I see I was picturing a 25 pile stack of PC’s this makes a lot more sense thanks for the explanation.

I’m not sure if running multiple single SSD machines would provide much redundancy over a server with multiple PSU’s and drives. Sure the CPU or mobo could fail but the downtime would be less hassle than 25 old PC’s.

Of course there is a learning experience in more hardware but 25 PC’s does seem slightly overkill. I can imagine 3-5 max.

I’m probably looking at this from a homelab point of view who just wants to run stuff though, not really as the hobby being “setting up the PC’s themselves”.

Of course, but installing everything on multiple bare metal machines which take IP addresses, against just running it in VM’s which have IP addresses… It just takes a lot of extra power and doesn’t achieve much. Of course that can be said about any hobby, but I just want OP to know that there is no real reason to do this and I don’t understand so many people hyping it up.

I don’t understand why people want to use so many PC’s rather than just run multiple VM’s on a single server that has more cores.

In my experience they’re very solid. They also have thicker PD charging cables.

You need those metal ones with braided cable

They have some of the best USB cables (strongest, least breakable). Used to be cheap too until they started spending big bucks on marketing.

That’s fast