MoVo

Yeah the budget my brother specified was 350 Euro max. Looking at the prices from reputable vendors in Germany, I can get this stuff for 340 Euros. Regarding the GPU, that is true. But the GPU would be a bigger upgrade anyways considering it would also require a new PSU. Hopefully he can delay upgrading long enough until the new Intel Gen is out to hopefully have some options in the entrylevel to mid segment. If really necessary I would also give him my 1660 super since I'm fine with onboard graphics

Budget (including currency): 300 - 350 EUR max Country: Germany Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: CS:GO, some light to medium programming work 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): Hi guys, I'm looking for an upgrade path for my brothers prebuild PC. It's currently running a 7th Gen Core i5 and is slowly but surely dying of old age. He is looking for an upgrade path to make this system last throughout his degree and upgrade after as soon as he has some more money. The only thing about his current build he wants to retain is his 1050 TI which he hasn't had any issues with so far (and a substantially better GPU wouldn't fit the budget anyways). Current parts list MSI GTX 1050 TI Some unbranded mico-ATX Board A 350W no-name PSU Intel 7000 series i5 8GB of RAM 1TB SATA SSD + 1TB HDD I've been thinking it would probably be wise to go with an AM5 platform since we'll (hopefully) get some more generations out of it. My suggested parts list looks like this AMD Ryzen 5 7600 (using the box cooler) Crucial 16GB (2x8GB) Crucial DDR5-5200 CL42 ASRock A620M-HDV/M.2 He doesn't want to buy used cause he has been burned by eBay in the past. Would this setup be any good for the coming years? In case he wants to upgrade graphics soon he'll definitely have to use some other PSU, but other than that I think this would futureproof him for the time being? Hopefully this time it'll work out I appreciate your insights

Thanks for the heads up! I found a Crucial P3 Plus with 1TB for 41€ as an alternative This was the cheapest unit with that power output I was able to find from a reputable brand. I found a 650W unit from Cooler Master for only 4€ more, anything else is substantially more expensive. Oh wow, just watched a Der8auer video and selected the Liquid Freezer II 240 instead. 80€ instead of 120€ with better performance! Yeah I was shocked regarding the absolutely horrendous mITX AM5 mainboard availability. There's a grand total of 4 to 5 boards I was able to find and they're all super expensive. The cheapest one was the MSI B650I Edge, but I chose to go with a somewhat more expensive one in my configuration because this one has an VRM fan and I had bad experiences with high pitch fan noises with these kinds of things. The Asus ROG B650E-I Is the one I currently have configured and comes in at 280€. What exactly is the issue you experienced with the vertical daughterboards? What ports are they used for?

Hello all, I'm currently looking into buying a new system. I'm currently on a 2019 16" MacBook Pro that is slowly starting to be a worse and worse option for my hobby tasks as it is getting increasingly unreliable, probably thanks to Apple focusing on their Apple Silicon lineup. I initially considered buying a M2 MacMini, but the price for any reasonable spec is not worth it for me. I contemplated buying a Mini PC "MacMini killer" as shown on LTT (Minisforum), but I'm somewhat concerned about the noise under load (I absolutely hate fan noise) and the lack of upgrade paths. So my goal is to build a reasonably priced compact Mini ITX system that is somewhat future-proof and can be upgraded for a long time. My goal is to build a relatively power-efficient system that is relatively silent under normal use and reasonable under load. However, due to being relatively similar in price, I'm very unsure if I should go with current gen AMD or Intel. Do you have any input on that? My current configuration looks like that: 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus: 103€ Corsair Vengance DDR5-6000 32GB Kit: 106€ Lian Li x Dan H20-A4 Mini ITX Case: 158€ Be Quiet SFX-L 600W: 110€ beQuiet Silent Loop 2 240mm: 119€ As I said, I'm unsure regarding the platform to choose. A R9 7900 configuration with a suitable mainboard is roughly the same price (slightly more expensive) than an Intel 13700KF. I have no clue which benchmarks could be a useful indication for performance in my usecase, so I was hoping to get some help here. Regarding graphics card, I was lucky and got a hand-me-down 2070 Super for essentially free, which is more than enough for my purposes for now. I appreciate your input! Post Template Budget (including currency): 1.300 EUR max Country: Germany Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Light gaming (occasional Minecraft session) Software development work Virtualization (KVMs with Windows, Docker) Data analytics & computer vision Light video editing

Hey all, thanks for your suggestions. Its been a while, but I just wanted to share the path we've decided to go now. As I stated in the intro post, as a student, my brother is on a fairly tight budget. As it turns out, with his new schedule he'll definitely have to invest quite a bit into a new notebook which is priority #1. I still wanted him to have his desktop system at home which he still uses for occasional gaming (mostly CSGO and RocketLeague). Inspired by one of the recent LTT videos, we've decided to go with a clean install and to give AtlasOS a try. We'll also clean out his wayyy too dusty case and add new thermal paste in hopes to get temps back under control. He also said he wanted to give Linux a try which I definitely approve of, but that'll be in a dual boot way. To improve the overall experience a little bit I'll probably gift him a RAM upgrade and a bigger SSD as well, so he can dedicate his budget entirely to his new university machine. Although I did not end up choosing one of the suggested paths, thank you all for your ideas!

Its a prebuilt, but its not be the big vendors of the likes of Dell, HP, etc. As far as I am able to tell, there are no non-standard parts in the build. The only part that do not appear to be regularly purchasable off-the shelf parts is the mainboard and the RAM.

Funnily enough the non-G chip is 25€ more expensive than the G version. Is there any downside by going with the G version?

Budget (including currency): 250-300€ Country: Germany Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Python programming & light to medium simulations (CPU bound) Occasional gaming (CSGO, Minecraft) My younger brother is in desperate need of an upgrade. He's in his third semester of his math bachelor and is now facing some CS/Software engineering modules where he's supposed to build out small to medium projects primarily in python. His current PC is ~5 years old and was a prebuilt back then with the following components MSI GTX 1050 TI Some unbranded mico-ATX Board A 350W no-name PSU Intel 7000 series i5 8GB of RAM 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD He needs to by a new laptop as well (my hand me down is also not the greatest anymore) and wanted to by one of those Gaming machines. I recommended him to invest the markup into upgrading his desktops PC instead since they are usually way better value. Since he doesn't need a whole lot of mobile computing power, he wanted to go down that route. Being a student, he's on a fairly tight budget and the components should not dramatically exceed 250€ I'm currently considering the following replacement parts AMD Ryzen 5 5600G for CPU GIGABYTE B450M K Kingston FURY Beast DIMM Kit 16GB (currently has a slow 8GB DDR4) Western Digital WD Blue SN570 NVMe SSD 1TB (will keep the current SATA SSD to dual boot Linux) With current prices, all of the components listed above would be around 280€ which would be in acceptable range. Should I re-consider anything before actually ordering?

Unfortunately resetting the BIOS didn't help either. But according to the BIOS event logs, the error exists since the end of November, which roughly aligns with my SSD replacement and me actually wanting to put this thing to use (it has been sitting on my desk for three weeks at this point). Is there a chance that I did mess up the power circuitry on the board (the screw did sit very tight and did require a decent amount of pressure to become loose)? If that did indeed happen, I guess there is not really a chance for me to fix it myself, right? I will definitely try to get in contact with the seller, but unfortunately they appear to be out of stock for these clients as well. Assuming I did indeed damage some part of the circuitry, what would be my best options to proceed? Visit some board level repair shop to let them take a look and see if they can fix it. I have no experience with these kinds of shops, but if the damage is relatively minor this should be fairly economical, right? Try and get a similar ThinClient CPU wise and use the RAM and SSD from my current one as donor parts to get it fully specced (seems like prices have increased dramatically, probably due to limited supply over the holiday season)?

Yes, it came with an OEM power supply unit. It also says 19V - 2.1A, so we should be fine there. Unfortunately I don't have anything to actually measure the voltage that being supplied by the PSU. However, I can't remember it having those issues on the first couple boots

Hello all, I recently purchased a refurbished Fujitsu S740 Thin Client with the Intention of using it as a small home server for some frequently used docker containers and home assistant. It came with 8GB RAM and a 16GB SSD (m.2 SATA). It seemed to work fine, but when I'm booting it up right now I am getting an error message along the lines of It initially seemed to work fine, but eventually it started showing this error message. I didn't really change anything about it, the only change I made was replacing the 16GB SSD with a 240 GB m2-SATA SSD (had to be a little bit rough with the screw holding in the factory assembled one, but made sure not to damage the board). Does anyone have an Idea what could cause this issue and how I could fix it? Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone, I'm looking for a decent yet affordable microphone setup for my homeoffice/discord/potentially voiceover needs. I just want to improve my audio quality since my current headset sounds like I'm screaming into a trashbin. I'm primarily going to use it for online conferences on MS Teams, voice chats on Discord and potentially Voiceovers for YouTube Videos. I did some research and from what I found, I came up with the following configurations: Rode Procaster XLR Mic (150€) M-Audio AIR 192|4 (105€) Rode PSA-1 Microphone Arm (75€) Config 2: Rode Podcaster Dynamic USB Mic (165€) Rode PSA-1 Microphone Arm (75€) Config 3: Rode Procaster XLR Mic (150€) Rode PSA-1 Microphone Arm (75€) Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen (101€) Is there a chance anyone here is working with one of those configurations and can share some feedback on the gear? Which setup would you choose? Do you have any alternative suggestions? Is the added cost of a XRL mic worth it? I appreciate your feedback!

Yeah you're probably right, while a ultrawide monitor looks pretty cool, its a bit overpowered. I think I'm better off purchasing the two 27" monitors you suggested and spending the money I have left towards a proper docking solution for my MBP and my work notebook

Not really a strict one. I'd set 1000€ as a hard limit for now for the cost of the complete monitor setup

Hey everyone, I'm looking into buying a new monitor for my homeoffice setup, which is long overdue. I'm currently starting at single 23" FHD monitor, which is less than ideal. I've been thinking about getting an Ultrawide monitor (LG 49WL95C-W or similar) or maybe two seperate monitors. My main focus is on productivity (programming + office work) with occasional casual gaming sessions. My main machine is a 2019 16" MBP. 1440p would be perfect, 60Hz is sufficient, more is appreciated nontheless. Do you have any suggestions on monitors, maybe from your own experience?

It totally depends on the software you're using, your requirements and your budget. To say that in advance, there are a bunch a very good windows alternatives such as the Dell XPS series where a lot of people share very good experience, they are a bit cheaper than the current intel based MacBooks in their respective sizes. If you want a MacBook, then you should especially consider which software you'll need. While Apple software such as Final Cut Pro, Logic etc will most likely work perfectly fine on those systems, most of Adobes Creative Suite and maybe other applications such as the Affinity Suite won't run natively on the Apple Silicon processors. I know that there are beta programs for Creative Cloud programs in progress, bringing a native version to the M1, but just because it runs natively does not mean its equal to the x86 counterparts. Resource intensive applications such as photo or video editing programs include a bunch of highly optimized low level code, porting that is not just the matter of hitting a button to cross compile, it requires actual changes to the code and can therefore take a while. Another problem is that such highly optimized code often does not play nicely with solutions like Rosetta 2 (the program that allows you to run x86 apps on apple silicon). And even if there is a native version, that does not automatically mean that the performance is equal to Intel counterparts due to the lack of platform specific optimizations. I'm sure Adobe is working hard on bringing the most efficient version of their applications to the Apple Silicon platform. However, the battery life of the Apple Silicon chips is absolutely amazing, so if that is an important consideration for you (which it probably is since you seem to plan using it during your commute). Also, if you plan to use it actually while working on the go, maybe take a look at the 14" model. I'm currently sitting in front of my 16" Intel MacBook Pro and while its a decent form factor to carry around when switching desks etc work etc, I don't think its a good permanent solution for working on the go.

I won't put anything directly onto the internet. We have a decently fast home connection with 100mpbs down and 30mbps upload, so I will configure VPN connections for the notebooks and the mobile phones. This was the plan anyways and my router provides a relatively easy service for to securely configure a VPN, including a dynamic dns. But I won't put the home server on the internet. You're right, that's probably a better option for photo sync and a decent option for document storage as well (my dad wants to move his dropbox to the NAS) Most likely we'll just use native clients anyways. Our main TV is a new Samsung Smart TV which supports the native Plex app. My brother and I will use the Windows/Mac client and the phones will use the android clients anyways. The only time where I can see transcoding become necessary is for the Chromecast for the home gym tv, but that single stream shouldn't be the with quick sync.

Looking at the RAM prices for 2x8 GB kits, I might go with 2x8GB from the start, since these are only 15€ cheaper than decent 2x4GB Kits Yeah I know, but the Plex Pass Subscription seems really reasonable. From what I found the subscription is also necessary for the Photo Library sync. Really? I read that calculating the parity heavily impacts the write speed which can be avoided when using the array. Given that I'm going to ingest quite bit of data when adding our movie library, I'm afraid that this will be too much of a bottleneck. Do you think this will be an issue our will write speeds still be sufficiently fast?

Hey everyone, I'm currently planning a NAS for my family. I researched and decided on a few components, but I also have a few questions. As for software, the NAS is supported to be a backup solution for 3 Notebooks, 3 Desktops and 4 (Android/iOS) Phones, main focus are photos and images. We also want to digitize the entire DVD/BD and CD collection. For this usecase, Plex with Plex Pass seems like the most complete and easy to use solution (especially for photo backups). The only additional service I plan on utilizing is a steam local cache and a PiHole server. First, these are the components (for price comparisons, I am in Germany, I'll add the cheapest price to the list as well.) MSI MAG B460M Mortar 89€: Was the cheapest I could find, has plenty of SATA connectors which seemed to be an issue with most small for factor mainboards Intel Core i3-10100 101€: CPU Supports Quick Sync, which I hope should be enough for transcoding in case a Plex client doesn't support direct play. Pre Transcoding all the files isn't really an option since we want too keep all the extras of the disk 8GB of RAM (2x4GB) 36€: just want to keep the option of upgrading to 16GB in the future Fractal Design Node 804 99€: This seems to be the best case for that usecase with 8 3.5" drive slots. I'd prefer a smaller case, but want at least 6 drive bays, do you have any suggestions for alternative cases? be quiet! System Power 9 CM 500W 60€: Seemed like a decent option for the price with the potential to add an entry level GPU in the future in case Intel QuickSync transcoding is not enough 2 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf 98€: Just getting two drives for the entry level setup, will add drives down the road. Main goal was to keep the initial price down since we're already at 700€ Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD 500GB 50€: I plan on using it as a cache drive, especially for data ingestion. I plan on using unraid as my operating system, seems like the best option and I like the broad availability of resources on the topic. Now regarding my questions All of these components are new. Is the CPU/Motherboard combination good or should I search for alternatives? Do you have any suggestions? Is 8GB of RAM for my usecase sufficient or should I go to the 16 GB from the beginning? Our movie collection is mainly made of DVDs, but we also have some FHD and UHD BlueRays with the plan to add more in the future. Will QuickSync transcoding be sufficient to serve a few clients? I appreciate your feedback and advice - MoVo

Hey everyone, I'm currently planning a home network upgrade for my family. Part of that upgrade is a NAS system that should be used for Windows and Phone backups (especially images and important Documents), multimedia (a whole bunch of CDs and DVDs, also a few BlueRays). We're on a pretty limited budget, my dad doesn't want to spend more than 350€ (excluding drives) Addionally, the NAS should be used for a few additional services Print Server (the network printer functionality of our printer is awful) / cloud print PiHole NextCloud (for easy document sharing in the home network, especialy across the phones) Plex (4K Streaming to a 4K TV if possible, transcoding is probably not feasable at this price, is it?) SMB Share for Windows Backups I checked a bunch of reviews for commercial options and the DiksStations by Synology appear the be the most popular prebuilt systems. However, the prices seem quite high, especially for the slightly more powerful ones. The one that seemed to have enough power (DS718+) comes in at 435€ without any drives. So I wondered if self-building was a (good) option. I did some research and found a few (older) articles recommending a setup similar to this Intel Celeron j3455 Mainboard (100€) 8GB RAM (30€) Case + PSU ? 4 TB NAS Drives (~120€ each) Would something like this be a good setup for my usecase or would it be too low-powered? Would you guys recommend building a custom system or buy a commercial product? If you'd choose the commercial product, do you have any devices that would fit my usecase? I appreciate your help!

It doesn't need as compact to not be able to house a PSU. The main concern is just that the PC shouldn't be too big to be able to fit on a relatively small desk. So they were looking into a very compact system, that I'm trying to deliver. At first we were looking into just using a thin client, but they're too limited in their resources to be a good pc, so thats not really an option. Another alternative are compact PCs like HP Prodesk, but they are pretty expensive, so I thought about self-building. I know that its quite challenging if not impossible to buy standard parts as small as a ProDesk, but I want to get it as close as possible in order to make the prices more comparable. It can be a little bit bigger, but it also should be quite a bit cheaper. NUCs are not really an option, they are just too expensive with comparable specs. that seems like a really interesting option. Do I understand correctly that this is a Case + Motherboard combination? The only problem is that it is only available with an A300 chipset which doesn't support 3rd Gen Ryzen iirc?

Budget (including currency): 450€ (exkl. Windows 10) Country: Germany Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: The PC is mainly used for office work with the standard apps like Word, PowerPoint as well as some specialized applications. Other details: The PC is a replacement for an old notebook. My friend bough a notebook because he thought he might could need it otherwise. However, the notebook did not leave the room once, so we figured a desktop system would be a better replacement, especially when it comes to price/performance. Since the PC is located in a space with costumers, the PC should be as compact as possible in order to hide it relatively easy (or make the setup look clean) My main issue is regarding the case. I figured, a CPU with integrated grapics should be enough for the kind of workload and should last long enough. So I was searching for micro-ATX cases, but all of them were still quite big since they all had enough space to fit a medium to large sized dedicated GPU inside. Do you have any recommendations for a very small for factor case (thats preferably relatively easy to build in) that doesn't break the budget? I appreciate your suggestions! PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor €89.90 @ Amazon Deutschland Motherboard MSI B450M PRO-M2 MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard €74.89 @ Mindfactory Memory Crucial 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory €47.99 @ Amazon Deutschland Storage Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive €82.90 @ Amazon Deutschland Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total €295.68 Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-11 15:46 CEST+0200

Thank you for your suggestions, unfortunately nothing really helped. Looking up the hostname resolving using nslookup did result in the right ip, but the connection still didn't work. Pinging the server's ip resulted in a timeout, but the other services like the webserver running on that server are accesible on the same machine. I improvised a solution adding a startup script that unmounts all of the network-shares and adds them back by IP. That seemed to work fine. Since the server is feeling rather unresponsive (its a rather old one, but since its only a NAS with relatively few clients I figured it'd be fine; I double checked and its actually running Windows Server 2012 R2, not 2008. But still, its eol) I have a feeling that the connection doesn't actually fail but rather time out. For the time being the solution helps until the long overdue network/hardware revamp is done. The notebook that's causing the problems is probably going to be replaced within the next two months. If my friend considers a revamp I'll suggest a FreeNAS/Unraid/similar machine instead of a Windows server (although I'll have to double check if they have software that requires Windows server). thats a bit OT, but can you recommend good resources for company-servers for small companies (around 10 clients). I see a lot of people recommending "old" enterprise server gear, but is that actually a good option? (They don't have huge storage requirements, they'd be probably fine with 4TBs of redundant storage). Again, thank you for your help!

Thats the odd part, the server is reachable by the other machines with no problems. The client thats having problems is connecting to the internet just fine and also shows up the other computers in the network. I already suggested a network overhaul with sufficient isolation between private devices and company devices, a server upgrade (probably with Unraid or FreeNAS) and offsite backups. But I don't feel like I have the knowledge (and time) to realize that, so I suggested he should try to get a good IT guy asap. Until now, I won't reinstall the server since the previous IT guy laid so many traps in the network configuration already, I don't feel like I could figure issues there out. I will drive over today and check if the hostname resolution works. If not, I'll try to set the Windows Server as the DNS server. I'll also double check the discovery services on Windows. I'll also double check the network connection of the server. I'll let you know as soon as I tried all the troubleshooting steps you mentioned.

DHCP and the standard DNS are both on the router. The windows server is just used for the network shares. I will try that tomorrow, I courrently don't have access to the network. It is connecting to the same network as all of the other clients do. All of the clients are using the same DHCP and DNS server (runnning on the router box), and just this specific Win7 client cannot connect to the network shares. It just reports that the given network path cannot be found. I assume that is because it cannot reach the Win2008server, no matter if I'm using the hostname or the IP address. But using the IP address should at least return a ping, shouldn't it? Edit: The exact error message we're getting is "Network Path not Found" in case that helps