Carl DaBeast

I designed my own case for a unraid server because I couldn't find one that I liked and matched my needs. It works well and I'm happy with it but the CPU runs a little bit hot because I misjudged the exit path for the air of the case. The stock cooler blows down onto the motherboard which is the opposite to the exhaust fan that sits slightly above the CPU. Is it possible to flip the fan in the Wraith Stealth cooler to blow the air upwards? I know I could buy an aftermarket cooler like the NH C14 but since I already have the stock cooler it would be fun to modify it somehow. Has anyone tried this or know if it's even possible? Even a janky solution with zip ties is fine.

As far as I could find unraid doesn't support ANY kind of Wi-Fi card. I found an affordable TP-Link router that should support OpenWRT. Hopefully it will work, thanks!

I've recently moved to a new apartment that has a really weird network setup. The network is shared throughout the building meaning the internet is wireless only. This is fine for my computer that can connect wirelessly but I have an unraid server that needs to be connected via ethernet. Would it be possible to buy a router, set it to bridging mode, and connect it to my server with an ethernet cable? If so is there anything special I would want to look for? For example would a router that supports Wi-Fi 6 be better if I want to transfer files to / from the NAS faster?

The cable on my keyboard broke (from being bent when placed in a backpack to move) so I figured I could try modding by adding a USB C port and making a custom cable. My issue is that the keyboard has a USB passthrough port and I want to keep the functionality of it. My plan is to use a USB C 3.0 port on the keyboard and make a custom cable that splits from a USB C connector to two USB A connectors. This mimics the original cable that has two USB A connectors, one for the keyboard and one for the passthrough. The "backwards compatible" USB 2.0 pins (GND, V, D+ and D-) would be used for the keyboard so in the off chance I loose the custom cable a normal USB C cable could work. The passthrough could use the two twisted pairs, one acting as data transfer and the other ground and voltage. This would mean that the cable was plugged into any other device it would most likely fry it, but it's a risk I'll take. Something like this. Now for materials is where I need some help. I have a ethernet cable whos connector broke but the wire is still fine. It has 8 wires on the inside which would be enough for two USB signals. It doesn't have any shielding, but I'm already outside of the USB specifications so how much would it matter? Would it be fine to use it or should I find an alternative that has shielding? Also when testing the continuity of the cable I noticed that on both connectors on the keyboard side (6 pin each, of which 3 were ground) two of the ground pins were grounded via the casing of the USB connector while one was connected to the ground pin on the USB connector. Does it matter how a ground pin is connected to ground? Is there a difference if it is grounded via the USB casing rather than the GND pin?

Ah, I think I was finding the bandwidth of pcie 1.0 instead of 3.0 x1. Thanks for the help!

The motherboard for my unRAID server has 6 SATA ports, but I missed the fine print that said that two of them share bandwidth with an m.2 slot that I'm using for an SSD cache drive. I've seen some SATA Expansion cards that fit in a PCIe 1x slot with 4 SATA ports (link) but I'm wondering if it's a good idea to use one of these. Is there enough bandwidth for a PCIe 1x slot to support 4 HDDs? I would probably never be pulling data from all 4 drives simultaneously, but I also wouldn't want it to be bottlenecked, you know, just because.

Ah that explains it. Thank you!

On the Unraid dashboard it is reporting that one of the users is unprotected. I'm unsure what this means and what it implies and I can't find any information about it because search results only show information about user shares that are unprotected. I'm guessing it is the guest user but I am unsure. All users have a password.

Whelp I'm not sure what component it was but it is working now. Might have been the CPU as when I pulled off the cooler the CPU was stuck to it and I noticed that one of the pins was very slightly bent. Was able to carefully bend it back and it's working now. I'm not sure if this was the issue, nor if the pin was bent before I placed it onto the motherboard the first time. All in all thanks for the help to narrow down what the issue could be!

I did the paper clip test and the PSU fan started spinning, so I am assuming that it is working properly. Tested without GPU and still nothing. One ram stick also changes nothing. Will try to reseat everything.

Yes, I even tried the reset pins but it didn't do anything.

I've finally received all the parts for a for a pc I was planning to use as a home server. I've placed the motherboard on it's box to test that all the components work before putting it in the case. My issue is that when I short the power button pins fort the front panel connections nothing happens. None of the fans spin for the CPU cooler, case fan, or GPU cooler. I know the motherboard is getting power as there are a few LED's that light up when the power supply is switched on. Any help to diagnose this issue is appreciated. Components: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 ASUS PRIME B450M-A II (Motherboard) 2x16GB Crucial DDR4 ECC ram Corsair SF750 SFX PSU MSI GT710 (cheapo card for video output)

I've been looking at a laptop that can help me with my programming / university work when I can't use my desktop computer instead. My current desktop is pretty good so I don't want to spend too much money on a laptop with great specs that I won't use most of the time. So I'm looking for a windows laptop that Isn't too expensive (~800 USD maybe) but can still play some games on low settings. Preferably not with a "Gamer" aesthetic and light weight is a bonus. Some games I play at the moment are Warframe, Valorant, and Minecraft (modded).

I've recently purchased two SSDs to replace my current boot SSD and HDD (move a lot and worried that HDD could get damaged, it was also really slow). A while back I also got an M.2 SSD but never bothered to transfer the content of my boot SSD because I found it too complicated and unnecesary at the time. However now that i am replacing the boot SSD I figured I might as well put the OS on the M.2 SSD because it's faster than the new SSDs. The current boot drive is a Kingston 128GB SSD and the M.2 SSD is a Corsair MP500 256GB drive. The new SSDs are Crucial mx500 2TB drives. I've found some recommendations of either using Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect to clone one drive to the other, however all the guides I've found have transfer from an HDD to 2.5" SSD or from one 2.5" SSD to another and requires one of the drives to be connected externally via a USB to SATA cable. How do I clone my current 2.5" SSD boot drive to a M.2 SSD? Also which is better between the Acronis and the Macrium cloning tools?

Thank you, I've heard good things about that SSD before and it was one of the top considerations. I actually already have 2 M.2 SSDs in my system, 1TB and 256GB. I guess they'll be the next components to upgrade. Thank you for the brief explanation. I forgot that LTT made a video about that recently. I will most likely go for a TLC SSD, the MX500, for better read and write performance. Highly doubt I will ever reach the max write capacity.