Proxmox may be the head honcho in the home lab ecosystem now, but things were radically different in the past. For years, the home server community heralded ESXi as its virtualization platform of choice. Unfortunately, ESXi’s time in the limelight was cut short after Broadcom removed the free version of the hypervisor last year. Fast-forward to April 2025, and for some reason, the company decided to reinstate the ESXi free license.

When building out your network-attached storage (NAS) enclosure or working with a few home lab servers, it's vital you get the filesystem right. The choice of filesystem depends on what you plan on using the system for and how you plan to go about backing up all the data. ZFS is a favorite among many for NAS and data storage, thanks to its robust feature set, namely snapshots. This handy addition to the file system makes it among the best for storing data, and I've relied on it for years to keep my servers up and running.

The higher the revolutions per minute (RPM) a fan spins at, the more noise is generated. Add seven more fans into the mix, and it can quickly get out of hand. This is why modern fans inside PCs are all controlled by PWM headers on the motherboard. Pulse width modulation enables finer control over how much power is supplied to the fan and how fast the motor spins at any given time. Most UEFI BIOS solutions for motherboards will allow you to take this a step further and fine-tune default fan curves, letting you set how fast each fan spins at for various temperature readings.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has had incredible success since its launch in April. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 got incredible review scores, strong sales, and has seemingly served as a gateway to turn-based games for people who might not normally play them. Whether this is your first turn-based RPG or in the hundreds for you, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has people hungry for more turn-based RPGs like this. While DLC might be on the way, it will likely be awhile until it's actually released. If you are looking for more turn-based RPGs to play through, we have a selection of games for you that will certainly scratch it. There is no shortage of great turn-based games to recommend, but we stuck with games with unique and interesting combat systems, since the active battle elements from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are what makes it special.

One of the biggest pains with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 50 series is its black screen issues. Ever since its release, people have reported that sometimes their RTX 50 series GPUs don't properly display anything on their monitor. Sometimes, this happens when the PC boots, sometimes it's mid-game, and sometimes it only happens during a driver update.

I've been using Gmail as my email service of choice pretty much since its inception. I've not had any issues with it per se, and it has worked as expected throughout the years. Of late, though, I've been meaning to try alternatives to Gmail, especially after hearing my colleagues speak about other options. Among the plethora of email clients, two options appealed to me -- Proton Mail and Notion Mail -- primarily because they're free, and I've used other services or apps from the parent company. I was initially skeptical since I'm so used to Gmail's UI, and I'm generally apprehensive of switching to new apps unless something's broken.

Depending on the kind of person you are, you fall into one of two camps — one that believes every BIOS update is indispensable, and the other that believes the BIOS should be updated only when necessary. If you haven't guessed by now, I'm part of the latter group. I even consider myself a tech Luddite who avoids BIOS updates like the plague. Irrespective of how you treat BIOS updates on your PC, there are always myths that you can still get rid of, whether they're about update frequency, necessity, complexity, or risk.

If you use a Mac, you’ve likely seen the little Time Machine icon in your menu bar and ignored it until disaster struck. For years, I relied on external drives or my primary server for backups, but I wanted something more flexible, inexpensive, and energy-efficient. That’s when I turned to a Raspberry Pi. With a bit of setup and the right software, I created a network Time Machine backup solution that just works quietly in the background.

With the Nintendo Switch 2 practically here, now seems like a great time to ask Nintendo to bring back the activity log. The activity log appears on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS, providing a detailed log about your gaming history on the console. The Switch 2 comes with tons of improvements, even if it didn't include everything we wanted from the Switch 2. There has been no mention of the activity log making its return, but the feature could be added, and should be, to the Switch 2 with a firmware update. The original Switch featured a lackluster game tracking system that just didn't provide the same level of detail as the activity log. Here's why we want it to return with the Switch 2.

Despite the programming landscape teeming with cool code editors, many developers (including yours truly) rely on Visual Studio Code to develop apps, create scripts, and edit config files. After all, it’s lightweight, works on the big three operating systems, supports plenty of languages, and is armed to the teeth with QoL-enhancing features. However, VS Code’s endless customizability is what truly sets it apart from its rivals, and there’s a barrage of extensions you can add to the code editor to boost its functionality even further.

Network-attached storage (NAS) performance is largely governed by the processor, memory, and installed drives. It's possible to give the enclosure a bump to make it better suited to more advanced or heavier workloads. This includes swapping out RAM modules for faster and higher-capacity equivalents, installing faster storage, and using NVMe SSD caching. An NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) is notably quicker than SATA counterparts, be it flash or mechanical. I spent a total of $45 on buying a 500GB SSD for caching, and it was the best decision I made.

There's a saying that "art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable," but sometimes it can just...disturb. Like, not even bring comfort to the disturbed; just straight up be a problem. And yes, it's for the sake of art and makes you stand back and think about things, but man, sometimes it can go a little far.