Build & buying guides
Pick a part, get the honest buying logic with no fluff, and jump straight to live $/value prices — for AI rigs, gaming builds and home servers alike.
AI PC build guide Build a local-AI / homelab PC by tier — GPU, DDR5 and SSD picks with live $/value. Best GPU for local LLMs Which card by VRAM, budget and model size — RTX 5090 to used 3090 and DGX Spark. NVIDIA vs AMD vs Intel for AI CUDA vs ROCm vs Arc — software maturity and dollars per GB of VRAM compared. Run big LLMs on mismatched GPUs Pool cheap mixed GPUs into one endpoint with Tightwad — a 70B without the flagship. Best mini PC for local AI Unified-memory appliances vs a GPU build — Strix Halo, DGX Spark and Mac compared. Best DDR5 RAM DDR5-6000 CL30 sweet spot, capacity for gaming vs AI, EXPO/XMP — with live $/GB. Best NVMe SSD Gen4 vs Gen5, capacity, TLC vs QLC and DRAM cache — reputable brands, live $/TB. How to shuck a hard drive Step-by-step: tools, the process, the 3.3V pin fix, CMR vs SMR, and testing after. Is shucking worth it in 2026? When shucking saves money and when it does not — reading $/TB vs buying retail. Best HDD by capacity The best shuckable drive at every capacity (12–24TB) with live $/TB tables. Best drives for NAS & Plex Sizing a home-server build, why CMR matters, redundancy, and the cheapest CMR shucks. CMR vs SMR explained The one spec that matters for shucking — and why SMR breaks RAID rebuilds. WD Elements vs Seagate Expansion The two go-to shucks head to head — what is inside, the 3.3V pin, and live $/TB. WD Elements Desktop The most popular Amazon shuck — what is inside and live prices by capacity. Seagate Expansion Desktop The budget shuck — CMR at larger sizes, SMR capacities to avoid, live prices. WD My Book Same drives as Elements, plus a hardware-encryption catch — how to shuck it cleanly.
Looking for live prices?
Every tracker ranks parts by the number that matters and refreshes daily: GPUs by $/GB VRAM, DDR5 by $/GB, SSDs by $/TB, and shuckable HDDs by $/TB. Buy when a part dips into the green.