Late reply I know, but I wanted to clear up that I
don’t want to normalize a 2.5kW homelab. Usually when talking to people about it I refer to it as “insane.” But, having an absolutely insane amount of computer and RAM is fun (and I personally find it genuinely useful for learning, in particular in terms of engineering for massive concurrency) and I can afford the hydro, so whatever. To match the raw compute and RAM with current gen hardware, you only need maybe 500W - you’ll just be spending a shitload of money up front, instead of over time on hydro. (To match my current lab’s utilized performance, I’d need at least 2 servers, one of which with a ~threadripper 7955WX and 256GB of DDR5, and another with an Epyc 9475F and 1TB of DDR5. That would put me somewhere in the neighborhood of $35k? Ish? Costs me about $115/month to run the rack right now (cheaper than my hot tub) and cooling is free in the winter (6~7 months of the year) so the break even is loooooong term. And realistically, $100ish a month isn’t crazy, considering I self host basically everything - the only services I pay for are my VPS to run my mail server, and AWS for glacier S3 for backup-of-last-resort.
Again, not trying to normalize 2500W, most people don’t need that (and I don’t really either), but I do make good use of it.
As for “rewiring the house for 240V”, every house* in Canada and the US is delivered “split-phase” 240V (i.e. 240V with a centre tapped neutral, providing 120V between either end of the 240V phase and neutral or 240V from phase to phase), and many appliances are 240V (dryers, water heaters, stove/ranges/ovens, air conditioners). If you have a space free in your breaker panel, adding a 240V 30A circuit should cost less than $1k if you pay an electrician, and can be DIY’d for like $150 max unless you have an ancient panel that requires rare/specialty breakers or the run is very long. It’s far from the most expensive part of a homelab unless you’re running literally just a raspberry pi or something.
*barring an incredibly small exceptional percentage