I started with your tier 3 and moved down to tier 2 because of power costs. I work for an MSP, so I have essentially infinite free last gen hardware from the ecycling pile, but the power consumption was too high. I’m in the process of moving from a Dell 720 rackmount to an HP EliteDesk 800 G5-SFF with 32 gigs of RAM that I put a pair of 4TB drives into, plus the 1TB on-baord NVME. Once I finish this migration I should save on the order of 250 watts, or 6 kWh per day, for a savings of about $40/mo in electricity. It’s worth taking your electric rate into account when you size your hardware, and figure out how long your ROI is for that decision.

For storage, I have a 16-bay rackmount server chassis for my NAS with 8TB drives (see MSP comment above) so I don’t have a good suggestion for consumer-grade hardware there. I know 16 spinning drives are pricey power-wise, but I just can’t give up 100+ TB. I’m pondering adding another DAS shelf to grow the array even further, though that will eat a bunch of the power savings moving off of the 720. For the time being, the inertia of not ordering a PowerVault enclosure is saving me money,

I need 13EEEE and I found New Balance to be the easiest to find in that size, since I prefer fabric uppers.

Edit: looked at the shoe when I got home and it’s a 481v3.

Marrying

https://www.harborfreight.com/8-piece-right-angle-screwdriver-92630.html

with

https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/drill-driver-bits/driving-impact-bits/security-bit-set-with-case-100-piece-68457.html

has been a game changer for assembling flat pack furniture. As a result, the hex keys just get tossed in a bucket of other hex keys,

From an earlier post I made much like yours, I decided to go with incus. I’d be fully migrated if real life hadn’t kicked me in the taint for a few weeks.