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.

I'm planning to upgrade my storage as I am slowly running out of space. I currently have a 128 GB SSD and a 2 TB 2.5" 5400RPM HDD (I can explain). I'm using the SilverStone ML-08 case so I only have space for two 2.5" drives. The SSD I've had since I first built my computer in a tower case and the HDD was the best I could find due to some limitations. The reason I have the case is because I move it fairly often, so having a HDD might not be the best idea. I've already had a scare because the SATA cable disconnected and briefly thought the drive had broken. It might not be necessary but I wan to replace the HDD with an SSD as it doesn't face the same risks when moving. I'm most likely going to upgrade both drives to two 2TB SSD's and when looking at whats available in my area there's a lot more to it than I thought. My main question is if it is worth going for a cache less SSD to replace the HDD or if it would be better to get a QLC SSD to replace the HDD and a TLC to replace the SSD (to not lose much performance). Whats the performance difference between the three types? Here are the options I have: inet.se webhallen.com

Thanks @rcmaehl. But this doesn't help much at all. I am aware that there are different keys, but that's not what I was asking. I was asking what the different between 'SATA and x2 PCIE compatible' and 'only PCIE 3.0 x4 compatible' meant. Also I'm not sure what you picture is really explaining besides the difference between m key and b key m.2 slots. The only notable difference between NVME and AHCI drives seems to be the color. So unless you have some text to accompany the picture to explain something it's really not helpful at all.

I have been looking into expanding the storage on my computer as I have some money to splurge on my computer. On my motherboard there are 2 m.2 connectors, however when looking in the manual there is a slight asterisks next to the specs saying that one is SATA and x2 PCIE compatible and the other is only PCIE 3.0 x4 compatible. I'll be honest, I have no clue what that means and I am concerned if there will be compatibility issues if I buy a m.2 SSD and plug it in. I already have a 120GB m.2 SSD in one of the slots and it is working fine, but I want to know if the other one isn't compatible with some types of drives or storage speeds. Also are there any recommended high capacity m.2 SSDs or regular SATA SSDs? I'm looking to replace my 2TB 2.5" HDD with solid state storage (my case doesn't support 3.5" drives). Someone told me about the Intel 660p, but the video LTT did on it made it seem like it wasn't a very good option for storing a lot of data (not entirely sure what is was good for exactly, maybe just a cheaper option).

My phone (OnePlus 3t) has started to run out of space and when running ADirStat to visualise what's taking up so much space I found that it's mostly a bunch of photos and memes I've downloaded onto my phone. I've backed up my data but I want to keep some of the photos. Is there any program (preferably directly on Android) that can sift though photos in a folder and quickly delete or mark images to be deleted? The issue I'm having is that it takes a lot of time to load the pictures, close the picture and then delete it as my phone is slowing down (possibly because it is full) and the stock software isn't the best to do it as it will occasionally jump around to the top of a file list instead of remembering where it was.

Thanks for the replies. It sucks that I jumped the gun on ordering the part but I'll look at this as a learning experience. It will still be several times cheaper than buying an entirely new monitor, and now I'll have spare capacitors for something else!

My PC monitor has recently started having issues turning on (status LED would blink and looked like it had issues "charging"). I suspected a capacitor had started malfunctioning so I decided to open it. Lo and behold I found a bloated capacitor, and it was the one closest to the DC input (which supports my suspicion). I've decided to replace it and I found a capacitor that would arrive within a few business days instead of four weeks (thanks China...). The only thing about it is that the size of the capacitor is slightly smaller than the one in the monitor. The capacitor in the monitor is also held down by some white silicon looking substance which is hardened. Does the size of the capacitor matter ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) if the rating is the same? What is the goop for? Is it only to hold the capacitor on place (and in that case can it be replaced with got glue) or is it for thermal reasons? Thank you. The capacitor I ordered. The capacitor on the circuit board. A better look at the goop.

Specs: MSI GTX 1050Ti i5-7600K 16GB Ram A few days ago while playing Warframe my FPS started tanking from the regular 80-120 FPS during a mission all the way down to a slideshow of 15-25 FPS. At first when it happened I thought that it was because it was an intense mission with a lot of enemies and somehow my computer couldn't handle it (even though the game is very well optimised), however after finishing the mission and returning to my ship my FPS didn't recover as where I usually have around 140-180 FPS I was getting around 40 FPS. I play at 1080p with a 60Hz monitor so I should be able to run the game flawlessly, but I can't. After trying some regular fixes such as lowering graphics and verifying the game files the error was still there, which is when I also noticed that the GPU fan was not spinning. MSI have a thing where if the gpu is under a certain temperature/load the fan will stop spinning to reduce noise, however when I am gaming the card should neither be at low temperatures or under a small load. This is however where things get weird. I checked NZXT's CAM, MSI Afterburner, and Task Manager. These three told me that my GPU was at around 60-70% load, my CPU was at around 80% load, and the GPU and CPU were at around 65ºC. If neither of the components are thermally throttling then why is my FPS tanking?

Thank you, I guess I misunderstood what the cache does.

In the near future I may have to buy a new harddrive if I decide on purchasing a very small case so that it is easy to move. The only issue I am facing is that I may not be able to move over my 3.5" drive as it needs to sit in the same compartment as the graphics card and there's a few millimetres of a clearance issue. and I'm not about to buy a new graphics card to fit a larger hard drive when I can just use a 2.5" drive instead. However when I was looking at what I could find locally (to avoid shipment fees and import tax) the only 2.5" hard drives I could find are the Seagate Barracuda at 5200 rpm with 128MB of cache and the WD Black at 7200 rpm with 32MB of cache. Which drive should I go for? While I would assume that the 5400 rpm drive would be slower it would do better at small files because it has a larger buffer, but then again I might be confusing how the cache buffer works. Thank you, Da Beast.

I did a bit of testing again by connecting my headphones to my phone and recording it. The audio does leak when the microphone is off, but not when it is off, which is good. However on my computer it still leaks when it is off. However I did notice that my phone was recording me a lot louder, so I connected the microphone through the extension/splitter cable (from 4-pole TRRS to 2 3-pole TRS, the pink and green marked ones) and the audio was a lot more quiet which means that the extension is part of the issue. Except when I swapped it out for a much shorter Y spliter my voice on the computer was still quiet and the sound still leaked. I'm not sure how or what to test now. Regarding Rear IO im not sure what I can try. There are five jacks, one which is meant for microphone and another for headphones however not marked by green and pink, but red and black because MSI. The other three are meant to set up a surround sound system, however for full surround you also need to use the headphone jack. However the issue is that the motherboard does not understand which one I am going for and there's no way to tell it, so the only way I can get audio or microphone on the back is to re assign what the microphone port does, and then I can only have either sound or microphone. Do you have any ideas what the issue could be or how to fix it?