Dahak

So I am about to do an upgrade and was wondering how the Define R5 holds up in terms of noise and cooling for newer systems. Thinking on a mid to higher end system. Thinking along the lines of the AMD 3700/3800 or the 5000 series equivalent / Intel 10600k/10700k For Video thinking the RTX 3080 but more likley the 3070 one the reviews come in Right now its pretty much stock, i did add some cheapo 120mm fan at the top as my current rig was getting a bit warm. So I will know I probably will need some additional fans (going 140mm, can do at least 3 probably 5) Or if its going to be bad, what similar sized case would work. Dont like any glass sided ones

You can, but just hook it up after you do the Windows install. You should have a 2nd cable that came with the motherboard, as there usually 2 even on the cheap ones

You should also run the WD Data Lifeguard Diags on it as well. If its failing it should show up on that. You can get it from the downloads in the following link to WD https://support.wdc.com/product.aspx?ID=613&lang=en#WD_downloads

If you are going to do a new install of windows, yes, it is easier to leave your old drive unplugged. As I have seen weird issue where it puts some boot files on the old drive if it sees it there.

While i do not have it handy, but I believe there is a setting in the VM Machine configuration that you may need to turn on before it will allow DirectX to work properly, like enable 3d. As well as you can look at the correct answer here https://communities.vmware.com/thread/526352 to see if that fixes the issue Basically you edit the .vmx file (Opens in notepad) and edit the following lines, or add them if they are not there mks.enableD3DRenderer = TRUE mks.enableDX11Renderer = FALSE