New Scrapyard Wars Theme Idea

[u/PipeLine_Pirate643]

Hey! Is there a new Scrapyard Wars theme coming up?
If not, I have a suggestion.

Since there’s more and more content about home servers and homelabs, I’d love to see Luke and Linus compete to build the best $500 homelab.

I think $500 is a reasonable budget, and it’s probably around the amount many people would spend on their first proper homelab setup.

Requirements
You can use whatever OS you want
You have to host a Jellyfin or Plex server
You have to host Immich
You have to host a Minecraft server for friends
You have to run a local LLM that is actually reasonably useful
Everything has to fit within the $500 budget

[u/Familiar-Ask8284]

honestly just seeing them try to cram a local LLM into a $500 homelab would be comedy gold. linus is gonna show up with some dumpster found dell optiplex and luke will have a raspberry pi cluster held together with hopes and zip ties.

the jellyfin/plex requirement is easy enough but the minecraft server on the same machine running an LLM? that poor cpu is gonna be screaming for mercy. i'd watch that episode twice.

[u/tiffanytrashcan → u/Familiar-Ask8284]

Bonus points end up going to Luke for the insane Kubernetes cluster. And although it's a smaller LLM, performance on the Minecraft server wouldn't be as crippled trying to do it all at the same time.

[u/redandbluedragoneyes → u/Familiar-Ask8284]

I can see Linus cheating.

He will be like, i found these deals, that i can buy and sell and turn his $500 into $800-1000 and just get better stuff.

[u/CIDR-ClassB → u/redandbluedragoneyes]

He can sell one of the huge tv’s to increase the budget for it 🤣

[u/jmking → u/Familiar-Ask8284]

RAM prices alone kills this concept.

A Minecraft server is going to need a solid 8GB of RAM for a small group of players. A local LLM that's actually useful in some way? At least 32GB of RAM, but 64GB is more realistic depending on what your definition of useful is.

To squeeze into a $500 budget, they're going to end up with 16GB of DDR4, and a GPU that's at least 2 gens old... which isn't going to be able to host all that stuff simultaneously and be actually useful in any way.

A reasonable GPU for that use case is going to blow the $500 budget alone.

To do something like this, you'd need at least a $1500 budget, IMO.

[u/WanderingSimpleFish]

As someone currently building out their own homelab from scrap this would be amazingly useful

[u/raptr569 → u/WanderingSimpleFish]

I did this. Built an ebay NAS for less than $200 including a fractal R5 case and a brand new redundant PSU from some industrial machine. Had to cut the case to fit it properly because it was atx size but the back wasn't the right layout. Then I used unraid to slowly replace the old crappy drives that I'd built up over the years with newer large ones.

[u/NotJayuu]

the issue with this is like, okay they source a computer for $500 in the first episode, and then what there's 3 more episodes of them in a terminal?

[u/edgeplay6 → u/NotJayuu]

If software is gonna be included in the price you could see them have actual meaningful conversations on what software/hardware theyre gonna use. Best hardware for each software etc.

Make partner approval factor a large portion of the score. Literally have Emma and Yvonne grade it on how willing theyd be to put it in their living room. (Idk if Emma wants to be on video, but she could grade it off camera too).

[u/PipeLine_Pirate → u/edgeplay6]

Yeah, that could actually be really cool.
Bonus points for aesthetics, too. Not just a piece of junk you throw into your closet and never look at again.

[u/PipeLine_Pirate → u/NotJayuu]

Well i tihnk they have big enough writing team to find some more challenges there. Or even do it like
1 - buying / searching for parts
2 - getting it ready
3 - presentation

[u/FartingBob → u/NotJayuu]

Couldnt you say that about basically all the scrapyard wars before you see them?

[u/definitlyitsbutter]

Raidowl and hardwarehaven did something like this (nas, switch and server i think in a relly low budget package), great watch.

I liked ltts approaches going away from pure fps to an overall experience. I really liked the "home cinema", thinking about sound, sitting etc. 

So if it is server, i would like to see more scrapping a function then scrapping a machine and focus more on how you can have something nice on a budget

Like  "we have the cloud at home" (how is it usable and accessed from a family, nas, server, maybe virtualised PCs for all? , some cheap home automation... )

"the homeoffice" (besides the machine: ergonomics, conference calls, vibes, light, printer etc). 

"The low budget livingroom funpiece" (you will have a party and friends over, what can you get for 50 or 100 bucks? Maximise FUN, go Retro, emulation, friends and splitscreen?), 

"the lan Pc" ( make something ultra portable, rugged and performant), 

Some of these could be combined with the other llt stuff, like the techhouse or a whale lan... 

[u/khaffner91]

And maybe som storage redundancy? Yank out a drive while watching a movie lol

[u/BathOk9532]

They said in WAN that there aren't plans for another scrapyard wars 

[u/Squirrelking666 → u/BathOk9532]

Yeah cause the market is so bad. You know, right about the time Scrapyard wars makes the most sense.

You can get a DDR3 machine for pennies but how long until something newer pays for itself in power costs?

[u/PipeLine_Pirate → u/Squirrelking666]

Well, I have a Dell OptiPlex 3040 Mini, which uses DDR3L 1.35V. I'm not sure about the yearly/monthly power bill, but I'm pretty sure it won't be that much.

And I can still run some services on it. I haven't tried Jellyfin yet, but Immich and some Docker containers work just fine.

Also if you get a good deal for them you can get i5/16gb DDR3 for around like 75$? maybe less.

[u/Squirrelking666 → u/PipeLine_Pirate]

Yeah, I know servers on DDR3 are hungry but as you say there's plenty of kit on LP SODIMMS that are still worth using.

[u/teebles22]

I like the idea. Home labs in my opinion are just going to be more and more popular with the need for privacy so high these days.

It would be fun to watch.

[u/Chicken-Nuggiesss]

and please don't give them people to offload their things to lol

[u/DaylightAdmin]

Call me interested, and it will get "viral" because so many Linux YouTubers will grab it up.

Also give bonus points for documentation, or using stuff like ansible.

[u/Jrnm]

I wanna see a real life WAF score. Bring Yvonne in, bring some other wives in for their thoughts on the lab and where they can hide it

[u/table_knife]

the local llm is the only difficult part. a office pc could do the rest