Egad

This is a very odd video, obviously is the audio issue at the front forefront of it, which to me also made it feel very low energy. It had periods where it just felt like watching Anthony mutter as he tinkered with an old computer. The scripting and planning of this also felt really off. Like why do you need a 2.5 gig NIC? Why is it even mentioned? What's the overlap of people with a second or third gen i7 as their primary rig but they have a NAS or something in their home that can do a sustained output at 2.5 speeds and they didn't think to put a 2.5 gig card in their desktop? I mean I could see if this was aimed at a college student and we're talking about how to leverage your college dorm's network on a budget type of thing, but a setup where this box sits on a desk, you run a cable from the box to your switch, and in turn your switch connects to some cable modem that that 1 gig nic was more than enough. The whole network thing just kind of limps along until a muttered conclusion of "So I guess higher speed NICs may not be worth it...". The USB 3 and Bluetooth stuff felt kind of half baked. I can see reasons there, but elaborate on them. For most folks that plug a keyboard and a mouse into their computer, USB 2.0 is fine. Adding two USB 3.0 ports on the back isn't a huge value add unless you're constantly pulling media of a camera or something over a cable. But these decisions should be driven by "Hey I have this peripheral I want and here is how I can expand my system to utilize it." It feels like the two points that have solid application GPU makes it better at games and >1666MHz DDR3 is often asking for trouble pre Haswell and they get lost in all the digression on other upgrades.

In additional the below ambient problem mentioned above, you'd need a pressure regulator to deal with the fact the system you're plugging into can easily be 4 or 5 bars, and most consumer water cooling stuff can only handle 1 to 2 bars. You'd always want to control the flow since at the rates the commercial stuff flows any leak would become a catastrophe very quickly. Especially since the max fluid dumped into your case is the based on the amount the building system holds rather than just the finite amount in your loop. I think the failure cases make this too severe to be attractive.

There seems to be two different things. The first is the Hackintosh doesn't have "stacked" radiators in that the air doesn't go directly from Radiator A to Radiator B, it goes Radiator A to the internal volume of the case to Radiator B. I agree with LTT there, the air will still pull heat of the rear radiator on its way out. In general having one big radiator used on exit, so that your airflow is best, that is: Ambient enters case -> picks up a minor amount of heat off the VRMs and such -> crosses large radiator and pickups CPU and GPU heat -> exits case But as Linus says you gotta work with what fits in the case and the delta between that model and the one they used is probably nominal. The cases just aren't that airtight and he's right about that/ I think Corsair is much closer to be being right about the server build and the direct stacking though, especially once you put the server in the rack and surround with a bunch of other servers kicking out heat. Nothing LTT did in the video really addresses that minus the one comment about Jake tried removing a radiator, but no clarity on to if this was just done on a table or if the server actually went back into the rack. To properly address that point LTT should actually 3D the proposed baffle, put the server in the rack and benchmark it during the workday (so while the other servers are also under normal workload and raising ambient temps the room).

If you really want cheap, go with a GTX 1660 and mod the 2 stream limit off. That's cheaper than a new mobo, RAM, and CPU. After all unless you already have a B450 and DDR4 sitting around already, 130 dollars isn't going to there anyway.

Dells don't always obey Dell law though. I agree in theory if you in Slots 1 and 2 you have Matched Pair A and if in Slots you have Matched Pair B, then it should work as long as neither matched pair violates the rules, even if pair A and B are not equal things should work. However my personal experience with Dells that should does not mean they will. I would agree with others, you can clean the RAM slots, reseat the CPU and generally hope for the best. Hopefully one of those fixes it, but if you can boot with Pair A or Pair B but not both, the unfortunate solution is probably you have to dump one of the pairs in favor of four of the same. I've had to do it enough I really only do memory upgrades for Dell using the Crucial tool: https://www.crucial.com/store/advisor Reality is if Dell never shipped a config of say 2x4, 2x2, then they never validated it. Or maybe they did validate it but the particular timing differences between the pairs you have don't work because of a bug in the BIOS about down clocking to the lowest speed, etc. At least 20% of the time I've gotten burned doing exactly what you're doing. The fact either pair works but both pairs together don't makes me think this one of those cases, with an off chance it's something isn't seated right as the problem.

If you pop out the RAM that came with the Optiplex and put your new RAM into those slots, can you get the computer to boot on just the new RAM?

At that point your options are either a R5 3600 or a R7 3700X. With exactly how many VM's you'll have running simultaneously answering the question of which one you want. This also influences the RAM, etc and in turn will determine how much money you have left over for a GPU after doing the core of your system. Reality is if your primary purpose is building a workstation type rig and you have a 1k budget, gaming will take a hit. Especially if you need to throw in a monitor, windows licenses, etc.

You should replace it when you can afford to. That being said depending on the games you play and your budget it may or may not make sense to replace right at this moment since you're looking at new RAM, a mobo, and a CPU all in one swoop.

I think it's a reasonable price, you can negotiate though. The PSU or a comparable one is ~40 to 45 new. BestBuy for example will see you a EVGA 650W bronze efficiency PSU for 44.99, I'm sure there are 500 and 550s out there for less. A 1070 used is a bit above 200 if you go the eBay route, a bit under if you do a local deal normally where no shipping or any third party taking a cut is involved. Although it's hard to be solid on the latter given regional variants. 550 W should drive your system. Personally I'd consider no more than 180 for the graphics card alone and then going out of pocket for a better PSU a better overall deal, even if it means I spent ~220-230 total, but this isn't bad either. Odds are the seller probably wants to bundle in that system integrator level PSU though because no one is going to buy that thing on its own.

I'd go: 5400 RPM drive. You have a 1 TB SSD so you really will only have data on the spinning disk. Get a 2 TB WD Blue or HGST Deskstar that does 5400 RPM. 5400s have a longevity edge, are quieter, and use less power. If you actually have a use case for the 7200 RPM drive, you'd be better off with a SATA SSD as your second tier. MSI X570 Mobos aren't great, also in general, I think a setup where you go with a pricer X570 just to get something that says X570 and wifi is not the best move. You're running a 3700X on a stock cooler, you can cut there and have more money for a fully modular power supply or just more money in your pocket. You can either step down a bit with regard to X570 since you really aren't using any of the features or drop to a B450.

144 Hz at 1440p isn't happening for Starcraft on that budget. Starcraft relies heavily on a single master thread, you may have stuff spawned off, but your frame rate lives and dies off that main thread. You'd want to be in the Intel camp on a 5 GHz chip, although even then in say late game 4 v 4 I doubt even a 9th gen Intel locked on 5 GHz is going to make it happen. The easiest path is just to aim for 60 fps. You can get a higher refresh monitor as long as you get a good quality one whose adaptive sync works with your chosen GPU brand and has the range to handle the late game FPS drops. Also making a ton of VMs means spending more on RAM and disk space for their virtual hard drives which at this budget is going to cost you fps in games since something has to give to cover those costs. Why exactly are you making a 'ton' of VMs?

Used Dell Optiplex or equivalent business tower ~120 to 150 dollars. Don't buy off Dell, Lenovo, etc directly. They always charge ~100 over market. Find the local guy flipping business towers. GTX 1650 149.99 One additional stick of good old green Crucial RAM (assuming the used tower comes with 1x 4 GB) Spend the rest on a SSD if you want. At the 400 range, you're already going to be compromising PSU, case, etc to come in under budget. Not a lot of stuff in a 400 dollar rig you'd want to carry forward to your next build. Plus if you're lucky, you'll get Windows for free with the used business computer. If spend some time surfing the local shops you can find a Dell, Lenovo, or HP tower that uses standard power pin for the mobo. So then you also have the option to swap in a more power PSU which in turn enables a better GPU.

Vega 64 no. 500w is the official min for Vega 56 from AMD. Note that Gigabyte has models of the V56 that recommend 650w PSUs, etc because of after market tuning. So the specific Vega 56 card and how you tune it matters (undervolting is probably good, OCing is probably a horrible idea). So as long as you confine yourself to AMD's stock power profile, then a conditional yes, depending on what else in your system. I personally wouldn't, but that all comes down to personal comfort of running with little headroom on your PSU.

The only value prop on the Threadripper 1 is that in the future you can buy a later gen/higher core count Threadripper. But you're limited to Threadripper 1 and 2 due to the socket shift for Threadripper 3. I'd honestly rather have 8 3000 series cores than 12 1000 series cores. A 2700X almost tied a 1920X in transcoding (the TR chip only had a 3 fps edge on h264 medium quality). Can't find any head to head benches on a 3700X vs 1920X, but I'd expect the 3700X to win. Most benches are of the 3700X vs a 1950X, with the 3700X losing by 5 fps to 7 fps despite having half the cores. In GN's 1920X revisit you can see the 3700X pulling head of the 1920X in Premier and such. GN actually ends up recommending the 3600 over the 1920X for most folks. To me it is: B450 Mobo: ~120 bucks Ryzen 3900X: ~450 bucks (which a B450 like a Tomahawk can handle at stock clocks) 570 out the door X399 Mobo: ~270 bucks TR1920X: ~200 bucks 470 out the door I think the X399 mobo destroys the value, unless you for a refurb mobo and cut price and/or your long play is to get a used 2990WX in a few years. You either pay ~100 more (the 3900X option) for something that crushes the TR1920X or you spend ~299 bucks on a 3700X, save ~50 bucks over the TR1920X and still have a system, that I think will perform better overall for Plex duties.

CPU heavy for sure in those situations. With your budget you're in an interesting spot. You have lots of options with regard to a Ryzen 8 to 16 core processor (3700, 3900X, 3950X) that won't blow your budget and are going to handle the load and should last for some time. I think the 3700 more than meets your needs and then the 3900X and 3950X are more if you want as big beefy home server that might end up doing other stuff. Honestly even a 3600 probably works, but if the goal is "Build this and don't touch it for awhile", I'd go 8 cores. You also have Threadripper as an option, but unless you source used parts you'd probably end up creeping over the 2k limit. You'd be looking at say 1,400 for a 3960X, 500 on a mobo and still need the other pieces. The other thing is Threadripper is a more niche platform, so you have to put up the enthusiast space teething problems. Where I could probably look is: Ryzen 3700X ~300 USD B450 Motherboard EVGA 1660Ti Black ~250 USD 8 to 16 GB RAM (2666 MHz green stuff is fine). 16 GB of Crucial 2666 MHz should be ~75 dollars, 8 GB should be ~40 dollars Tier A PSU SATA SSD Boot Drive OR nVME drive if you want to save the SATA port for the data drives However many drives you need, want to spend the cash on. Just avoid Seagate and their abnormally high failures. HGSTs are really good and WD Reds are also good. Some specific notes: The B450 Motherboard's main purpose in life is to have SATA ports, so don't get the cheapest one out there. Get one where you have more SATA ports. I would say the MSI B450 Tomahawk with its 6 ports is about as low I'd go. Since the fewer ports you have the more it forces you only have high capacity drives connected to them. Since you need a GPU anyway given the lack an iGPU on your CPU, might as well go with the 1660Ti. I find it a nice quality of life improvement because when you rip a Bluray and find it's VC-1 or whatever you can just immediately feed it into the Turing GPU to transcode and it won't take long. That being said, literally any video card works. At the end of the day, your GPU only needs to drive your display, your CPU is doing the transcode work. You don't even need a GPU in that you could install a Linux distro that lets you headless boot and remote in from a different box. For RAM 8 GB is more than enough, you just need RAM to hold your videos in as they playback. The only reason to go up to 16+ GB is if you plan to any kind of memory cacheing or such. Green Crucial 2666 MHz DDR4 is the way to go. You don't need anything fancy. Power supply you want something good because this thing is on 24/7/365/. I'm partial to the Seasonic Prime Titanium line. They're pricey, but they run fanless below ~40% load and I don't mind paying for efficiency and the fact it's no moving parts in its default state. You can easily save a buck here by looking at something else. Disk wise, it kind of comes down to ports on your mobo and your future expansion. If say you have 6 SATA ports, have 1 port assigned to your SATA SSD boot drive and 4 drives assigned a RAID 10 pool, you can only add one more drive. If you buy a M.2 boot drive then you'd have two SATA ports free (or in the future could you buy a PCIe card to give you more SATA ports, etc). I'm partial to 10 TB Western Digital Red Drives and 12 TB HGST drives. Just avoid Seagate and its above average failure rate. I'd say pick something you are comfortable buying 4x of and then going RAID 6 or RAID 10 (plus of course external backup). Then you can add more drives. You can also look into Unraid which lets you pool up drives that don't match if you want look into that.