Best way to start a home rack?

I wanna say .. don't do it! But it has been a lot of fun for me. Ebay and craigslist/kijiji are your friends. Pretty much all major cities have computer systems refurbishers that recycle old data center hardware. Find one of those and build up slow.

I got a sound proof quarter rack a long time ago but that has been more pain than it was worth. I just stack up my machines using ikea tables now.

These systems are heavy, noisy and power hogs. Those are the major things to look out for in my experience. If you can get systems with BMCs, that is great. I have my systems setup in the basement so I can just turn them on/off as needed. I don't keep them up 24/7 due to noise and other issues.

I got into this as a hobby because the duckduckgo person wrote a blog post on his early home rack. Serve the home is a good site but seems pretty dead these days. I was debating whether to expand my home lab but feel no good deals to be had these days. In the old days when I set it up, my cluster was a beast .. C6100 from DELL and C6105. Bought those off of ebay for a steal. What systems are you thinking about now? And where abouts are you?