I like Mac Minis in general, but for a first homelab machine I’d choose something with 2+ NICs, without using USB dongles.
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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May I ask why you need 2 NiCs for home labs?
For that kind of money you can get new mini PCs that will be much more powerful and have more than one NIC, like the other comment mentioned.
Take a look at Beelink mini PCs for example.
I would opt for like 3 older lenovo mini pcs or something for home labbing. Guess it depends on what you want to do. I like making Promox clusters.
mini pcs and mac minis are nice but if you want lot's of customization options, I do recommend getting the asrock N100 motherboards. they're around 130USD and these have an n100 cpu built in with a passive cooling heatsink. it's a flex-atx sized(also ITX is available). if you have leftover disk, ram, psu and a case, you can build a great little server since it also has m.2 nvme storage support 2 sata port, and 2 pcie(x16 and x1) slots, you can add NIC, gpu or whatever you want!
I have mine with a nic so it has 3 eth ports which I run almost everything on from a router, backup to all kinds of apps on docker