mehtaman

Some really helpful and interesting comments here, thank you all. The idea of using a Pi and Flash storage was for low noise, as I’ve made my current setup pretty quite with silent fans in the case and PSU. There’s only a little noise from the drives when in use. I’ll take a look into some of the boards suggested above.

Can’t fault the N54L one bit, it’s been online 24/7 for over 10yrs only ever rebooting once a month for MS patching. I guess I just have the itch to modernise my setup. Maybe a QNAP or Asustor off the shelf NAS is simpler to setup but I like the idea of building my own NAS to.

Hi, I have an old HP N54L micro server that’s been ticking away since 2011-2012 which is due an upgrade. It current has Windows Server 2019 installed with Storage Space setup for data storage. I’m happy to sync the data over to a new NAS but my question is, can I build a decent NVME NAS using a Pi5 as the controller/OS? If so what cases, boards, hats, OS etc are the best to go for to setup a NAS?

Saw a RX6900 come up for sale here: https://www.it-me-up.co.uk/asrock-rx6900-xt-phantom-gaming-d-16g-oc-16gb-ddr6-pcie4-hdmi-3-dp-2340mhz-clock-rgb-lighting-overclocked Just wondering if it's any good compared to other cards on the market. Thanks

Cool, that's pretty much what I have. If one of the boards looks like its missing a CPU pin is there any way to replace the psingle in or is it just a pile of scrap now?

Hi All, I have had the opportunity to pick up returned computer stock from a large retailer. Thankfully most of it seems to be ok, however I have about 5-6 motherboards with damaged CPU sockets. I have used a USB Microscope to align the pins as best I can and will spend some time testing the boards today. However, should any still fail to work - what other tools can I use to test the boards? Thanks in advance!

hmmm maybe I would be better off with the Gen10 (4 core version) as its just over £500 in the UK: https://www.ebuyer.com/854984 Looking cheaper than a custom build, supports 5 of my 6 drives and I can stick my backup drive into a USB caddy Just the RAM to upgrade (as I plan to create a VM or two).

I guess I got wrapped up with the term MircoServer and went down the like for like route when in reality an mATX or ATX will certainly have 6+ SATA Ports along with 2-4 PCIe Slots (For Future Expansion)... back to the drawing board I think.

A very valid point and certain something I'll look into... Do you know if it needs to be RAID compatible or is Windows Storage Space a 'virtual' RAID? I know when I have had to rebuild my OS drive, the storage space was not affected, Windows detected all the settings from the Data drives. Thanks

Hi there, I currently have a HP MicroServer (N54L) setup. Optical Bay has been swapped out for an SSD (OS) and in total there are 5 Standard 2TB Data Drives. I have Windows Server 2016 installed on the SSD and just used Windows Storage Spaces to mirror my data over 4 of the Data Drives. The other (fifth) Data Drive is used by Veeam Backup Free Edition. The system is getting old and the new MicroServers are not value for money like the N54L was. What are my upgrade options? I was thinking of just building a new PC but struggling to find a decent ITX / mATX that supports a large number of SATA Drives. Want to keep costs below £600, I already have the data drives and a GPU. Any suggestion are welcomed.

Ah man, there's me thinking I'd have enough of a return to build a nice new Ryzen setup... guess every little helps

Hi there, Not really sure where to place this post... I am looking to sell my mother board, CPU and RAM and upgrade to something that can at least handle DDR4. Any ideas on what the following could fetch in the UK market: CPU: Intel i7-4790k Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97M-D3H RAM: 2x Corsair CMY 16G X3M2A 2400 C11 A (4x 8GB) I'm thinking around £500 on a good day. Thanks ?

awesome build

Did you use ATIFlash or Gigabyte's own flashing tool to do so? Regardless of the BIOS updated, I'd like to resolve why ATIFlash is throwing a wobbly. Same PC used to have Dual RX480's installed and had no issues with the BIOS flashing. Can't remember if I had to play around with any reg settings to unlock flashing or not.