ikhantt

Good specs but it uses a lower power 4070, has a terrible display, cooling is underwhelming and instantly reaches max temp and the chassis it uses is fragile and prone to break.
 
The acer was made to be a good cheap laptop with good specs from last year and is a higher quality device all round with a gpu that is actually a bit faster. Cpu wise since it doesnt thermal throttle the performance is good and basically the same/better than the msi.
 
Battery life for both sucks. 4 hours tops.
 
 

Honestly I think the acer laptop is probably the better buy based on reviews but the msi is also on sale. Still I think the included display for the acer is better vs the msi while the gpu for the msi is better than the acer so I guess it depends on what you value more. 

https://www.newegg.com/obsidian-black-acer-nitro-5-an515-46-r5xn-gaming/p/N82E16834360253 maybe this? Not sure about warranty though. 

100% do this! you can show a saving to your FD and that will offset some of your project costs.
I would also be looking at just adding new disks and or a new storage array for your SAN. one think to note though is I would be prepared for great failure if the disks are 7 years old at this stage. 

You apparently never used RAID controllers.
 
El-cheapo, motherboard one - aka fakeraid controller: You can migrate disks to another PC, even another generation of ICH controller, and disks&RAID are correctly identified. LSI RAID controller (similar for other makes): If you connect disks to another controller, you can IMPORT them, thus restoring Logical Volumes on them that were previously in use. In both cases, all your data is there. No tears, no extra money spent.

same here. the best one i can find online is a 120W 20pin mini DC/DC power supply. would love to remake this. first attempt was powered by an i7 2600K 
 
EDIT: if you got to the startish of the video, they say its a hdplex power supply. looks like it can go upto 800W