Cynagen

Glad it was of help.

You know me? Or know of me? LOL

Hey, #58 here, there was a bit wrong mentioned in the video. I still have the majority of my hardware, including my blown up GPU (I mined on it and blew the power delivery). I had a Kotaku article on my page trying to link up with all the other beta testers: kotaku.com steam-machine-beta-user-trying-to-find-all-300-of-his-l-1483650714 I want to see the countersunk hole on the top to ID this one myself and see if we can help connect you with it's original owner for a more detailed history on the system and how it ended up where it did. Eric above is #210 #94 for example. Truth be told, I used the Steam Machine as my daily driver for a couple months after my AMD Bulldozer died (8120 OC'd to 8350, on a cheap gaming board that blew up, noticing a pattern? LOL) The 300 page I built has since been taken down, but I'd be willing to answer questions, and bring/send a -still working- model (sans the blown GTX780) to you to check out with beta controller if you wanted! Honestly, I want to take it and all my other discontinued/prototype Steam gear through Valve HQ to hopefully get it all signed by staff who helped develop it. Maybe someday. Currently at work right now as I post this, so here's to hoping InfoSec wasn't watching and getting upset at me posting on forums, I'll check back in later tonight and provide some photos (when I can upload stuff without getting InfoSec's immediate attention). @PixelButts, that is indeed a prototype! It is not ID'd for the Beta (which had the vent holes countersunk, that's a rare find outside Valve!) Add't edit: Stopped the video and zoomed in for a look, the system LTT has now is either #228 or #238 looks like. Just checked my data, and 228 owner never checked in with me looks like... however 238 did. https://web.archive.org/web/20160322031810/http://cynagen.com/steam-machines/ @Eric, I misidentified your machine! You ARE #94... I misremembered how the holes were drilled, had to archive my own page! WHOOPS!

How did that not catch on fire and end up that dusty?

What's happening is the DNS requests are being directed to the Pi-Hole, not the actual traffic, that's another solution entirely that requires WAY more horsepower, and you're right in that if done through a RPi would nuke speeds and pings. There's a couple ways to go about blocking ads like they mentioned in the video, per device or across an entire network if configured correctly. There are multiple ways to block ads at the network level, this is just the fastest and easiest way to do it with the least amount of resources. Online gaming should not be affected, any visible slowdowns in behavior on apps on a phone or on the PC are going to be related to the DNS interruption when trying to request for ads and the code handling this eventuality poorly (typically the culprit is poor advertising plugin coding). It wouldn't be any different than disconnecting the ethernet or wifi or flipping the device to airplane mode in this instance.

Setup of every user who visits? Some people may only visit one or two times, waste of the time to sign somebody up.

Here's a crappy mspaint of an idea to make a single station.

While I would agree with you on the single build, multiple users. There are some pitfalls, any hardware maintenance required requires the loss of the entire X stations being run as the entire system will likely need to be shut down.

You should upload the floorplan with dimensions so that it can be more accurately scoped/designed. You've provided the case model so we can get dimensions from the website, combining that with any selected monitor size, you can start to figure out desk space. As for the computers, above would help minimize dust, but if you're going to have RGB, it's time to look at unconventional means of display if you're going above. I'd recommend getting solid straps to go around the case, then hang it at a 45 degree angle above the workstation position it's connected to with the tempered glass window showcasing the inside facing outward, exhaust to the side or out the top will ensure that the heat is pushed away from the gamers. Additionally, to hang these, you may have to build custom rigging, though with some solid steel piping and proper construction, you can incorporate a wooden platform to act as the desktop where the monitor keyboard and mouse will sit. If you want to up the game a little, put a T-joint in the metal about height with a player's face, and put a VESA mount on. Tons more ideas, I'll be back. Honestly, I would be happy to come over the border to help build this out.

For each user this would be more than sufficient to play most games: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/2D9vnH And at ~$1525 USD without discounts, if you got 4, that's only $6100 of your $12000 USD budget, and that's not including saving a total of $1200 because you already have 2 1070s (the build I linked has a 1070 Ti). So with the additional savings, it's $4900 total to outfit 4 identical computers with reasonable hardware at reasonable prices. You additionally get a 250GB Samsung EVO 860 M.2 SSD to use for your OS drive (ultra fast boots), and a Seagate FireCuda 2TB "SHDD" Hybrid for storing games, the Hybrid SSD on board the drive should help with game loading times by keeping copies of your most used game files on the SSD portion of the drive. Note that these do not have monitors, mice, keyboards, speakers, or any other peripherals, these are just the towers, so there's extra budget to work with, but it will eat into your NAS concern. With the remaining budget of $5900 or $7100 (depending if you want to use those 1070s or buy new 1070 Tis and you already have all the peripherals you need for the above PCs) you can build a pretty beefy FreeNAS setup on their site just to get a professionally built and supported rig to get you started. Or you can continue the DIY route and build something pretty beefy for your needs following recommendations from the FreeNAS community for example. I won't speculate into a build here, the budget is literally murky at this point because of unknown variables, so I'll leave that up to you sir. Good luck!

You can do this now with a simple Bluetooth to RCA kit. Google Home devices have had Bluetooth built in since day one, and Google just pushed out the functionality to connect to external speakers for when you're playing music rather than listening on the Home speaker or Casting. Additionally, with the Home Max (big speaker) you can pair 2 of them together for stereo Bluetooth playback from 2 independent speakers rather than just one Max. Provided your Google Home device isn't terribly far away from the stereo system, something like this would suffice; https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00IQBSW28/ezvid02-20 and is cheap too! There's even an Amazon Basics version that's even cheaper still, though I'd start worrying about audio distortion/noise from cheap DACs. Either way, the Sony LF-S50G is too costly for something that is super cheap to replicate if you already have a Google Home device. It's still technically cheaper to buy a Google Home Mini for $50 USD and the Amazon Basics A2DP receiver for $20 than spend up to $200 on a smart speaker that simply tries to be loud. Heck, the Amazon Basics model features a 3.5mm output jack so you can plug in a powered set of speakers, say something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Multimedia-Speakers-Mobile-Devices/dp/B00KK9481I/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1522572485&sr=1-4 for less than $30 means you can completely replace the LF-S50G with something that will project the sound, and possibly even sound, better for half the price. Not to mention because you're buying a proper Google Home device, if you live in the US and have Google Voice, then you CAN place calls with the speaker in addition, adding yet further functionality not offered on the Sony device. It looks nice, and I'm sure somebody will like it, but when I can buy individual components to replicate it and be able to reuse and upgrade individual components down the road, I prefer that to tossing out an old smart speaker for whatever reason that we came to rely on entirely.

Before I go posting full specs here, I just wanted to throw out a couple of my concerns before I attempt to opt in to be counted. I'm running a QNAP TS-431 (4-bay) + 4-bay eSATA port replicator for a total of 8 disks, the 4 disks in the eSATA enclosure are not in a RAID configuration (I popped them in one by one and had to manually transfer stuff from disk to disk so I never attempted to RAID them). My concerns are that my base enclosure (the TS-431) won't qualify me in the first place, and that the 4 disks in the external enclosure won't count (for whatever reason) thus completely disqualifying me. They're all for storage as per the requirement; I'm not including the USB2.0 RAID0 enclosure attached to the NAS; One of the disks in the external enclosure is the destination of incoming sources including my own Plex DVR captures (HDHomeRun Prime + CableCard ftw) others acting as sorted semi-deep storage (before it gets mirrored to DBox), and the internal bays are configured together as a RAID5 right now to store my movie collection for Plex. Overall, there's a 4x3TB RAID5 in the internal, and 3x2TB + 1x2.5TB individuals in the external enclosure for a total of 8 drives and 20.5TB total. If somebody could clarify if I qualify, I'll do up a full post with pics, but if I don't qualify, I'll show myself out until I can get on FreeNAS at some point in the future.

Kyle, that was 1260KBytes/sec not bits/sec. Honestly, use a zoned triple-pass encode, you can get pretty low, but as an example, I ripped my Wasabi DVD into mkv h264/ac3 and ended up at ~2.25mbps (~2,250kbps, bits per second). 94 minutes runtime at 1.47GB total (including the audio track which was ripped and preserved from the disc, no encoding) for what is effectively a ~1:1 copy. Protip if you go with zoned encoding for control: Use the chapter marks from the DVD as tips for where to set your zones, set a lower Q for high action scenes, and a higher Q rating for low-action, and like Q=31 for credits unless there's video clips that play alongside or a background/foreground animation. Additionally, this information is for preservation at the best possible quality with lowest filesize possible, Plex will transcode where supported and may decimate the quality in transit to you, but by working with triple-pass and trying to find the right balance of zoned quality adjustments, you might be able to achieve some very nice results for archive and transmission as Plex will typically (if you've configured your settings correctly) stream the source file to you if possible and it's under the max bitrate you permit. Most DVDs cap out at about Q=7 to Q=5 because of the low picture resolution and the format disc constrictions, so the majority stream video direct, but may transcode audio based on the device you're streaming to, YMMV.

Now you guys have a challenge; To build the cheapest, profitable, Burst mining rig. You've gone overboard in true LTT-style and made $100 or so a month, but there may be a cheaper config with lower power consumption which might still be profitable right out of the gate. I'd like to see the results!