JayRad

Hey Fam, Going to try and make this as short and to the point as I can, as I feel I can drone on in detail, also it was a long day at the office lol. Simple breakdown: I've got a buddy who is requesting assistance with a handle full of items at his Commercial/Industrial electrical contracting company. I'll break down his pain points and objectives, as well as my experience. I've been working with PC's since 2008, Graduated computer science in 2013 and been in the corporate IT-field ever since. (I don't work here, just helpin out) What he's got is a small sized-business of 2-3 office management and personnel, and 5 field tech's who utilize work-provided android mobiles on the go, as well as personal work laptops (windows) and work utility trucks. Office 365 subscription is being utilized by all employees for data manipulation and processing. Working files/data are stored and sourced from Sync.com platform (No how it landed here, clearly I wasn't in his life in recent years past) Primary file types being handled by employees are in text-derived formats or PDF/PDF Image. (Most exceeding no more than 10MB) Problem: My buddy, the operations manager is finding specific inefficiencies and lacks of tangible accountability/check & balances behind some of the work that is claiming to be done weekly. To put it lightly, he is aware of mismanagement of time and resources on work-provided equipment during work hours among employees - word travels too. (Essentially: Lot's of recorded hours & miles, little to show) What he'd like to see happen: 1) Mobile Device Management on each device. (Primarily: App install control, GPS, Remote Protective Wipe, Pin Reset, Data usage monitoring) 2) Transition from Sync.com (?) file share management to: locally managed central storage solution such as NAS. He also made the mistake to configure every PC to mirror the cloud locally, so losing this platform would free up 300GB+/- on each Windows device (He would like to be is full control of the data, which will reside on the NAS and accessible via Home Rogers Ignite 1.5Gbit Down/ 50Mbit UP dynamic IP residential plan) 3) VPN connectivity between end-users (techs & office staff) and the data (aforementioned NAS device - He would like full control of the network, connections, and traffic + screen monitoring when needed) Initial thoughts and ideas for community review: 1) As my friends company has already put money into the subscribed MS 365 solution for data manipulation and management, I lean towards "openess" in adopting Microsoft 365's Intune MDM - Tier 2 @ $4.00/device from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/microsoft-intune-pricing (I am personally/professionally familiar with only Maas 360 MDM & Google MDM solutions to date.) 2) Looking at Synology NAS solutions, such as DS 923+ , although most of my past tinkering comes from the Qnap family. I've worked with Qnap long enough to see it's downfalls, and have always simultaneously heard of the good experiences from Synology by the community. (Looking for model encapsulating but not limited to: 4-HDD Bays, RAID 5 Support, Nvme cache-drive support, Ample CPU performance, Ample MEM allocation, 2 x 1Ggbit NICS, Min. 1 USB 3.x port, 3rd-party VPN server support IE OPENVPN etc. I am open to hearing more 3rd-party VPN suggestions) 3) As the last line hinted, mulling over a viable software VPN solutions for such a nominally numbered crew, work-scope, and network scaled environment. I would envision something similar to VNC lite server/client configure on the network for his screen monitoring queries. (Only familiar with OpenVPN solution for personal projects/tasks. I utilize and manage Cisco AnyConnect and Meraki at the workplace on a daily basis - So I have the fundamentals, just never dicked around with anything aside from OpenVPN in my spare time while on modern router back-ends) Note: I understand that this homie could just utilize OneDrive via 365 in a plethora of ways to establish file access, file management, and cloud backup, but this would negate the ability of owning the data as prescribed in his criteria. Trust me, I tried, he's just been burned by too many guys milking the goat in his fleet and is tired of chasing. We'll explore Onedrive cloud storage as the mirror to the NAS. If a 3rd-party VPN Server can be layered on the NAS, great, if not, a reputable gateway/router may be in prospects as well. Having everyone on a flat, solid & reputably delivered 3rd-party VPN solution and topology will open the ability to have him monitor his boys. Being 34, I'm not a new-age as I used to be. So forgive me for any oversights with modern solutions I have yet to discover myself. Once you get locked into one field, keeping on top and in the loop is damn tough ahuehuehue. Thanks in advance boys & girls; throw'em my way.

I've been playing Star Citizen for a handful of years now, and have had to make some upgrades in order to suite the ever growing demands and development of the game. I would highly recommend doubling your RAM, based on some of my own SC instances holding up to 10-11GB memory. Definitely consider getting your hands on an SSD as well. You'll be reaping the benefits not only of just speed, but power usage while on the road, data corruption being eliminated, and the fact that SSD storage has never been so cheap. Jump on it! Also, if you are adept in hardware, you could consider repasting your CPU and GPU onboard with a more reputable brand TIM. This has always shaved off an easy 5C+/- on my laptop builds.

So I was browsing for a new(er) router for my new place recently. For the last 5 years or more I've been treated very well by my Asus RT-N66U router (released 2012/2013?). I decided to go with something on the lesser expensive side, considering all the of my expenses going into the moving and acquisition of furniture for the place etc etc. Long story short, I decided to order the Asus RT-AC1200 because, well, AC is becoming the current standard, and we all like to keep up with the times. My intention was to make the AC1200 my "new" main router, and re-purpose my N66U as a 5GHz repeater for my TV streaming needs. Little did I know that a company such as Asus was still producing network communication equipment with 10/100mbps ports; both on LAN AND WAN. It was only when I started fishing further into the specs on their website that I noticed way wayyyyy down in the ports description that all of the ports are incapable of gigabit throughput. I was a little shocked to see that moving into 2016, Asus was marketing AC routers capped at 100mbps not only on LAN, but at the WAN as well. I understand that companies create "tiered" technology to suit the wallets of every level of consumer, but please... At that point, gigabit ports on consumer routers had been around for over a decade. This hardware will provide nowhere near the speeds that are advertised on it's box (which of course is always hypothetical), with the exception of solely Wireless devices communicating with one another through this device alone. You would hope to expect that your WAN could provide enough for your AC wireless throughput at least, LAN aside. Lesson learned! Read ALL of the fine print, and if the price quacks like a duck, and it looks like a duck... it's probably a damn duck lol

Hey everyone, This is a bit of a loaded question; but I am interested to know if anyone has gotten this to work. My end game looks like this: Play a Windows App Store game from Steam client, and also be able to use steams In-Home Streaming functionality. I recently purchased Forza Motorsport 7; my very first Windows Store game. As you know, this library does not install like most other game clients like Steam, Origin or uPlay. Windows has the filesystem locked down tighter than fort knox, and even if you do alter permissions to access game files, you cannot simply run any executable. I feel like I've probably tried a better part of the solutions online, but to no avail have I had any success. Starting to wonder if this is at all possible. Does anyone know if I am beating a dead horse surround this situation? Thanks dudes and dudettes!

I know right? lol It's really been such a fun project; one that I have meant to do for a long time now. If you keep your eye on Kijiji in cities around your area, you are bound to find a good 775 board My buddy just tagged me in a video that I think you might find interesting. This youtuber did damn near the same build that I did, and he has reported some modern day benchmarks too. Check it out!

Finally for the 9800GX2's installed, and boy... do they ever generate some heat! I ended up removing the shrouds and repasting the cards to bring down the temps a tad. They were idling at about 67C initially, but have since dropped a good 10-12C after the cooling mod. I'll wrap up some benchmarks soon. Cheers!

Yeah, see what the new replacements run like. This configuration should work quite well based on my experience with the same hardware. The Noctua you've got is a great cooler as well.

It's definitely running way too hot, so something is for sure not adding up. I am also running the 8600k in the Gigabyte Ultra Gaming z370 mobo. My idle temps are easily floating in the mid 35C-40C with an overclock of 4.9GHz, and will spike to 70C+/- during heavy gaming. My ambient room temperature is on the cooler side, probably around 18-19C. If you are getting temperatures of 90C at stock clocks during gaming, you have got something wonky going on with either the CPU itself, or your heatsink/TIM placement. I think returning the CPU for another one was probably a good choice for good measure. Which thermal paste are you using by the way? (Not that it would itself attribute to these types of high temps solely) And I believe that your PSU should suffice just fine. The RX480 looks to draw only about 170w peak out of your total.

We've disabled USB ports at our local youth centre due to some kids running malicious software in the past. It's not a farfetched idea. If you are concerned about people booting from their own USB devices on your system (such as Hirens, Linux Live, etc), there will be an option in your BIOS boot menu to circumvent USB booting specifically.

I'd consider doing an entirely new build if your budget is capping at $2000. Absorb some of the cost of the new PC by selling the old one.

Post up your full specs if you can. Might help. What games are you looking to play and at what graphic detail? What resolution are you currently/intending on running? What is your upgrade budget?

At what boot stage does the computer freeze exactly? Post screen?, Windows 10 logo splash screen?, immediately after your login is entered?

Can you post up your PC specs for the community to see? If I could do my own workflow in this instance, I would... - Remove all removable devices with exception to your I/O keyboard and mouse - Remove all peripheral internal devices such as optical drives, and other PCI/E devices - Reset CMOS - Update BIOS - Run Memtest on memory - Run SMART short/long HDD test - Reinstall OS with one stick of RAM - Once installed, insert one additional stick of RAM and reboot & login. If successful, shutdown, add another stick and reboot & login. Rinse and repeat until you find the culprit module. - If no luck by this point, I would try to reinstall on another HDD. - If it still persists after that, you could look into trying another power supply if you've got a spare around. I have seen PSU's do some weird gray-area crap in some rare circumstances.

Star Citizen was using almost 11GB of 16GB on my system. Everything was maxed and at 1440p.