guess the biggest fears then are just physical damage from rough install and then potential heat damage (though maybe swapping thermal pads and paste helps alleviate that?) And of course checking benchmarks for any weirdness if possible I guess...

Thank you! The case rec is super helpful actually, I was considering the Fractal Design Define R5 (though I wasn't sure how to feel about potentially spending the same amount on my motherboard as my case, but people seem to swear by it), so it's great to have confirmation they're actually worth it. I had given PC Part Picker a shot, but it seems like it doesn't quite catch the ECC memory support for some of the AMD systems (maybe because they're unofficial?) I will give it another shot though, and thanks again!