Home Lab Hardware I’m Most Excited About in 2025
As we are now near to the last month in the first quarter of 2025, there are many developments that I am excited about when it comes to home lab hardware. It seems like there are more powerful hardware options now than ever before. I wanted to give you all a look at the home lab hardware that I’m most excited about moving forward this year.
Table of contents
Home Lab Hardware is now more powerful than ever
We are entering a new era in being able to run home lab environments. The hardware is now more powerful than evern and provides so many options for all kinds of solutions and self-hosting. We have always had access to second hand enterprise servers which have powerful hardware, but come at the price of super power consumption and massive electricity bills and cooling costs.
However, the more powerful the CPUs get in a small form factor size and the recent RAM evolution we have seen in the mini PC space, home lab hardware or prosumer type hardware can do everything we need it to do at a fraction of the cost of what you would pay for the initial investment and ongoing power consumption.
1. RAM upgrades and size revolution
To me, the recent introduction of 128 GB DDR5 SODIMM modules from Crucial are what we have been waiting for, for so long now. We have been stuck at very odd sizes for a while, with the minimal 64 GB of memory, then moving up to 96 GB. But now, we can have a full 128 GB of RAM. Honestly, I can be happy with this level of RAM. I worked with this for years on my Supermicro server hosts and it seemed like a really great size for home lab, especially if you had multiple hosts.
In case you haven’t heard, Crucial has introduced the new 128 GB SODIMM kit that consists of (2) 64 GB modules. You can buy these using the link below (Amazon affiliate links, I get a small commission if you purchase from here, but helps with content production).
2. Minisforum MS-A2
The next home lab hardware that I am very excited about is the forthcoming Minisforum MS-A2, proper successor to the MS-01. This time around, the MS-A2 has everything the MS-01 had in the networking department. However, it also includes a uniform 16 core, 32 thread processor, 128 GB of RAM support (my theory, not their specs), a PCI-e slot, and the same nice form factor that we have come to love about the MS-01.
To see a more detailed comparison of the MS-A2 vs the MS-01, check out my recent blog post here comparing the two awesome home lab mini PCs: Minisforum MS-A2 vs MS-01: Best Home Lab Server in 2025?
I think the MS-A2 is going to be a phenomenal machine that will elevate what we have done so far with the MS-01 with the benefits of the uniform AMD processor and the additional capability of bifurcation on the PCI-e slot.
3. DIY Motherboards
Another hardware that I am super excited about and encouraged with are the DIY motherboards. For the past few years, I haven’t been interested in building a home lab server. I have just been buying off the shelf hardware, and recently mini PCs since I have made the move to mini PCs in the lab environment.
However, when I reviewed the Minisforum BD795M motherboard, I fell in love again with the chance to build a server. Considering how well it turned out, I have been keen ever since to look for DIY motherboards that might make great possibilities with building your own server and self-hosting options.
- https://amzn.to/4i2VEDH (Amazon affiliate link which I earn a small commission on)
I also recently reviewed the Minisforum BD795i SE motherboard that is even smaller than the BD795M and has most of the functionality, including a preinstalled CPU cooler from Minisforum, so you don’t have to supply your own, outside of a 120mm fan for the heat sink. Both are great boards and illustrate the potential now to build these mini PC-type server builds that use the same technologies and give you options to pick and choose some of your hardware, like the server case, drives, etc.
4. NAS devices
The area of NAS storage is another area where things have gotten super interesting in my opinion. I never thought I would be able to have a low-power NAS with all NVMe backing a virtual machine datastore in the home lab that performed well. I now have this in the form of the Terramaster F8-SSD Plus. I really like what Terramaster is doing in this space. Also, Ugreen, and other are producing some really cool NAS devices that have a lot of power and capabilities packed in a very small form factor.
- https://amzn.to/41xtM5c (Amazon affiliate link which I earn a small commission on)
What I like as well is the fact that you can do so much with NAS devices now. Open source NAS operating systems like TrueNAS and others have changed the game and allowed enthusiasts to self-host, lab, and do other things with only a NAS device, without any additional hardware.
However, as I mentioned, you can also use a NAS in conjunction with servers as virtual machine and container storage. I use mine also as a backup target for several backup technologies, and also hosting things like Plex, Twingate remote connectivity, and S3 compatible storage.
5. Small footprint KVMs
One of the cool things I have had an obsession with is small footprint KVMs. I have a couple based on raspberry PI devices. However, there are other devices that have appeared on the scene like the JetKVM that really show just how cool this area of home labbing has gotten.
Wrapping up
Well, there you have it, just 5 of the home lab hardware solutions that I’m most excited about in 2025 for playing around in the home lab. There are tons of other types of hardware out there and it really depends on what you are using your home lab hardware for in what you are most excited about. Let me know in the comments as to what hardware you are excited about or looking to purchase in 2025 in the next few months.
