PenguinMaster

I have recently been assigned the task of updating my uncles business' computers and storage server. Their current computers are from 2013 and the server is from 2011 and this year they finally decided that the crashes made it so they couldn't work efficiently anymore. They have about 7 or 8 employees working there. For the new desktops I picked Dell OptiPlex 3080 Micros. I was between the OptiPlex 3080 Small Form Factor and the Dell OptiPlex 3080 Micro but picked the Micro because it was $10 cheaper per system and we don't need DVD drives so I figure why waste the extra space. Are these systems a nightmare to work on and should I pick the OptiPlex 3080 Small Form Factor instead, or will the Micro be ok? The new desktop specs are: i5, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD... For the server I picked a PowerEdge T340 Tower Server. Their last server was a T310 with about 4TB of storage and the Xeon processor from that year. I don't know what the exact specs are because I don't have access to the machine and they couldn't find the service tag. I am equipping their new server with 8TB (2x 4TB 7200rpm drives) of storage and I also wanted to equip it with 2 500GB SSD's as cache. I believe they will be using windows server because they use a program called quick books which will only run on windows server or on specific versions of linux. Now I know they could use VM's but I'm really not sure what to do. They have an IT guy and all I need to do is equip the server for him and the IT guy will take care of setting it up for me. The only thing is Dell has like 1,000 different options for the PowerEdge T340 and so I'm not sure if I should get the TPM module, do I need more threads or more cores or both?, is 32GB of RAM enough?, should I get the RAID card or the HBA adapter, do I need RAID, if so which version (0, 1, 5....), do I need to upgrade the iDRAC or will the basic one do, what is Microsoft SQL Server?, should i add any of the "keep your drive" or warranties on? I know some may be asking "Why Dell", and the reason is my uncle only wants Dell and I don't want to be their 24/7 tech support so we're going pre-built. Not to mention the lack of accessible parts. Any help is appreciated.

I tried using regular VGA cables with a coupler, and no luck. Yes, one end needs to be female, and the other end male. Good idea, I will look for compatible cables. All 15-pins on the KVM are in use because 9 of the pins are used for video 4 are used for usb and the other two are used for audio. I just emailed them, that is a really good idea.

Thanks for your help, but those cables are regular VGA and not extensions, or do not make use of all 15-pins, only 9.

I have a JideTech 4-port VGA KVM, and I need to extend the cables because the included ones are too short. The connection between the cable and the KVM is a standard male (cable side) to female (KVM side). All I need is a regular VGA extension cable to extend the KVM cables, the only problem is I have yet to find a FULL 15-Pin cable. I have only been able to find 9-Pin cables that they falsely call "full 15-pin". I already had to return a set of extension cables because of this. I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations for an actual 1-1 wired 15-Pin VGA extension cable, because the KVM uses all 15-Pins. Thank you

Thank you for everyone's support, I will get back to you on what happens. The Drive was formatted as MBR

I have an HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 Server and when I go into the boot menu to look for my USB drive to boot from, its not listed. Does anyone have any ideas?

I actually have 2 internal USB 3.1 ports but no internal SATA ports, only SATA X4 which needs a special adapter that I don’t really want to buy so it’d be better to go the USB route I think.

So would you recommend staying with the USB install or the SSD Install path? The SSD is 100GB, but I heard FreeNAS doesn't actually need an L2 ARC The USB Drive is only 32GB, but its USB 3.1 so fast enough.

Ok, sounds good. Thanks!

Yea windows keys can be had for almost nothing on eBay, and they have a money back guarantee. In addition, Windows 10 is already free to download.

Yea it appears as if the discount I was referring to is no longer available. You can get windows 10 for $109.99 at Newegg though. Newegg Link

That PC build is way better than the original one, but you didn't take into consideration that windows 10 is like $89.99. Also the likeliness of finding ANY graphics card even marginally close to realistic pricing is pretty poor at the moment unfortunately. You might want to consider waiting a little while to build a new system.

I recently got a good deal on an HPE ProLiant DL380 G9 Server, and was wondering what the best settings for FreeNAS would be. The specs of the server are: 2x 6 Core E5-2620v3 2.4GHz 32GB RAM 10GbE NIC Redundant 800w Power Supplies 12x WD 500GB HDD (WDC WD5000AAKX-60U6AA0) 1x Intel 100GB SSD as boot and cache drive since I read from STH that a USB install isn't recommended. If your wondering why the AAKX Drives its because I got them all for free from my work as "spares" that were no longer needed. How should I set up the drives in FreeNAS? What RAID settings should I use. I see many different people are torn on what the best settings are. I have a second server that will make a copy of this one every day so redundancy isn't as big a priority as speed and capacity. All feedback is appreciated.

I would remove any devices from your boot order that you are not using (meaning disable the ability to boot from them). Make sure that the HDD is FIRST in the boot list order and if you are using UEFI make sure that its the UEFI partition that is the first in the boot order.

Totally fine, I must've just not seen that you had said that. Hopefully someone with more information will be able to assist you at this point, or consider contacting NVIDIA or your graphics card manufacturer to see what they have to say / offer.

Oops, I was thinking about the 3600 not the 2600. I think that you will have some problems with the 2600. I would recommend selling that and getting at least a 3600 if your motherboard supports it for that GPU. Otherwise, maybe when RTX 20 series are a reasonable price again, consider picking up a 2060.

NVIDIA has "GeForce Experience" which has game ready drivers, but this shouldn't be a problem, it should in theory actually help with games. Unless there is a defective driver release from NVIDIA. Maybe try using this to install game ready drives?

They should, in theory, work just fine with each other. I would estimate a bottleneck of under 5% which isn't much. EDIT: Please ignore this message, see below.

You aren't using any of those "game ready" enhancers, are you? One of these could be interfering with the GPU. Example: Razer Cortex

You have hidden items turned on. To shut that off, at the top click "view", and then un-check the box next to hidden items.

that board supports up to 5100MHz, your 3600 will work fine

Are we talking B550, X570, or Z390? I'm pretty sure most current motherboards will support 3600. It shouldn't be a problem, but your memory will only run at 3200MHz instead of 3600.

I had a similar issue in a PC I built for a client. It ended up being a defective memory stick. The first thing we can try is using ONE memory stick at a time, try to overclock. If the system crashes only on one stick, then that one is defective. If this doesn't work I would try to update the system BIOS. MSI has software called "Dragon Center" that allows you to easily update your Mobo' BIOS from Windows and it will do all the rebooting and installing for you.

Oh yea, were you trying to use a data recovery tool because the drive had failed, or because something was accidentally deleted?

If your going 3-rd party, just double check the reviews before you make the purchase. Also, compare mAh of the genuine and the replacement battery in question. (The higher the mAh of the battery, the better).