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artkingjw

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Everything posted by artkingjw

  1. I might just DIY a solution: Get one of these clamps, and stick/glue my preferred cable clip on top.
  2. I found something kinda similar for lighting rigs instead of desks... https://www.cosmomusic.ca/on-stage-lta4880-lighting-clamp-with-cable-management-system---pair/p
  3. Thanks for the suggestion. This one is interesting, does it clamp well? or does it move very easily? It's also limited to 3 cables though, was hoping for a bigger bunch.
  4. Hi, this feels like a stupid product to want but does a cable management clip exist that uses a clamp system instead of double sided tape? I've attached 2 images of adhesive cable management clips. Surely there must be some sort of C-clamp version out there? I just want something to gather a big bunch of cables, at a position near the edge of my desk, and keep them neatly there. But I want to be able to reposition them without dealing with double sided tape, nor having to drill/re-drill into my desk top? Even a C clamp that has a loop on top to take a cable tie would be good. Anyone seen something similar? Cheers
  5. @mariushm thanks for the suggestion. I think the fans I have don't respond to low voltages well. I remember using them in my PC case, with a potentiometer fan speed adjuster, and the fans had trouble spinning up at the low speed setting. Also, I believe PWM can go much lower than voltage adjustments alone, which would be the purpose of going PWM for this case.
  6. Hi all, I have an unconventional request, but can anyone recommend some sort of standalone PWM controller to power some spare PWM fans that I have. This is NOT for building a PC, but for a side project, where I need a small amount of silent airflow only. Ideally, this would be some sort of hub, with a knob. An Arduino based solution could work, but would take some time as I'm not familiar with it. I would rather not try to source a CPU+motherboard+PSU just for this purpose if I can help it. Any recommendations will be appreciated. Thanks.
  7. Hi all, I haven't seen this posted yet, but Tech Deals had a live stream with relevant discussion. I'm still very early in the VOD, but one of the ideas raised was having an Editor in Chief (they also cite Dr Cutress for this idea)... Seems like a very balanced and informative discussion so far. EDIT: I did a search for 'tech deals' - didn't flag anything, but apologies if i missed it, this thread is LONG. EDIT2: I'm much further into the VOD now, and wow this is good. In a, very level-head, wise uncle sort of way. I don't think he has all of the info, but he seems to know enough to have useful opinions. A shame that it just won't be as popular because it doesn't promote outrage in the way that GN, LMG, many others tend to.
  8. Just wanted to echo agreement on OP's opinion. This thread has been reasonable so far. I feel like unions have been romanticized too much in the recent past. I am a member of a union. They can be good for certain things, but IMO are often bad for many others.
  9. To get back on topic, here are my absolutely worthless 2 cents. To me, the answer feels more like it should be "No... but they have to stop VERY soon". To me, it feels like they have been growing too fast for too long. They will need time to consolidate, then grow again when the time is right. This is just based on how I've observed the teams that I've been apart of grow over time. Obviously anecdotal, many solutions exist, etc.
  10. Yea, but USB ports tend to fail more often as they are meant to be used often. Think about how often you would be expected to insert/remove a flash drive. The contacts can wear out, the plug material can also wear out and loosen. A SATA data port just sits there, and (usually, and in my case) rarely gets touched after the build. Oh well thanks for your suggestion.
  11. UPDATE: I tried to isolate variables by swapping ports and cables. During this process, all drives started working again. This sounds like a loose cable situation, even though no cable was loose, and all my SATA data cables had the metal latch on them. My best guess is improper contact of a pin due to oxidation or something... I remember cleaning sim cards years ago when a phone didn't detect the inserted sim. Some light rubbing tended to remove any dirt/oxide layer. The process of swapping ports must have had enough abrasion to clear the contact patch on an affected pin. Seems like the problem is solved for now...
  12. Hi all, I have a Ryzen 1700x + ASUS B350 Prime Plus system, built in 2017. There haven't been many upgrades/changes since then, cable managed very cleanly, with slack for all cables etc. I'm wondering how likely it is that one SATA port on my MoBo has died? or would it more likely be my SATA cable? Recently, one of my HDD's (Disk A) disappeared from Windows, and appeared as RAW in Windows Disk Management, BUT trying to do anything to the disk (change to 'offline', reformat etc) lead to Disk Management becoming irresponsive. CrystalDisk said it was fine though, SMART stats looked ok. It also prevented my PC from shutting down, and booting into Windows. These issues stopped after I physically disconnected Disk A from the computer. However, Disk A was usable through a HDD toaster. Plugging a new HDD (Disk B) into the same SATA port lead to similar symptoms as before. Plugging Disk B into a different SATA port did not show any problems. I'm frantically backing up data from the original 'failed' (but not failed) disk now, just in case. Disk A is a Seagate, which makes me slightly more paranoid. I haven't swapped the SATA data cables, nor SATA power cables yet. However, all of my drives share SATA power from the same daisy chain. If the problem is as I fear, the MoBo... how likely is it for my other SATA ports to also fail? Should I get a new MoBo ASAP? I'm kinda in a busy period of life now, using this computer for work... Thanks
  13. Hi all, I need some help with a storage spaces storage pool. OS: Windows 10 Pro SATA Drives: Samsung SSD (Boot), DVD-RW, 2 x WD Blue 4TB, 2 x other HDD's I have two 4TB drives setup in two-way mirror mode via storage spaces, many years ago. The pool is almost full now, and one of the drives is showing some pending sectors, so I snagged two new 8TB drives in a good deal. I intend to replace 2 x 4TB (mirror'd) drives with 2 x 8TB drives, maintaining it in NTFS, and maintaining all data since I have some programs installed in this pool. I'm wondering what the best approach is? I've seen some tutorials on how to do this for drives of the same size, but not for different (larger) new drives, which I expect would create some issues? I also clicked the 'upgrade pool' button, which I understand is some sort of new feature, so I'm not sure if it affects how previous tutorials work. I use the DVD-RW drive, and the two other HDD's for work data. Therefore, it would be best to minimize the downtime of these drives if possible. The way I see it, one way would be to remove the other two work HDD's - mount the 2 new 8TB drives, and set up a new storage pool on those drives. Then, copy everything from the old pool into the new pool, unmount the old pool and rename the new pool's drive path. Is this sensible? Thanks in advance for your feedback.
  14. Here is a list of official CPU's supported, which I believe is used in the Serve The Home article on these things: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-au/optiplex-7060-desktop/opti_7060_sff_setup_specs_manual/processor?guid=guid-e178c653-4f96-4d67-8c6e-0d7e87454d21&lang=en-us After some more digging, I found this: https://www.dell.com/community/Optiplex-Desktops/Optiplex-7060-SFF-Upgrade-from-i5-8500-to-i7-9700/m-p/7776901/highlight/true#M47761 It suggests my mod will most likely work, with some tinkering. Just need to make sure that the cooling config + power supply are adequate (the G5400 is a 58W TDP chip, so it is incompatible with the i5-8500T, but will be compatible with the 65W normal 8500). Dell seems to sell two variants of the same computer - the T class processors get a 90W PSU, while the normal processors get a 130W PSU. I'll also need to check if there's a RAID config that gonna mess with the processor swap. There's also an unofficial BIOS for 9th gen support. EDIT: If anyone is wondering, I did end up snagging a 7060 for a good price, and I did swap it's 8500 (non-T) for my G5400. Both machines still work. The T version uses less power, so I didn't trust a prebuilt with that CPU to deliver the same wattage, those also tend to come with a lower spec power brick. The non-T version has a comparable wattage to the G5400, so with the supplied power brick, everything works as expected.
  15. The 'T' just means it's a lower power consumption chip, it's clocked lower, everything else seems to be the same as the 'normal' 8500. It doesn't seem to be a mobile lower chip though.
  16. Yea, my suspicions were raised when I couldn't find any guides on swapping the CPU for this particular model, merely SSD and RAM upgrades. Does not look promising... just wondering if anyone here has had experience working with these machines before.
  17. Budget (including currency): ~AU$500 Country: Australia Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Plex, (Linux) VM's, NAS 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 all, this one is a little complicated and not 1 build per say... in short: I want a little more power in my NAS, and add a second SFF machine to my setup (HTPC). I currently have an unraid NAS running on: Pentium G5400, Gigabyte B365M HD3, 16Gb RAM, Quadro P600, Corsair RM550x, LSI HBA running a 7 drive array. There are two parity drives. The NAS runs a fairly typical array of docker containers for downloads, file sync, and media server duties. Most of the time, this processor is enough for my needs. The processor seems to be a bottleneck during times such as disk preclearing, parity checks, and when transcoding more than 1 video - all threads get pinned to 100%, or near 100% usage for more than a few seconds, and file access slows down, even on the cache pool. Also, I can't run transcodes (even on GPU) and something like a parity check simultaneously. I'm also keen on playing around with some virtual machines on my unraid server, mostly just for fun/curiosity. I'm sure that my transcodes (Plex and Tdarr) are using the GPU, so any CPU use is just unavoidable overhead. My plan is to upgrade the CPU to something efficient, but has more cores/performance than the G5400. At the same time, I've been thinking about adding a SFF HTPC to our living room. So I've been eyeing some refurbished Dell Optiplex 7060s that happen to contain an i5-8500T - these are priced around $500 or so, which is as much as I would be willing to spend on this project at this point. They also happen to be nice and small, which wins mega points with the rest of the house. So the idea is to get one of these Optiplex 7060's, and swap the i5-8500T with my Pentium G5400 in the NAS. The NAS will be upgraded to an i5-8500T, and the Optiplex will be downgraded to a Pentium G5400. We won't be gaming on the HTPC, just Plex/Netflix etc. some web browsing, using the included Windows 10 Pro license for now. Is this a wise move? Would this be possible on the Optiplex? These chips should be of the same generation, use the same socket, and are compatible with the same chipsets? Feedback is appreciated. Thanks! P.S. There are various models of 7060's so the i5-8500T may end up being an i5-8500 non-T version, depending on availability.
  18. Thanks for the help, I think I've got a good head start now. There is also the idea of building the system in a more conventional silence optimized case, but making our own straps/handles for ergonomic transport. This way we should have larger Mobo sizes available to us, with more flexibility on PCIE slot numbers. But that's an ongoing discussion. For now, further testing has shown that we can proceed in the short term with a ghetto workaround without getting a new computer. Not really keen on prebuilts, we have loads of these older machines lying around (being a university) and they also sound louder than we'd want. For starters they seem to have a PSU with an always on fan + a small whinny CPU fan. The more recent units we have are also too small to have PCIE slots. Cheers
  19. RE the Prodigy M - gotcha. GPU is only to display something, nothing fancy. Thanks for pointing out airflow. After thinking about it, it seems this might be the optimal route. A small RAM and thermal sacrifice on the CPU side, but an extra free PCIE slot, and one less fan (or set of fans) to worry about. It seems there is a way to limit the vram allocation in bios. Thanks
  20. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm thinking of reserving system RAM for the cameras as much as possible, while running one of those passively cooled GPU's. In theory this would reduce heat output on the CPU side too, allowing me to maybe run a fan-less, or at least 0-rpm fan tuning? I remember seeing a fan-less aircooler on SPCR a few years ago. Looks like two votes for the Prodigy so far. Although it seems to have 2 PCIE slots only, which isn't a deal breaker.
  21. Thanks for the suggestions. Yea I was worried about small + cooling as smaller fans tend to be higher revving and therefore noisier. We're still new to these cameras, but the machine we're testing them on at the moment is using dual Xeon E5-2620 V2s quite a few 860 EVO's plugged in (non-RAID) and 32 GB of RAM. It's basically a tower server. It's been performing well enough in preliminary testing, but we haven't stressed tested it with thousands of images yet. As far as I can tell, as long as we don't do major image processing work on this machine (which we should not), then anything decently powerful enough to run Windows + storage spaces + VNC with some overhead will suit. The bottlenecks are with RAM and SSD capacity+speed. The acquisition software pre-allocates RAM, but tries to fill the target SSD first. Theoretical maximum data rate per camera is around 300 megabytes/second (3 X 100 megabyte images per second); we currently have a pair of these cameras, but may move up to 4 cameras in the future.
  22. Hi all, I'm at a university and our research group might need a silent yet (semi-)portable computer for data acquisition. Does anyone have case recommendations for such a build? It needs to have space for at least 2, but ideally 4 PCIEx4 single slot cards because our scientific cameras are picky and will only work with the specified PCIE cards. The lab environment we're working in is noise sensitive, so we'll need to make reasonable effort at noise reduction, bringing the PC as close to silent as possible. Thankfully the only job his PC has is data acquisition so power and heat are of minimal concern. For portability I'm hoping for something like a handle, or at least something that does not weigh too much so it's easy to move around the lab. Castors won't work for various reasons. Any suggestions welcome. Cheers. EDIT: The PCIE cards come with an option for a short PCIE bracket, presumably for server racks.
  23. Hi, I got a new Seagate Barracuda HDD today and decided to check it with SeaTools, in case I received a dud, but more for curiosity. It's plugged in to my computer via a USB dock at the moment. After launching SeaTools, it scans for any drive that's plugged in to my machine. But I noticed that it tends to kick out this new Barracuda drive. As a result, Windows gives an error that says something like "the last USB device you connected to this computer has malfunctioned and windows doesn't recognize it". The drive no longer appears in Explorer, nor is it detected by Disk Management. The drive activity light on my USB dock remains on. Is there anything I should be concerned about? Is this just a bug in SeaTools? Is it my drive or is it the USB dock? Am I paranoid? I've started a test on HDDScan instead, 4% complete and so far so good. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
  24. magical Qnap fan... maybe the WD fan just sucks hard (or... not hard enough as it were.. ba dum tss). Or maybe its just my house/location way west of Sydney. 30c is about the coolest I've ever seen my drives run myself.
  25. mate that's exactly what I did haha. I got the WD EX4 for something like 200 AUD on eBay. Look how it turned out... All premade NAS units look like they lack cooling to me. Drives are tightly packed with a weak fan at the back. Unless you've got a different experience with Qnap/Synology?
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