The most common reason ppl buy rackmount gear for the homelab is for training on enterprise equipment and because they find it dirt cheap on ebay. That is despite the noise and running costs.
They said they wanted to build a pickup truck. They ended up with an industrial excavator ๐ .
Regular homelabbers dont buy racks and use 15 bays. In the day of 18Tb shucked drives who needs that many bays??
This whole thing is weird especially since people like geerlingguy and the self hosted people promoting it. I mean those guys use raspberry pi 4s for most of their own stuff?!
I dont think thats making a dent in their marketing budget. Also judging by the replies they do actually reach their target audience.
So far it seems they know where to find their target audience just not what they actually want.