There are a lot of disk information softwares that can read S.M.A.R.T. data.
Google a few, test them with the disks you already have and see what you like best.
You'll need something like a capture card to ingest video into your PC. Like an el gato capture card. They make a PCI-e expansion card that can do that.
Go USB C. A isn't going out of style anytime soon, but C allows you to plug it into smaller and smaller form factor devices like phones, or thin books with only a USB C port.
Plus, you can always get an A-C adapter if you can live with some speed loss.
if you have WiFi6 or 802.11AX then you probably won't notice the difference in internet speed, because your ISP will be the bottleneck.
find out what your wired speed is, then test the WiFi speed. figure out how much you really need it. unless you're playing multiplayer games that require low latency, you're probably better off with wifi.
I should mention i have an 802.11ax router and PC and i get local transfer speeds of 700-900 Mbps, and my ISP only delivers 600Mbps on a good day, which is rare. so in this case, WiFi is not a bottleneck for me.
you can't just drag and drop the "windows" folder to the new drive. the best way to do what your asking is to clone the boot drive to the new drive, but you can't because your new drive is smaller.
you'll have to do a fresh install of windows, sorry.
If you're going Build-Your-Own, I suggest TrueNAS. It has ZFS RAIDs, and supports PLEX as a plugin/jail.
Synology is an out-of-the-box solution, but it's PLEX video encode/decode performance is pretty bad
so the Mobo isn't powering up when you jump the PWR +/- pins? sounds like the pins are broke, or the trace is cut.
I would try to RMA the motherboard if you're sure you're jumping the right pins.
when you say the motherboard doesn't start you mean no debug lights or fans start?
I know you were able to do a BIOS Flash, but i would also douible check that you have all power cables in, the CPU and the Mobo powers may not be fully seated.
also, doublecheck you're jumping the right pins on the Mobo
your BIOS should have XMP or DOCP options for the memory on board. if it doesn't or your sticks aren't all clocked at the same speed you will not get the advertised speed.
otherwise it will run at a "safe" speed for your motherboard, based on what the motherboard supports.
the Users tab shows usage based on the account that launched the process.
the System background launches lots of tasks that do not appear in that tab.
The user tab is best for diagnosing public computers that may have multiple users signed in. It's basically useless for a single owner PC.
oh, also get your new GOU working with the old CPU before putting the new CPU in.
old CPU, new GPU - test and verify, update BIOS, retest same combo.
New CPU, old GPU, test and verify.
New CPU, New GPU, test and verify.
sometimes the folks on the forums get exhausted by requests they feel are too basic. They just don't reply.
I know most folks just don't know what they don't know though.
in task manager> click processes, then click the memory column and sort by usage. see what's eating memory, then google the process.
that isn't too much RAM usage. you probably don't have a virus.