voyager_

Late to the party but thats fitting considering how old this post made me feel. I think I still have a few ide drives and cables laying around. I still even have my usb adapter with a molex power supply. Anyone one else remember having to move the jumpers for master and slave?

Byte my bits and Space Invader have some great unraid videos on these sort of things. You will definitely want all the plex metadata on your cache drive and I use ram for transcoding. The Way you do this is by changing the share permissions for the appdata. I have mine locked to only use the cache drives rather then the array.

sync contacts to google account and backup important files to google drive. if it has an sd card move everything you can to that. keep the screen brightness down

What are you wanting to get out of it long term and what are you planning to use it for? Pre-built is nice for the convenience factor but can be pretty limited but if all you want is storage and maybe something like plex where limited transcoding may be needed then it's a great option. If you plan to run vm's and want to really expand it then DIY is the better route. It ultimately comes down your use case. In this case DDR4 vs DDR5 won't make a difference

@GuiltySpark_ Bottlenecking, Bottlenecking, Bottlenecking.... Sorry had to

What are you exactly trying to get out of it? If nothing is bottlenecking then what makes you think you're not using it to its "full potential" is the GPU maxed out, video memory limitation, cpu limiting it? What are you trying to run on it? If you are set in wanting to upgrade and spend that kind of money then staying on AM4 doesn't really make much sense, you will be still running a dead end platform. Going AM5 gives you potential to upgrade down the road. Just keep in mind you may spend some decent $$$ for little return, last thing you want is to spend the cash and not notice a difference. The best thing I can recommend if you're trying to decide on what parts are worth upgrading is to do some research and look at the system monitor while in game in intense situations where the hardware should be most loaded and see what could be holding it back and do so in multiple games. If it's one thing in particular it may be worth reaching out in those forums to see what people have been doing or running.

I feel that we are missing an important segway to our sponsor https://www.lttstore.com/ to get your hands on one of the best ratcheting screwdrivers ever made and while your at it make sure to keep yourself hydrated with a high quality insulated water bottle! or an ifixit kit, I've had mine for 12-13 years at this point. I also keep small wire cutters for zip ties, ZIP TIES!!!!, and spare thermal paste in my computer kit. Seriously though, get the screwdriver... in the immortal words of Shia Labeouf "Just Do it"

Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro+ are my daily drivers, I think I got them for $60 or $70 on amazon a year ago. Sounds quality and call quality are great. They don't have audio passthrough though but the newer ones might. I wear them all day at work and you can use one side or the other, the case will also do wireless charging and I can go all day listening to music, podcasts, etc... and haven't had any battery issues.

THIS! My wife and I use google sheets for everything from packing lists to task lists. Easy to access and maintain. If you want to get real fancy with microsoft with excel and access you generate some sweet reports

Why do you think the motherboard is a limiting factor? It has little to do with performance. It's true some higher end boards can be more stable or provide more power delivery to the cpu unless you are going subzero it's probably not an issue. assuming the ryzen 7 is supported by the board the 5700x3d is am4. As far as deciding what you want to upgrade I would look at the task manager while running different games and see if the cpu is high vs the GPU. I would lean towards getting a better nvidia card since amd hasn't been working out for you. Depending on what budget/what you want to spend you can find better cpus used for a good deal. Memory would be the next, find the fastest supported by the chosen cpu and board. Ryzen loves fast memory and the 3000 you have now is kinda slow. I would also consider getting a better power supply, depending on what you go with you may be borderline on the output. 750w is a good range to get now and down the road. I know you mentioned saving for a NAS but you may want to add more storage now if you're planning to get into video editing. The 1tb you have listed doesn't go far. 4-8tb mechanical drives are pretty reasonably priced and add a 2tb ssd for storing the video files your working on

Hardware wise the cpu ram are fine. As far as the drive goes my go to has always been wd reds but it needs to be CMR not smr. SMR drives are much slower. I also avoid seagate when possible. I still have some running but they have given me more problems over the years. As far as the OS choice I would look at something like truenas or Unraid. I prefer unraid for ease of expansion down the road but you do need to pay for it. I wouldn't use raid, Im just assuming here that you are wanting to use hardware raid through the motherboard and I would steer clear of it. Stick to a software version that managed through truenas or unraid. For your boot drive you will need to also look at the os. Unraid uses a usb stick where others can use a drive. Something to consider is many motherboards will disable sata ports if an m.2 drive is used. For expansion down the road you can always add and HBA card to expand it further. In my servers I use an LSI HBA to connect all drives that will be part of the main pool and use the onboard sata for passing through to vms or unassigned drives.

Im sure you could make it to work Cat6 can do up to 320ft but I would not do poe and fiber may be better. If you do run ethernet make sure to run a backup cable. If you can run a trench and bury conduit and add some pull strings for the future. If there is power connect the switch and computer to a ups. You will need an enclosure that can keep the system warm and clean. Cooling may be another issue though. If there is something like a closet that you can insulate and seal off from dirt and other junk you could add a small heater and small window ac. You may be able to find a unit to do both, heating you could do a space heater and keep it as low as possible but I don't trust space heaters just due to fire concerns.

Until there is enough support, for people wanting nothing more than a chromebook they are fine. For most others it won't be until they can run everything that current systems can run. As far as business applications they may never replace x86 for home use im sure in the very far future they will have a place as either more developers create arm based applications and things similar to proton get more support to be able to run x86 on arm efficiently. But I never see x86 going anywhere atleast in my lifetime. Look at some programming languages like cobalt, many systems still run on it.

You may have just gotten a faulty one, I have one and it's great. I use it for an hp laptop and charges at the same rate as the 65watt wall charger it came with. I even bought one of their 100watt usb c battery banks and both have been great.