byalexandr

As another update - while I think the 4TB M.2 drive will suffice for storing video for now, I may end up getting two or more large capacity 2.5" SSDs and doing a RAID configuration. I also might add another 32GB kit since the mobo has 4 slots, but typically 32GB has been enough for me so we will see. RAM seems to be much cheaper than it used to be when I was still building PCs. Played some games on it last night and it runs great! CPU temps were well under control, GPU fans barely even spin up and even under load it's a super quiet machine. Much much faster than my ROG Z13 was (to be expected of course, but still).

Just to update (typing from the new PC!) I ended up going with these parts: i7 13700K Gigabyte B760M Aorus Elite AX D5 Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 32GB (2x16GB) WD Black 1TB M.2 (OS/games drive) Inland 4TB M.2 (Storage drive) Gigabyte RTX 4060 Eagle OC 8GB Asus Prime AP201 Corsair RM750E Corsair H150i Elite Build was pretty easy, liking the case a lot even though the footprint is pretty large (might as well be just a shorter full size ATX tower). Very quiet, temps are looking good and the PC is lightning fast of course. I am finishing up installing all my apps and what not, and downloading R6 to test out the new GPU. Thanks for all the help!

I will consider an AMD processor for sure, as long as the productivity performance is up to par with the Intel offerings. This is the new list I came up with that uses mATX and 13th gen i7 right under $1500 (same RTX 4060 card): https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=c037e544-67c8-42da-a413-6eb0094edc11 And to answer your question about files, normally they are around 200-300GB but it all depends on the length of the event. A private session following around one person is under 200GB of video, an entire day racing event can be even more than 400GB. Typically I film 1-2 events per month and keep the footage archived for at least 90 days. All of the footage is recorded on micro SD cards that I change out throughout the day as they become full - I then move all the footage over to my computer so Premiere Pro has fast read access and also add to that amount with the number of exported videos I create from the raw footage. I figure a 4TB M.2 SSD will suffice and if I really need more I can change it to a RAID setup with 2.5" SSDs later on (since this mATX case has a bit more flexibility than the other mITX I had on the previous list).

Since it is mainly for productivity and gaming loads come second, I don't think (from what I've briefly read) I would benefit from the 3D cache on the Ryzen chips. Although I would be fine I guess with having a 13th gen i7 over a 14th gen since I also read the difference between the two generations is marginal and is just the classic 'refresh' thing that Intel has done in the past. I can look at a different case for sure though. I just liked the vertical layout of the 2000D but the difficult to access I/O on the bottom might be a deal breaker anyways and I can probably deal with the larger footprint of more traditional ITX case. I would prefer mITX, but I definitely don't mind the 13th gen as mentioned above. I forgot to mention that WiFi (or at least Bluetooth) is a must for me since I use a Bluetooth mechanical keyboard (Logitech MX Mechanical mini). I'll put together another list and come back with the link for additional input. I agree the Micro Center PC builder is painfully slow but they don't list Micro Center on PCPartPicker so it's a manual process entering all the prices.

Budget (including currency): $1500-2000 USD Country: USA (aiming to buy everything at Micro Center) Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Heavy video editing in Premiere Pro, other Adobe CC applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), web development, light CAD (Fusion 360), games such as Rainbow Six Siege, PUBG, BF4, Minecraft. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Hey all, I currently have an ROG Z13 tablet, and while it's decent for gaming and video editing with the i9 and RTX 3050, I've noticed I never really use it anywhere except for at my desk and the lack of USB ports can get somewhat frustrating sometimes with all the dongles and docks and what not. Plus, the docking station thing that ASUS sells for this tablet that has a GPU in it is just ridiculously overpriced for what it is. So I am going to try to sell it and instead build a small desktop machine. I use a 27" 1440p Dell monitor, have a keyboard, mouse, etc. already but may replace the 1440p monitor with another ASUS ProArt 27" 4K display that I use for my WFH job (I do marketing and web dev for my company). I will mainly be using this PC for editing video in Premiere Pro, and need a lot of fast storage space. I run a drone business that specializes in motorsports video and regularly collect 200-400GB of 4K 120fps video for each event where I process them into short clips that I sell on my website. I have looked into getting a NAS or even just a drive bay that connects via USB C, but my home network is just not fast enough (most if not all my devices, including my router, are 1 gigabit) to properly playback the 4K video in Premiere Pro. Right now I am just using a 1TB external SSD and I quickly fill it up with video, not to mention if it dies then I just lose all my video. Ideally I am looking for something that will have a small footprint, not only mITX but possibly a vertical style case with as small a footprint as possible as I have an entire other workstation (for my main job) on my desk along with my massive Voron 3D printer. I can stretch the budget as needed, but would like to keep it around $1500 USD if possible. A very good CPU, lots of fast memory and fast/reliable mass storage are more of a priority to me than having the fastest graphics card possible for the price. Honestly my mobile RTX 3050 that I currently have in my ROG tablet is fine for pretty much all the games I play and encodes video decently fast so I imagine even a budget desktop graphics card like an RTX 4060 will be fine for me. Here is something I put together - I have not been in the loop on which processors are 'the best' these days, so feel free to suggest any changes. I know the newer Intel processors run hot so I made sure to include a big water cooler. If I can shave down the price closer to $1500 I am all ears on what to change. https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=82f099cc-25e6-4803-a938-7ed295473728

So interestingly enough, I decided to just plug in a USB device and see what happens. Sure enough, the card was working, though not as expected. I used a USB viewer utility to see all of the computer's root hubs/controllers, and it is a Renesas controller. However, the card for some reason was giving me a lot of trouble with the webcams - for our podcast, we use 4 (previously 3 as that was the max that would work on the old laptop setup) C920 webcams. The whole reason for switching to a desktop dedicated for livestreaming was to have more USB controllers to provide ample bandwidth for all the cameras to work with OBS. However, putting two cameras, which is not even close to exceeding the bandwidth of a single USB 3.0 controller, on each controller in the PC would just not work for some reason. Sometimes one or two would work, sometimes the controller (both the expansion card and the chipset one on the motherboard) would produce an error that it couldn't get a device ID, sometimes none of the USB devices including the keyboard and mouse would even turn on after restarting. Just as a test and sort of a last ditch effort to get it working, I plugged everything (including all 4 cameras, audio interface, peripherals, etc.) into the USB ports on the motherboard, skipping the expansion card altogether, and it all works fine. What is interesting too is that in the USB viewer utility, everything is still on one root hub, but I get absolutely zero problems with bandwidth issues. So I am left completely clueless as to why 4 1080p webcams work on a single controller on this computer, but only 3 work on the laptop, and why 2 cameras on two controllers gives a ton of issues and works even less than before. Anyways, sort of a rant about USB I guess (maybe it was even something to do with OBS), but at least it's working and since I'm too lazy to take out the $15 expansion card to return it, will just use it as for the time being. I think my next 'upgrade' to our podcast studio will be some proper camcorders and an HDMI switcher, which is unfortunately a somewhat expensive exercise.

Hey all, I needed another USB controller for my podcasting setup, as more than three Logitech webcams exceeds the bandwidth available on the laptop we are currently using (with a single USB 3.0 controller). I put together an old desktop I had laying around for the sole use of streaming through OBS, and got a PCI-E expansion card that adds another USB controller to connect some of the webcams to. However, the card did not come with any driver disk, nor can I find anything online. This is the exact card I got: https://a.co/d/8NP2b5o Some of the reviews even mention they could not find drivers online, but I figure someone might be able to help me out on here. I also found the same card on Newegg (https://www.newegg.com/p/238-00DE-00266), which mentions I have to install the 'NEC USB3.0 driver' for it to work. Googling that and finding a driver on Dell's website, I installed it and restarted the computer but it still shows as no driver available for the following devices in device manager: The card had a label on the box to the website cablecc.com, which is a Chinese cable supplier. But I wasn't able to find the card on there nor any driver downloads (not that I would want to download drivers from a Chinese website anyways). Any ideas on getting this thing to work?

Just arrived - this mouse is awesome. Love the improvements over the G502 Hero. I may look into getting the Powerplay mouse pad to go with it eventually; one thing I wish this mouse had (I know it would compromise the wireless capabilities) is Bluetooth, so I can pair it with multiple devices. But switching the USB receiver is easy enough.

Actually, after using my G502 Hero a bit more I remember why I liked this mouse so much lol. I ordered a G502X Plus Lightspeed off of Amazon instead. Hopefully this one doesn't present any issues in the future like my poor MX Master. Wonder if I can send it to Logitech to get fixed or something..

I went to my local Best Buy to try some out and the Basilisk definitely seemed nice. Also the Corsair something or another but I didn't like the texture on it that I know would pick up a bunch of dirt and stuff over a short period. They were out of stock of most stuff though, guess since it's the holidays, so I might go to Micro Center tomorrow to pick one up.

Hey all, Making this post to see if there are some recommendations for wireless mice. I am looking for something that will last me a long time, and be used for both work and gaming (I work remotely on my XPS 15, and sometimes game after work on my ROG Z13). I absolutely love my MX Master 3S, especially that I can just switch between the two devices, but recently the left click has been having problems. Sometimes it won't register a click, sometimes it will think I stopped clicking when I am still holding the left mouse button. It was a little frustrating in FPS games because I wouldn't shoot the bad guy in time, or stop shooting just before they are unalived. It has gotten worse over the past week or so and even more frustrating when I can't do something as simple as drag and drop a file on my other computer. So for now I pulled out my old G502 Hero to use. But, I love the ergonomics so much on the MX Master, that I'm not really enjoying the G502 at the moment. Plus, the G502 is still wired. Any recommendations on a good quality mouse (doesn't necessarily have to be a gaming mouse) to replace my MX Master (with similar ergonomics)? Should I just buy another one and hope this one doesn't crap out on me? The main thing I'm not liking about my G502 anymore is it's a lot 'lower' than the MX Master. I guess I developed a sort of claw grip and the raised back of the MX Master was really nice and comfortable. The G502 doesn't have this, so my knuckles sit much lower and I rely on my palm a bit more which feels a bit weird. It doesn't necessarily have to be a gaming mouse, but I know usually they have better sensors and buttons, input latency, etc. I also do not like a light mouse - I have all of the weights installed in my G502 and the MX Master is about as light as I want to go. TIA

Awesome, thanks for the info. Pretty unfortunate that there isn't an XG Mobile docking station that doesn't have an eGPU. Not that the unwieldy connector would be very nice to use anyways, but something for just the purpose of being a dock and not to beef up the graphics performance sure would be nice.

Hey all, Long time no post but I recently got an ROG Z13 (I wasn't sure if this post should go in Laptops or Tablets, since it is a tablet, but anyway...). I really like the tablet and gaming is incredible on it, the RTX 3050 Ti is enough of a workhorse for me, especially with the tablet plugged in and in 'Turbo' mode. However, I also use Adobe Creative Cloud quite frequently, and I could very much use the extra real estate of another monitor. My work laptop, which is an XPS 15 with an 11th gen i7 and RTX 3050, has a WD19S docking station that not only charges the XPS but also connects my 1440p monitor, Ethernet, etc. I plugged it into my Z13 just to test, and though the monitor works no problem, I get a system notification saying the docking station does not provide full power and it wants me to connect the included 100W charger. This is kind of a bummer as the 3050 Ti will run a bit slower with the Dell docking station connected, even though it greatly simplifies everything into one cable. I know when I purchased the tablet that there is the XG Mobile dock available, but I'm wondering if there is just a normal (similar) docking station that I can purchase (that also isn't over $1000) that would allow me to charge at the full 100W and still provide some extra I/O for a monitor, wired network connection, etc. all in one USB-C cable. I browsed Asus' website but didn't really find anything that was even similar to the WD19S, and the XG Mobile is unfortunately just far too expensive due to a feature that I don't even really want or need (the RTX 3080 inside of it lol). It's quite interesting to me that even though my Dell docking station outputs 130W, the Z13 is still complaining that it isn't enough charging power. I assume it's something to do with software or incompatibilities between manufacturers but nonetheless disappointing. Does Asus offer something similar to the Dell WD19S that would be compatible with my ROG Z13?

Somewhat yeah actually, that one looks like it would work. I'd prefer one with a bare board and a female USB input so I can print a small case and use a generic cable, instead of the converter being part of the cable. But I think like you said the best route it to just solder a USB connection to the input side of a standard buck converter.

Like the title says, I am trying to find a buck converter that will take a 5V USB input (either Type C, Micro, Mini, whatever common cables I have laying around) with a stepped down (variable) output. Maybe it's my search terms, but all I'm finding are buck converters that take various voltages in and then regulate them to a 5V USB output interface, which is quite the opposite of what I need. For reference, I am 3D printing a mechanical clock, and though this clock normally uses a weighted pulley system to 'wind' the clock, I am replacing all of this with a servo motor that has the end stops and potentiometer, etc. removed, leaving only the motor and gears. I want to power the clock with a simple USB power input, and have a buck converter step down the voltage from 5V to the bare minimum required to keep the clock running. Does something like exist? Or would I need to solder my own USB connector on the input side of a standard buck converter? I'd prefer to have an all-in-one board that has the USB input on board, and a simple short lead to connect to the servo, that way I can print a tiny case that hides somewhere on the clock frame and keeps everything tidy.

After creating the pool with just one 6TB WD Red, I may not even expand the pool, at least for a while. I moved a lot of CRAW photos from my camera(s) and several games in my Steam library and still not even close to any real storage utilization lol. I also found out that I will need some specialty hardware from HP to install a second 3.5" drive (as my machine only came with a 2.5" SSD), even though there is another slot for a second 3.5". Overall pretty happy with the performance though, for just a single 5400rpm drive, I get around 100MB/s transfer speeds which is pretty close to saturating the gigabit connection. Don't think I will really play games off of it (probably move the games over to my SSD first) but convenient not to have to redownload stuff all the time.

Another question, how is editing a Premiere Pro project (typically 1080p footage) with the source media on the NAS? Taking into account a Gigabit wired connection and 5400rpm WD Red drives (simple ZFS pool, no parity or striping)? If I could work on video projects without even having the source media on my local machine, that would be fantastic, so long as the source and preview playback is smooth.

Last update: Got the second HP ProDesk machine and ended up using TrueNAS Core as the OS. Was able to get everything set up no problem and log into the web GUI: My final setup looks a little something like this: I did some more reading and found that MicroTik appliances come with an 802.1X forwarding package out of the box, and apparently it is really easy to bypass the Arris gateway with one of those. I may end up doing that in the future, but so far pfSense has been working excellently and I have had zero issues with dropped connections aside from one of the APs occasionally losing LAN connection (I think it is just a bad CAT5e cable, will do some testing to diagnose that further). Anyways, for now the file server only has the 128GB OS drive (Samsung SSD), but I did order one 6TB WD Red to start with. I'll add a second one later and if it's not able to saturate the gigabit connection without any RAID configuration I may run the two drives in RAID 0 for faster transfer speeds. Nothing on this file server will serve as a backup, it's mainly just to keep Steam games that are too large to fit on my laptop and some raw media that takes up a lot of space (also on my laptop). Will also use it just to transfer files quickly to other people in the house, so no need for a parity drive. Overall though pretty happy with FreeBSD and how everything is working. Definitely a nice solid home network now given the low budget solutions to everything. I may throw in some Noctua fans in both of the systems, as the fans are just a little bit noticeable being close to my workspace. Other than that though, they are great machines, well worth the $70 I paid for each of them.

I ended up installing TrueNAS Core, since I'm a little used to BSD at this point as pfSense is also BSD. Installed no problem, logged into the web GUI and was pleasantly surprised with how nice the UI is. I don't have any disks in the pool yet, just the OS installed on the 128GB SSD that the machine came with, but I did order a WD Red 6TB to start off. Will throw another one in there later for a 12TB NAS, which should be fine for the foreseeable future.

I'll take a look at those options. And as far as storage goes, I think around 10-20TB will suffice; I could RAID 1 two large capacity drives if I spend extra money and get two, say, 14TB HDDs. But it really is just to offload raw media and project files, not really for backup as I do keep final exports and such on the company's network and on my own cloud storage accounts (I'd also like to store a few Steam games on there so I don't have to redownload them all the time). Really just depends on how much I want to spend on the drives, two 14TB HDDs is already over $400, and if I can spend say around $200-300 even though I'd sacrifice any redundancy that would still be more reasonable to me. After all the machine itself was like $70 at the end of the day lol.

Hey all, I recently made some upgrades to my home network, mainly building a pfSense box and upgrading my APs and switches from what was previously just an AT&T Arris gateway. I used an HP ProDesk 600 G1 SFF as the router, with a dual GbE Intel NIC thrown in (so far it has been great, no complaints). I liked the desktop so much that I actually ordered another one to use as a file server, as I have a lot of raw video and exported projects that take up a ton of space on my work laptop and I would like to offload them somewhere on the local network. My work has network drives, available by connecting to my company's VPN (I work remotely), but I would like to have my own storage at home so I can also use it for personal files and not worry about others in the organization having access to it. This second ProDesk only has two 3.5" bays, plus the 128GB SSD that it came with, so I am thinking I will just get two high capacity HDDs without any sort of parity drive to maximize the available storage space. The machine came with Windows 10 installed, but I'm not sure it's the best solution for a simple file server and I'd rather use a Linux distro running samba. I have Ubuntu Desktop (20.04 LTS) installed on a USB stick, but I'm wondering if there are some better options out there that are more lightweight, maybe Ubuntu Server or something else that is barebones. At minimum, I would need the ability to shell into the 'server' but a simple GUI would be nice as I'm not a professional with the terminal just yet. Other than that, browsers or any other applications are not at all necessary. I don't intend to run a media server like Plex or anything, it is strictly for file storage for devices connected to the local network. Whatever I end up choosing, the most important thing is that the share shows up in Windows, Mac OS, and Linux devices alike without much setup (if at all) on the client side.

Last update for a while, at least until the other HP desktop I ordered (to use as a file server) comes in. Here is the final setup, minus the second HP machine: I moved the AT&T gateway to my office/room where the pfSense box, 8-port switch and one of the APs sit. One port on the switch is daisy chained to the bigger 16-port switch at the cable box/patch panel, where other wired devices and two other APs are connected throughout the house: As much as I tried, I just could not get the ONT to negotiate authentication with pfSense. So I put the Arris gateway in IP passthrough mode (different subnet, DHCP turned off, WiFi broadcast turned off) so at least the home network is routed through pfSense and it holds the public IP address. I will see over the next few days how reliable the setup is, hopefully with less load on the Arris gateway I don't experience any random connection drops anymore. Wired speeds are still 1Gbps (around 600Mbps over wireless, depending on range), which is great news as I've read some threads mentioning the gateway dropping the throughput to 100Mbps when in passthrough mode. But other than that, not much to report. I may take another stab at the "true bridge" mode in the future, but this should do for now. My home network diagram now looks like this:

From my understanding, or at least in my service area, the ONT is only separate because I am on a 1Gb line. If we had gone with a 2Gb or 5Gb service, the technicians would’ve had to run the fiber directly inside the house with a gateway/ONT combo (BGW-320). In its current configuration the fiber stops outside the house at the ONT and is copper only inside the house.

I joined on January 5, 2013. Been a long time!

It's enough to make me never use AT&T as an ISP (or phone provider) in the future... I already switched to Verizon for my phone plan and it's been 100x better. If I can't get it figured out though, I will probably have no choice but to just put the gateway in passthrough mode and use pfSense as a secondary router. Kind of defeats the point and will likely not fix my dropped connection issues, but maybe with enough tinkering I will figure it out.