|OT| The PC Hardware Thread -- Buy/Upgrade/Ask/Answer

[rybrad]

Picked up a 5800x3D and a 6900XT XFX Merc 319 Black in the last month. Both of them seem to be under-performing by 10%+ in Cinebench and Timespy compared to what I can find for averages elsewhere on the same hardware. No issues with thermal throttling as both components are staying nice and cool. I have a Corsair HX850 which is the minimum recommended PSU by XFX and I have several SATA drives and extra fans adding onto that, could this be affecting my performance numbers? At the end of the day, it's not a huge deal, but I want to see if it is symptomatic of a potential issue. My UPS also had an overload protection warning when running Heaven benchmark so I am swapping that out for a larger one as well.

 

[low-G]

Picked up a 5800x3D and a 6900XT XFX Merc 319 Black in the last month. Both of them seem to be under-performing by 10%+ in Cinebench and Timespy compared to what I can find for averages elsewhere on the same hardware. No issues with thermal throttling as both components are staying nice and cool. I have a Corsair HX850 which is the minimum recommended PSU by XFX and I have several SATA drives and extra fans adding onto that, could this be affecting my performance numbers? At the end of the day, it's not a huge deal, but I want to see if it is symptomatic of a potential issue. My UPS also had an overload protection warning when running Heaven benchmark so I am swapping that out for a larger one as well.

Just curious, why would you pick that GPU over a 4090?

 

[gabbo]

Just curious, why would you pick that GPU over a 4090?

Cost would be a lot lower for sure.

 

[rybrad]

Just curious, why would you pick that GPU over a 4090?

It was $630 USD with 2 free games as opposed to $1,600 minimum! I am over Nvidia price gouging and since I don't care much about RT or DLSS right now, I will wait and see how things look in a few years when I do a full system refresh.

 

[low-G]

It was $630 USD with 2 free games as opposed to $1,600 minimum! I am over Nvidia price gouging and since I don't care much about RT or DLSS right now, I will wait and see how things look in a few years when I do a full system refresh.

OK I saw that card listed at $1600 which is why I was wondering.

Amazon product
$1600 is currently the lowest price for the 6900XT XFX Merc 319 Black, and Amazon themselves are selling it for $1800!

 

[rybrad]

OK I saw that card listed at $1600 which is why I was wondering.

Amazon product
$1600 is currently the lowest price for the 6900XT XFX Merc 319 Black, and Amazon themselves are selling it for $1800!

Oh wow, yeah I definitely would not have paid that much for it! I got it at Best Buy, it has been going in and out of stock since I bought it for sub $700 and $630 was way cheaper than I could find any comparable Nvidia cards. The games were a nice bonus, but I will really only play Callisto Protocol as Dead Island 2 is an Epic key.

 

[Shahem]

RTX 4080 + AW3423DW on order.

No ragerts.

 

[spindoctor]

Would it be better to buy a 4090FE or another card like the Gigabyte 4090 OC for 7-10% more but with an extra year of warranty? That 7-10% would still be a substantial amount of money given the high base price. I guess my question is would you pick the FE over AIB cards? Durante I know you have a 3090 FE or 3090Ti FE. Would you care to share your thoughts?

 

[Durante]

I'm really happy with the 3090 (non-Ti) FE that I've had roughly since launch (and which I still use since it's impossible to buy a 4090FE).

That said, functionally third party models can be as good or even better. What I like about the FEs is that they look and feel like an expensive high-end product (in terms of design and build quality), while the equally or more expensive AIB cards frequently don't.

 

[spindoctor]

The price difference was pretty big on Amazon, which I’m using via Microsoft Rewards. Reviews and thermals looked good.
After Spin Doctor’s reply, I put in for a cancellation since my item wasn’t due to ship until 11/30-12/5.

Some more information that is pertinent to this discussion. My Gigabyte 3080 Gaming OC is 320mm long and, as mentioned, barely fits into the Meshify C after removing a front panel fan. I just learned today that the 4090FE is 304mm so that will also fit into the case. I was under the impression that the 4090 would obviously be bigger than the 3080 so I just assumed there was no chance it could fit in this case. That said, a quick glance at the dimensions of AIB cards indicate that they are all longer than 320mm, which would would again present a problem for this case.

In short, I would still recommend a bigger case if you are planning to get a newer GPU but the 4090FE will in fact fit inside this one.

I'm really happy with the 3090 (non-Ti) FE that I've had roughly since launch (and which I still use since it's impossible to buy a 4090FE).

Are you looking to buy a 4090FE specifically? I assume you are because you say you're still using the 3090 as the 4090FE is hard to come by. I assume if you just wanted a 4090 you would have bought an AIB one by now. How are the FE cards sold in your country anyway? Over here you go to the site of the company Nvidia has partnered up with and click a button on the store page to get in a queue. Then they send you an email when your number comes in the queue (and they have stock, obviously) and you have 48 hours to complete the payment to buy it. I got in the queue on the 21st of October and got the invite email yesterday. Put in the order today.

Before this queue system, they had tried to sell them by doing flash sales on their site. This was during the Ampere era where these FE cards were literally the only cards that were sold at MSRP. Everything else was being sold at scalper prices even from retail vendors. The demand for these 3xxx FE cards was, thus, insane and their site would crash every time they scheduled a flash sale. Literally, their site kept crashing for months and they were never able to successfully sell a card by that system. That's when they changed over the queue system, which is better, obviously but it was also a complete disaster as people waited for a year and a half or even longer for their number to come up. Technically speaking I'm still in the queue to buy a 3080FE from some time in early 2021. The 4xxx queue is moving along faster because of the insane price of the 2 cards I imagine.

 

[Durante]

The 4090 FE situation here (well, in Germany, "here" it simply doesn't exist) is that basically at random times (and at most once a week -- there hasn't been one in 2 weeks) there is a drop of FEs in one specific store, and you have ~3 minutes to order it. That's it.

AiBs are still generally more expensive than the FE, and those models that are not are (i) almost immediately sold out, and (ii) the lowest-tier models, which I don't really want to pay even FE prices for.

 

[DrShrapnel]

Some more information that is pertinent to this discussion. My Gigabyte 3080 Gaming OC is 320mm long and, as mentioned, barely fits into the Meshify C after removing a front panel fan. I just learned today that the 4090FE is 304mm so that will also fit into the case. I was under the impression that the 4090 would obviously be bigger than the 3080 so I just assumed there was no chance it could fit in this case. That said, a quick glance at the dimensions of AIB cards indicate that they are all longer than 320mm, which would would again present a problem for this case.

In short, I would still recommend a bigger case if you are planning to get a newer GPU but the 4090FE will in fact fit inside this one.

I wound up getting a Meshify 2 Lite. Has a bit more room then the C.

 

[didamangi]

The non k cpu is out now in my country, i3-i9, weird. Still waiting on b760 but for now this is maybe my "good enough" build.

Just $40 more than a 13600kf for mobo+cpu here. And the mobo is kinda good? 15 phase vrm with the rare bclk overclocking support. For that price it's pretty good value here. Usually other motherboards with that good of a vrm reach the z690 pricing easily. No bios flashback but the ad said 13th and 12th gen support, so I guess they shipped with newer bios?

Will still wait for b760 pricing and the cpu reviews though.

 

[Kvik]

Those are seven digit numbers in your currency!

 

[didamangi]

Those are seven digit numbers in your currency!

Helps with math in my school days. Not really ;D

 

[Paul]

Not exactly HW related, but it is so weird and I dunno where else to ask.

Yesterday, about half of the internet websites in my browser favourites stopped working ("website not found") while the other half works just fine.
Among those not working is Steam, so only offline mode is possible.
I restarted router but no change. Then in about 30 minutes it started working again.

And why am I asking? Today, right now (and about the same time as yesterday), same issue is happening. Again the same sites that did not work yesterday are not working now. Including steam. But youtube runs just fine, for example.

I guess this is some problem on side of my ISP? On their site no network problems are reported.
Has anyone encountered this?

 

[Parsnip]

Not exactly HW related, but it is so weird and I dunno where else to ask.

Yesterday, about half of the internet websites in my browser favourites stopped working ("website not found") while the other half works just fine.
Among those not working is Steam, so only offline mode is possible.
I restarted router but no change. Then in about 30 minutes it started working again.

And why am I asking? Today, right now (and about the same time as yesterday), same issue is happening. Again the same sites that did not work yesterday are not working now. Including steam. But youtube runs just fine, for example.

I guess this is some problem on side of my ISP? On their site no network problems are reported.
Has anyone encountered this?

From my limited understanding of how the internet works, I would guess that it's a DNS issue and if you are using the ISP DNS like most people probably are, then the issue is on their end yeah.
If it happens again and if you feel like experimenting during it, you could try swapping your DNS to Google's name servers which are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and see if anything changes.

 

[Paul]

If it happens again and if you feel like experimenting during it, you could try swapping your DNS to Google's name servers which are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and see if anything changes.

Thanks, I will try it if it happens again. It again happened btw right during Game Awards for which I stayed up until 3AM when I was watching inside steam to get a chance at another steam deck. But this time I reset the router immediately and then it started working right away, so I am starting to suspect my router might be dying or something.

 

[Parsnip]

Not directly a hardware question but what's the best "fix windows 11 start menu, taskbar and crap" app these days?
I think I remember some folks here using startisback/startallback? I'm currently using openshell and explorerpatcher and explorerpatcher in particular is a bit flaky, not unstable or anything, but occasionally the actual explorer windows just kind of randomly auto refresh and jump into focus for no reason and I'm fairly sure the problem is in explorer patcher, so I'm curious what the best alternatives are. Also I wouldn't mind having just one app instead of 2.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

Well my monitor took 15 minutes to stabilise and provide an image yesterday so i bit the bullet today and now have a Dell G3223D on it's way.

Dell G3223D 32 1440p 165hz Monitor

Hopefully i made a good choice, it's not curved which may not be an issue after i spend a few hours with it but we'll see.
Now to cross my fingers and hope i get a good one with no dead pixels etc. which is always a lottery these days it seems.
Hopefully it will turn up tomorrow before all the strikes start over here.

It's a shame as the Smasung C27HG70 is a great monitor but it's dying in stages and i didn't want to take a chance and end up with no monitor over christmas.

 

[Theswweet]

Having a Microcenter nearby, and living in an area with a healthy BST PC hardware scene, is very dangerous. Walked into Microcenter to return the temp GPU I grabbed in case I didn't get an AIB card from the RDNA3 launch and ended up walking out with an AM5 platform upgrade thanks to the motherboard bundle savings and the free 32GB of DDR5 memory. Good thing I can sell my AM4 parts and make this upgrade cheap in the long run...

 

[Durante]

Not directly a hardware question but what's the best "fix windows 11 start menu, taskbar and crap" app these days?
I think I remember some folks here using startisback/startallback? I'm currently using openshell and explorerpatcher and explorerpatcher in particular is a bit flaky, not unstable or anything, but occasionally the actual explorer windows just kind of randomly auto refresh and jump into focus for no reason and I'm fairly sure the problem is in explorer patcher, so I'm curious what the best alternatives are. Also I wouldn't mind having just one app instead of 2.

I'm using startallback and I'm 100% satisfied with it. (I was already using startisback basically since Windows 10 was released)
It restores the start menu, explorer, and even the actually useful version of the calendar flyout.

It's a shame as the Smasung C27HG70 is a great monitor but it's dying in stages and i didn't want to take a chance and end up with no monitor over christmas.

My previous monitor was also dying in stages (and after only 3 years or so), and it was also a Samsung. On the other hand, I have a Dell from literally 2005 that I still use on a secondary PC.
I don't think I'll buy any Samsung monitors again.



Also, there was one more drop in Germany, and I got it even though it had to go through a reshipping service to get to Austria (very annoying):

Interesting how different the fan blade geometries are, I just noticed it in the picture now.

Also, when I first turned it on I had a grinding noise on one fan, and I thought I would have to send it back. Luckily it was just one of the (mostly decorative) tiny fins you see to the upper left there touching the fan, and bending that back into position by half a mm fixed it. I guess it's somewhat understandable given how much they optimized the fan size and how close the tolerances are, but it still shouldn't really happen on a 1850€ product.

 

[Li Kao]

Durante I won't even joke about buying your old card. Even secondhand that thing must cost an eye.

 

[Durante]

Well, if anyone (in the EU, since I really don't want to deal with other shipping/fees) does want to buy a used 3090 FE in good condition, send me a PM. Let's say €600 (+shipping) as the special Meta price for anyone who's been here for half a year at least.

 

[Li Kao]

Durante Noooo, you were supposed to say it only to me
Now those jackals will buy it under my nose ! I know it !
...
Mmh, to find 600 though (not a critic, that's a steal).

For curio's sake, when you say good condition, you mean ? Is the card old ?

 

[Durante]

For curio's sake, when you say good condition, you mean ? Is the card old ?

Well, it's about as old as it can be (I got it a few months after launch). I just meant it as I said it: that it's in good condition -- absolutely no damage of course, and just used for gaming (and development, which is the same workload) in my (well ventilated and kept clean) PC. I guess people on ebay would say "excellent" or something like that?

I also still have the original packaging, which I would use to ship it since it's very well-protected in that.

 

[Li Kao]

Durante I have to decline. And that's devastating to me. But at the end of the day, while it's an incredible deal and I'm certain you took good care of it, you never know what might happen. If the little thing die on me in a couple of months for one reason or another, I will have a 600e paperweight. And an autograph. Because I would have asked for an autograph. For the lulz.
It kills me to know the next gpu I buy will most probably be pricier and less powerful, but I guess that's the power of warranty.

You should definitely sell it higher if no one here bites.

 

[ScreamingTrees]

Well, if anyone (in the EU, since I really don't want to deal with other shipping/fees) does want to buy a used 3090 FE in good condition, send me a PM. Let's say €600 (+shipping) as the special Meta price for anyone who's been here for half a year at least.

That's a great price for a 3090 FE. The lack of vram in my current card is holding me back in things for work so if Li Kao isn't going for it, I would be very interested!

 

[Durante]

Durante I have to decline. And that's devastating to me. But at the end of the day, while it's an incredible deal and I'm certain you took good care of it, you never know what might happen. If the little thing die on me in a couple of months for one reason or another, I will have a 600e paperweight. And an autograph. Because I would have asked for an autograph. For the lulz.
It kills me to know the next gpu I buy will most probably be pricier and less powerful, but I guess that's the power of warranty.

You should definitely sell it higher if no one here bites.

I think that's a perfectly valid choice -- as you say, regardless of the condition, it could break at any time and then it's out of warranty.

ScreamingTrees I'll ask around locally if anyone wants to buy it (since I'd obviously rather sell it that way than shipping it), but if not I'll send you a PM.

 

[Parsnip]

I'm using startallback and I'm 100% satisfied with it. (I was already using startisback basically since Windows 10 was released)
It restores the start menu, explorer, and even the actually useful version of the calendar flyout.

Cheers.
I need to install the trial and test it out when I have a bit of time.

 

[spindoctor]

Congratulations on finally snagging the new GPU Durante

 

[rybrad]

I am looking for some new case fans as the bottom case fans in my Fractal Torrent have an annoying clicking sounds which replacements did not fix. I was looking around for 140mm alternatives but the 140mm development seems to move a lot slower so not a ton of great choices. I'm wondering at this point if I am better off getting some of the more advanced 120mm fans instead (like the Noctua NF-A12x25 or Phanteks T-30). Low noise is a top tier consideration for me when working and good airflow while gaming so if anyone has any favorites, let me know. Price is not a big deal as not losing my damn mind listening to this clicking is better than saving money!

 

[Parsnip]

Cheers.
I need to install the trial and test it out when I have a bit of time.

Well, turns out I had some time today and installed startallback. Seems like it covers almost all of what I generally needed from alternatives.
I do wish it had an option to force all windows without rounded corners, and had a little more options for mixing and matching styles.
I'm also getting a strange visual bug in both the volume slider and calendar that I was also getting with explorerpatcher, so I wonder if that's some leftover from that or what.

Weird white box around the volume slider, like it's in focus or something, on the calendar flyout it's around the date. Clicking anywhere on the thing makes it go away and it doesn't affect funtionality, but it's strange all the same.
Maybe it's some W11 accessibility setting that I've accidentally turned on.


Quick googling suggests it's exactly that, but the suggested solutions don't work. Oh well.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

My new monitor turned up the other day and i'm pretty happy with it. Dell G3223D, 165hz, 2560x1440 with Freesync Premium Pro? and GSync compatible.
I kinda wished i had gone for a curved monitor but i'm getting used to a flat monitor again. I thought going from 27" 1440p to 32" 1440p would be odd because of pixel density but it's fine. If i get another desktop monitor it will definitely be curved tho.

My new Displayport cable turned up so i'll swap that over too. It's a new KabelDirekt 8k VESA Certified to replace the Club3D cable i bought years ago. I'll only buy DisplayPort VESA Certified cables and only from those two companies. Though the monitor came with a cable from CablesToGo so they must be fine even if they are much thinner.

The 2TB WD Red SA500 SSD i bought on offer to replace my dead 4TB samsung turned up after 3 weeks too so i need to fit that too.
I need to try to properly wipe the dead Samsung and see if i can get an RMA on it as it seems to be part of the bad batch built earlier this year that just dies.

 

[Kvik]

I need to try to properly wipe the dead Samsung and see if i can get an RMA on it as it seems to be part of the bad batch built earlier this year that just dies.

Based on my experience (dead SSD) in the past, their RMA is pretty good. They sent me a fully-paid express post satchel to send it back to them with.

 

[Jonas]

It's time for me to finally upgrade from my gtx1080 and I'm looking at putting down a big sum on it but I'm really inexperienced with pc parts so I'll buy a finished one that I can make some small changes to. This is the one I've been looking at.

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv X Matte White cabinet
Intel Core i9-13900KF
ASRock Z790 PG LIGHTNING motherboard
PALIT GeForce RTX 4090 GameRock Omniblack 24GB
Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 6000MHz 2x16GB RAM
FSP HYDRO G PRO 80+ Gold Modular 1000W
Arctic Liquid Freezer II - 360 (I'll change to this one form the stores own brand)

One of my biggest fears is that I'll be stuck with a system that is too loud (the ps4 fans from hell really did a number on me) and this store doesn't have a lot of options but my impression is the liquid freezer is a good choice?

Will greatly appreciate if any of you have any thoughts on it!

 

[spindoctor]

It's time for me to finally upgrade from my gtx1080 and I'm looking at putting down a big sum on it but I'm really inexperienced with pc parts so I'll buy a finished one that I can make some small changes to. This is the one I've been looking at.

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv X Matte White cabinet
Intel Core i9-13900KF
ASRock Z790 PG LIGHTNING motherboard
PALIT GeForce RTX 4090 GameRock Omniblack 24GB
Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 6000MHz 2x16GB RAM
FSP HYDRO G PRO 80+ Gold Modular 1000W
Arctic Liquid Freezer II - 360 (I'll change to this one form the stores own brand)

One of my biggest fears is that I'll be stuck with a system that is too loud (the ps4 fans from hell really did a number on me) and this store doesn't have a lot of options but my impression is the liquid freezer is a good choice?

Will greatly appreciate if any of you have any thoughts on it!

That looks like a great build.

The Arctic Liquid Freezer 2 is generally considered one of the better AIOs. At least, it's given as a default choice when recommending one, much like how Noctua is sort of a default choice when it comes to air cooling. It's the one I would have bought for my new system but it wasn't available in my country, so I went with a Lian Li Galahad 360 AIO.

Does your use case require the power that the 13900 provides over the 13700 or even 13600? I found this sort of aggregation of reviews for the CPUs on reddit and it shows that, at least for gaming performance, the 13700k is about 96% of the 13900k and the 13600k is 92% of the 13900k. In my country, the 13600k costs half of the 13900k and is the best bang for the buck, so to speak. I personally picked the 13700k over the 13900k because I just couldn't justify a 50% price increase for a 5% performance uplift (and higher thermals). Of course, if you have non gaming workloads that benefit from the increased power or you just want the best, then by all means the 13900 is a great choice. It's the best CPU around right now, basically.

But yeah, that seems like a very good build to me.

 

[Jonas]

That looks like a great build.

The Arctic Liquid Freezer 2 is generally considered one of the better AIOs. At least, it's given as a default choice when recommending one, much like how Noctua is sort of a default choice when it comes to air cooling. It's the one I would have bought for my new system but it wasn't available in my country, so I went with a Lian Li Galahad 360 AIO.

Does your use case require the power that the 13900 provides over the 13700 or even 13600? I found this sort of aggregation of reviews for the CPUs on reddit and it shows that, at least for gaming performance, the 13700k is about 96% of the 13900k and the 13600k is 92% of the 13900k. In my country, the 13600k costs half of the 13900k and is the best bang for the buck, so to speak. I personally picked the 13700k over the 13900k because I just couldn't justify a 50% price increase for a 5% performance uplift (and higher thermals). Of course, if you have non gaming workloads that benefit from the increased power or you just want the best, then by all means the 13900 is a great choice. It's the best CPU around right now, basically.

But yeah, that seems like a very good build to me.

Thank you for the reply, sounds good on the AIO
The store unfortunately didn't have the 13700 as an option for that build so I went with the 13900.

 

[Parsnip]

What's your mobo fan-curves like? I need to try and tweak mine some. Currently it ramps up way too fast to way too high, and then cools off and then goes again. Huge pain in the ass.
Also doesn't help that currently all my case fans are using the same single pump power out, need to move at least some of them to the actual case fan power out so I'll have more control.
It looks like MSI has an utility that I can use to tweak that stuff while I'm in windows so at least it will be easy to test some usage scenarios.

 

[gabbo]

What's your mobo fan-curves like? I need to try and tweak mine some. Currently it ramps up way too fast to way too high, and then cools off and then goes again. Huge pain in the ass.
Also doesn't help that currently all my case fans are using the same single pump power out, need to move at least some of them to the actual case fan power out so I'll have more control.
It looks like MSI has an utility that I can use to tweak that stuff while I'm in windows so at least it will be easy to test some usage scenarios.

Is it Dragon Center? Or wahtever their mobo software is called? I might need to fire that back up, as my fan curve is in need of some tweaking as well

 

[Parsnip]

Is it Dragon Center? Or wahtever their mobo software is called? I might need to fire that back up, as my fan curve is in need of some tweaking as well

They've dropped the dragon from the name now but yeah, that's the one.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

ASRock | SONIC

Name of your web site

www.asrock.com

 

[gabbo]

ASRock | SONIC

Name of your web site

www.asrock.com

I'm torn between "Humanity was a mistake" and kinda liking the silver Sonic silhouette

 

[Li Kao]

’Name of your website’. The little touch that makes a site look pro.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

I'm torn between "Humanity was a mistake" and kinda liking the silver Sonic silhouette

The silk screen silhouette is great but also... when the feck are you ever going to see it after you've installed the board?

 

[C-Dub]

Computers gotta go fast too.

 

[Alextended]

I thought I'd check local prices and it seems like finally you can get some good 8 core cpus for around 200. Less for 5700x, more for 5800x. Then with a mobo and 32gb ram on top stay well below 500 (so if GPU prices weren't crazy then for less than 1000 you'd have a top of the line gaming rig just like back in the day, now it seems you need 1.5-2x as much just for the GPU, lol). But I'm told now is not a good time to buy? I also saw some reviews bashing the once long awaited 5700x, not because it's not the expected slightly worse 5800x that still performs similarly in gaming but because it's an "aging" chip and intel has better cheaper stuff? Yet here at least when I arrange by price these are the cheapest 8 core cpus, the i7 10700f is inbetween, then for around 250 or so there are some 10 core i5 and over 300 for the 12 core i5. way more for an i7? What's the recommendation for modest budgets now? Wait for 3D cache cpus? There's literally always something new to wait for and they might delay the medium range x700x option again forcing you to higher or lower end, or be pricy altogether like 5800x was at launch, plus probably use pricier DDR5 so all components adding up to much higher cost and/or waiting even more for lower cost options/discounts and then something new will be around the corner again for a repeat of this exact situation. It's not like you won't need to upgrade again for next gen either (unless you wait way too long to get something like they may have) so waiting mainly delays how long you enjoy cruising through this one (well I'd also need a new gpu to cruise through it but I'm sticking with my 1080 for a while longer for sure). Surely people who bought last year something one can only afford now don't hate/replace it already? I've been looking to upgrade since AMD became competitive again and that was like 3 cpu generations ago, lol, there was always a reason not to (primarily that the 3770K I have was pretty good but it's pretty damn long in the tooth now, especially for VR, but not just that). Anyone?

 

[Parsnip]

Finally got of my lazy ass and rewired my case fans. Turns out my mobo actually has one more sys fan powers than I remembered, so that was a nice surprise and now all my case fans have their own power and fan curve, huzzah. Noodled around a bit with the MSI Center app and while I don't plan to use it to actively control the fans, it's a more convenient way to test out various curve configs in actual desktop environment with running programs and then just copy the settings to bios as the more permanent solution after have found the right settings.

 

[Parsnip]

Thinking about home NAS' again. Leaning towards the Asustor DRIVESTOR 4, AS1104T. Or possibly its 2 bay slimmer brother. Glanced some reviews and the main downside people seem to point out about it is that it only has 1gb of ram, but I don't think that matters for my use case. I just need it to store stuff and be accessible easily on demand, I don't care about any of the transcoding stuff or whatever.

The actual main problem I end up with these is that I don't know how many bays I will realistically need. 2 bays might be enough if I stuff big enough disks in there. For now. But it feels like 4 bays would be a safer, more future oriented option. Ideally I would also remove all HDD's out of my PC too, just keep the essentials there. Which then also means I would need to figure out how much space I need in the PC.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

ok I'm going around the buoys on this again due to some recent new stuff

thoughts?

https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/shared/ab553efd-2450-4f8d-84b9-f7fd8d072c0f?utm_source=3xsconfigshare&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=copypaste