PenguinMaster

1 hour ago, person123456789 said:

sennheiser hd600

Changed to budget of $250

Hi all,

I am looking to buy a new gaming headset for someone and the budget is anything under $250.  It needs to be compatible with PC at minimum but if it is compatible with PS5 and Xbox also that would be nice. I would prefer wireless, but wired is also okay as long as it is a nice headset.  Sound quality is definitely the first priority over anything else.

Any recommendations are greatly appreciated

Hi all,

I need to be able to run a switch outside because I have a couple of ethernet devices that will plug into it.  I have a switch flex mini laying around so I would like to be able to use that if possible.  My idea was to place the switch in a weatherproof enclosure since its not weatherproof.  My only concern is it states the operating temperature can only be -5 to 45° C (23 to 113° F).  In my area the temperature can get to 0° F and sometimes a bit below.  Would it be possible to still use this switch?

Any ideas would be great!

Update: I was given a Dell Inspiron 14 5400 2 in 1 - 14 Inch FHD Touchscreen, Intel Core i7, 12GB Memory, 512GB SSD laptop from a family member.  I think that should be good for me.

12 hours ago, TylerD321 said:

What do you think of this lenovo laptop?

I think it could be a potential laptop.  I was looking at the Lenovo ThinkPad and ThinkBook series and also the Dell XPS.  Which of the two would you recommend?

2 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

Pretty much every single Razor Laptop is designed to fail due to heat death.

Oh lol I did not realize they had a lot of problems

2 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

Is there a reason you dont want a Ryzen based 5000/6000 laptop?

AMD is fine also.  I just have not heard much about their laptop chips.

3 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

id say you are better off with 15.6 over anything 13 or 14.

The desks at my college are extremely tiny so I have a 13 inch laptop currently and it fills the whole table top.

@BiotechBen @Shimejii

I live in the US and also I'm a cybersecurity major.  So far what I've needed to use my laptop for in college was for Python coding and Wireshark.  Not sure what the future will hold though.

For specs an i5 or an i7 is fine and I would rather have good battery life over having a graphics card in the system.  8 Gigs is probably okay for my use case but I really would prefer 12 or 16.  For storage I think anything over 500GB is reasonable.  For size I would say 15" is my absolute max with 13 & 14 inch laptops preferred.

Do all razers have problems or is it just the ones with dedicated graphics cards?

Also I had a feud with HP in the past so I hate them now and will no longer support them

Hi all-

I am looking to get a new laptop for college and my budget is anything around $1000.  I was looking for a windows machine as that is what my school mostly uses.  I do not really need it for any type of gaming since I have a desktop but if it can that would be a plus.  I was thinking something like the Razer Book or Blade since I like the big trackpad like the Apple MacBooks but if theres anything similar I would also consider it.  I was also thinking the Framework Laptop Kit could be a possibility.

What do you guys think?

I am open to used laptops - the Razer Blade would most likely need to be used.  Also for some reason I can't find the Razer Book at MSRP it seems like people are scalping the price on them for some reason.

Input is greatly appreciated

5 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Well I know Apple do not support 160Mhz, so that may limit the speed, although the wider the channel width the more likely you are to have problems at range.

 

You mentioned through two walls, I assume you tried in the same room as the Access Point too?  As losing half your speed (or even most of it) through two walls is not that unusual.

I played around with the channel settings a little bit and I got it to work.  Now I am seeing 500Mbps+ when a couple of feet away from the access points.  There is this new weird issue happening though on my IoT network.  My google Nest Hub keeps creating random MAC addresses.  It created 3 so far... I click "forget" and they come right back.  Theres no traffic going through it either.

3 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

What client(s) are you trying?

An iPhone 13 Pro and an M1 MacBook Pro

35 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

That too, if you're looking for anything like 800Mbit you likely need 80Mhz channel width, with some clients I've even needed 160Mhz even though 80Mhz should have been enough.

THATS IT!! Increasing from 40Mhz to 80Mhz increased my speed from 200Mbps to 300Mbps and when I pushed it to 160Mhz it went up to 400Mbps - through two walls!

EDIT: Nvm the 400Mbps was a fluke.  I ran the test a second time and it went right back to 300Mbps. Disappointing

Hi all

I have a couple of Ubiquiti WiFi 6 Long range and Lite Access Points around my house and after setting them up I found I was only able to get between 200Mbps to 300Mbps maximum.  I set them up with most of the settings on default or auto.  These access points should easily be able to do 500Mbps+ (which is also my internet speed).  I did an environment scan (see picture), so maybe theres too much congestion on a channel?  But my access points are around channel 48 and theres no 5G interference around those channels??  I ran the speed test on a 5Ghz Network.

I am not sure what the problem could be?

Also I'm new to Ubiquiti gear so its likely I missed something.

3 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

I mean it allows us to use one antenna and have TV on all devices. I have the HD homerun with 4 tuners and its nice. The reason why I use Live TV is we have a data cap, so it allows us to watch TV without using much data, as Plex uses maybe 1.5 Gigs in a month. I have yet to try the feature that strips commercials automatically from recordings. I do find that sometimes when you're trying to skip commercials when watching recordings that you hit the limit the device buffered the content, so you have to wait for it to catch up. Other than that it works well. 

 

The other good thing about the DVR is the content isnt encrypted like it would be if you used one from the cable co. So you can literally copy the recorded works and take the with you. So if you wanted to watch them locally on a computer for example. Also if you find you need more tuners because you want to have more recordings and watchings going on at once, you can use multiple tuners if you wish, Just make sure your antenna setup supports this use case. 

 

The only issue I find with the DVR function is that some stations cant be enabled because guide data is not available to them. I find these are mostly useless channels but it does happen. Some times this information is made available after a while some times not. I think I have over 60 channels but only 55 can be enabled. 

What antenna setup do you guys have?  I think this is the way I'll go in the future.

On 8/3/2022 at 2:28 AM, Jarsky said:

f its only a media server (Plex/Emby/Jellyfin, and its eco system of apps torrent client, overseerr, sonarr, radarr, etc...) then the i5 12600K as well as a GTX 1650 are overkill. 

Thank you for the input and that parts list.  Will definitely take a look at the parts when I go to build it!

On 8/2/2022 at 9:55 PM, LIGISTX said:

Unraid has some features that are nice, truenas has others

I did a lot of research and decided to go with the UNRaid path.  

On 8/2/2022 at 9:55 PM, LIGISTX said:

Will there be much transcoding happening? What is the main use case for plex streaming?

I actually don't know how much real transcoding will be going on.  Like you said it seems like maybe a lot of direct play.

On 8/2/2022 at 9:55 PM, LIGISTX said:

This is like trying to kill a spider with a flame thrower

I love this analogy 

I am mainly going to use this machine for just the NAS and for Plex and I have another "desktop in a server chassis" machine that I can use to play around with linux or whatever I decide to use it for.  It's a 2U and it has an i5 9600 and 16 GB of ram and a 500GB ssd.  Plenty for what I'll end up using it for for now, but like you said who knows what the future will hold...

So it seems like I'll end up selling the HP server because of the power consumption and go with some regular consumer parts.  

On 8/2/2022 at 9:51 PM, Donut417 said:

Live TV DVR functionally are locked behind the Plex pass

What do you think about the Live TV feature on Plex?

Also thank you for the other information on transcoding and about the GPU!

@LIGISTX

This was the original server I was planning to build but it is a little too expensive and seems overkill.

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9S 46.44 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Storage: Samsung 980 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung 980 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital Red Plus 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Western Digital Red Plus 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Western Digital Red Plus 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Western Digital Red Plus 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Western Digital Red Plus 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Western Digital Red Plus 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1650 G5 4 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS PLUS 850 Gold 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Wired Network Adapter: Intel X550-T2 2 x 10 Gb/s Ethernet PCIe x4 Network Adapter
Custom: Unraid Plus OS

Case: Rosewill 4U Server Chassis RSV-R4000U

44 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

If you had 10 GBe networking and set up an iSCSI array, maybe

Oops I forgot to mention that my house is run for 10GbE CAT6A.

44 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

don't transcode 4k

So when adding movies to plex make sure they are already in 4K?  Or don't store 4K at all?

44 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

2 parity drives saved me

My original plan was to have the 2 parity drives.

44 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

RAID is not a buckup

I have a mac mini with a 16TB WD External HDD to back up the server.  Should be good enough for my purposes.

44 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

but the surface level bit is unraid is A LOT easier to add storage to down the line

Yeah I've read a lot about both of them and it seems like most people are recommending UNRaid over TrueNAS because its more simple for first time users to comprehend also.  I think UNRaid is the way I will go.

44 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

ZFS does a LOT of work in the background to keep your data 100% in tact forever and ever, unraid doesn't do this

This is something to consider, I don't really see myself adding more drives in any time soon either so that benefit of UNRaid doesn't seem like a huge benefit to me.  Do you think TrueNAS is a better choice?

44 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Plex can use a GPU for transcoding, but if you don't need to transcode, no, you don't need a GPU. OR you can use the CPU to transcode which will almost certainly be plenty enough power.

So would it be better to get a higher tier CPU and no GPU or get a lower tier CPU or mid-tier and a GPU?

44 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Do you have an old PC laying around?

I don't right now so I would either need to buy someone's used system on eBay or buy new parts and build something.

I actually was originally planning on using a Dell DL380 Gen9 server for this which I upgraded to have 28 cores, 56 threads, 64gb of ddr4, a P440 SAS Card, and a 10Gb SFP+ NIC but after a bit my family realized the fans it has in it are way too loud even though its in the basement.  Also power consumption is a bit high on it.  If there's a way to quiet it down a bit I would actually like to use it.

Would you reccomend SSDs for a cache drive?  I was thinking like 2 Samsung 980 1TBs or something similiar.

Hi all,

I am looking to build a new NAS / Plex Server.  I talked about it in the past before but I never ended up making anything due to budget constraints, but now I have the money to spend on one.  I am a noob when it comes to the UNRaid / TrueNAS so I am not sure which I should pick.  I want the NAS portion for picture storing and some game file storing, like save on one computer to the NAS and then pick back up on another computer.  Like maybe install my Steam library to the NAS.  For the PLEX portion there will be times where 3 people are streaming at the same time at 4K resolution (Apple TVs).  I am looking for some advice on what specs I should be looking for... I would prefer to buy some used hardware to save some money if possible.

I already have 6 WD RED Plus 4TB HDDs for this NAS.  What RAID settings should I use?  1 redundant or 2 redundant drives?

Why pick UNRaid over TrueNAS or vice versa?

Does PLEX benefit from a GPU?  Would an RTX 2060 be fine for this?

Thanks for any help

On 7/18/2022 at 5:45 PM, emosun said:

the os can't open the files anyway so delete them and see if it stops

Yup that worked!

Hi all,

Thanks for your advice.  I ended up getting two APC SMC1500C as they met my power requirements, price requirements, and also have network abilities.  This is more of a redundant setup because there is an LG chem battery from our solar on our house that backs up the data outlet so this is more meant to bridge the gap between when the power goes out and the LG Chem kicks on.

I traced it back to some of the files it was calling for and it created these weird files in Users

Also no this isn't a virus this is a fresh copy of windows with only a very few reputable programs installed.

9 hours ago, SamClan said:

Furthermore check what is booting up with your system. You should still find it in your Taskmanager 

 

Throw everything out you don't need 

I did that and the prompt is still showing up. Very strange.  It is definitely related to Visual Studio though.

16 hours ago, emosun said:

Why not check the name and directory of the file to see if its at all relevant to you

It wont even let me see where the file is originating from

Hi

When I start my PC after rebooting or shutting down, I always get a prompt that says "how would you like to open this file".  So I picked Notepad to see what it was, and this is the dialogue it gave me.  It happens every single time I start the system.  I think it has to do with Visual Studio?  But I am not sure.  Does anyone know how to stop this?  I am using windows 11.

Edit: I had to create a paste bin link because the whole notepad output didn't fit in the post

https://pastebin.com/uWr9YDgZ