We’re only two months into 2025, but I’ve already got quite a few home tech upgrades that I want to talk about. Many of them had begun in Q4 2024, so technically that would have been last year, but the series of upgrades continued into this year, with one more still underway right now.
I didn’t quite plan to go that many upgrades. However, a bunch of things (i.e. events) came together one after another that led me to embark on a tech refresh.
The first upgrade was with my home Wi-Fi. I came across MikroTik’s new wAP ax 802.11ax Wi-Fi access points which were a perfect like-to-like drop-in replacement for my existing wAP ac 802.11ac Wi-Fi access points. You see, my wAP ac are ceiling-mounted, and it is really convenient that the new wAP ax uses exactly the same mounting brackets, so I not only don’t have to make new holes in my ceiling, I can also simply just reuse the old brackets.
I am a MikroTik fan, because their devices are very capable, yet very affordably priced. They are never on the cutting-edge of Wi-Fi technology, but their software features more than make up for that. I wrote about MikroTik a few times, but never nearly covered the many MikroTik devices I’ve used, including both my old wAP ac and the new wAP ax.
I also upgraded my main MikroTik router, the RB4011, to its successor, RB4009. I got the version with all POE ports. I didn’t need that many POE ports, but having POE ports enabled me to connect the Wi-Fi access points directly, supplying both power and providing data connectivity. Previously, I needed to use a separate POE switch (also from MikroTik) to inject power to the Wi-Fi access points. I can now reduce clutter a little bit by getting rid of the POE switch.
The RB5009 is awesome, though I wished that it had another SFP+ port. One is not enough, though I can still live with. My home doesn’t need that much bandwidth, but it would have been nice to another SFP+ port for more local switching capacity. Only the first of the 8x RJ45 Ethernet ports supports 2.5 Gbps, with the remaining supporting only up to 1 Gbps.
That 2.5 Gbps now connects to a XikeStor SKS3200-4E2X switch that has 4x 2.5 Gbps RJ45 Ethernet ports, and 2x SFP+ ports. This is a managed switch that supports VLANs, and important feature I need in my home network.
The 4x RJ45 ports are nearly not enough, because that’s the bare minimum to connect the 2.5 Gbps capable devices I already have in my network. I could use more ports because my devices have multiple 2.5 Gbps ports that I could configure in a aggregated link. The SKS3200-4E2X supports link aggregation too.
I had posted about my 10 Gbps broadband upgrade. It was something I had been mulling about, but I really wasn’t important. I said at the start of this post about how a bunch of things came together. The 10 Gbps broadband upgrade came about like this: I was out-of-contract on my prior broadband plan, ViewQwest had a good promotion, and there was this nice XGS-PON solution that allowed me to get rid of the ONT. Like the POE switch that I could get rid of, I liked the idea of the fibre optic cable running from the wall termination point directly into an SFP+ transceiver in my router.
The ViewQwest 10 Gbps broadband upgrade led to the RB5009 upgrade, and for the XikeStor SKS3200-4E2X to serve a useful purpose.
My new mini PC, the GMKtec K8 Plus, was a new 2.5 Gbps device that the SKS3200-4E2X would serve, providing faster network transfers to my QNAP NAS.
Then, speaking about the NAS, while my QNAP TS-464 has been serving me well, a few incidents in recent months gave me some concerns about reliable access to my data. Reboots of the TS-464 are very slow. It was so particularly long one day that I begun to worry, and along with a separate incident where my virtual machine in the TS-464 was corrupted (though subsequently recovered from snapshot), I decided I must consider going back to a DIY TrueNAS server. I had used FreeNAS, and still use many TrueNAS (the new FreeNAS) at work, so I’m quite confident that TrueNAS can be relied on.
That brought me to embark on building a DIY NAS system. I don’t build PCs often and never have I built from parts sourced from AliExpress. I noticed there are good options for components that are suited for a NAS build, and of course, coming from AliExpress, they are very competitively priced. My goal was to build a box that can do at least a 6-wide RAIDZ2 (i.e. RAID 6), and with capable enough compute to serve as a hypervisor for at least 4 virtual machines. It would be a fraction of the cost of a QNAP or Synology box, yet far more powerful.
I will write about this DIY NAS project so if you’re interested, do watch this blog for updates! A sneak preview: this is a JONSBO N3 chassis with CWWK Pentium Gold 8505 mini-ITX, with options to support up to 14 HDD and 6 NVMe, more than I can actually fit into the case.
Finally, I’ve setup a new workstation at home and upgraded its 24-inch FHD monitor to a nice 27-inch QHD one. What monitor did I get? I’ve used many PRISM+ monitors, but I decided to get something else this time. Guess which one?
I got the Xiaomi A27qi. It’s surprisingly a very good value. With the right vouchers at the right time, I snagged it for just $166 from Lazada. (Actually, I ended up buying 2!)
The monitor has decent build quality, nothing to fault there. The stand is basic, with tilt support. There are VESA mount holes in case you want to use it with a monitor arm.
Probably the biggest surprise for me was when I tested it with my Spyder5PRO colourimeter. It scored 100% sRGB coverage! I can see the display does look pretty good though I didn’t think the colour was that good. The colourimeter, however, tells me objectively that the sRGB gamut coverage is that good.
A small bonus is the 100 Hz refresh rate. I don’t think that matters in my use case, and I think 100 Hz doesn’t make it for gaming enthusiasts. It is, nevertheless, one up over the typical 60 Hz on other basic productivity monitors.
That has been the home tech refresh this Q4 2004 – Q1 2025 season. Mostly unplanned.