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frokes

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  1. Like
    frokes reacted to whalemonster in Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity   
    I agree with a lot of what you say, but it's incomplete. Steve's analysis re. the stress and errors resulting from an overly-tight production schedule was spot on, imho. A lot of staff interviewees said as much in the recent video re. working for LMG. And for a post-startup in the accelerate phase, that's not necessarily unusual. However, many young companies misjudge the correct pace/step change of that acceleration when they first encounter it, and can get locked into a cycle thinking they have to operate that way, when in reality survival is possible (and more probable) doing slightly less, better. Unintentionally burning out yourself and the workforce is also not conducive to sustainability. Often with male tech CEOs, that frantic pace and a tendency to overreach is fundamentally related to various aspects of male psychology. That's all part of the issue. The other half of the equation, for me, is getting better at emotional intelligence. The infamous 'hot takes', knee-jerk quickfire judgements or opinions which by their nature are incompletely evidenced, might be meme-able and light-hearted on the one hand, but they also suggest a tendency toward hot-headedness, or worse, hubris. Neither of these traits command respect, and instances of them rearing their ugly heads are always cringeworthy on screen. They're personality flaws that self-aware leaders should be trying to work on and eliminate, rather than revel in. On this occasion, the scale of the knee-jerk defence posture and the rhetoric surrounding it are baffling and surprising. Every tech CEO gets at least one of these crises where for a moment, ego takes full control, they believe all of their own hype, say something silly in an emotional state, then have to swallow their pride and do the embarrassing climbdown / public apology. A greater degree of emotional intelligence could really have helped here. Knowing when to mentally step back, assess, and reinstate calm before responding could avert so many public missteps. It's not a skill prevalent among men in their 30s, let alone 30-something male tech CEOs, but it should be a requirement of the role. Sure, we can all do something stupid and apologise later, eat the humble pie, etc., but damage will have been done which was entirely avoidable had the inflicter spent a little more time on introspection. Breaking stuff and saying sorry as if that makes it fine is what we do when we're young and petulant. Finding humility, learning to listen, banishing pride, recognising your flaws, and resolving to fix them so you stop breaking things in the first place? That's grown-up behaviour, and it speaks to an inner wisdom which effortlessly commands trust and respect in those around you. Often on WAN, Linus and Luke mention being in their 30s and how old they suddenly feel. Ironically, I spend most of those moments thinking "If you only knew how young you sound." 🙂

    I've found this whole affair quite bizarre and it has shaken my faith in LTT - a channel I've always loved and recommended - but I know it can be repaired. I wish to continue supporting the channel for many more years, so I dearly hope now we'll see some humility, atonement, and some level-headed, logical damage control. GN's video must have felt like a kick in the, well, in most places I guess,  but I suspect the vehemence of the reaction to it might be explained precisely because it highlighted publicly something that was already feared internally - that mistakes are being made, because things are moving too fast. I hope LTT takes this as a wake-up call and recentralises around its people to take better account of their needs and concerns. Some slight deceleration is required, but don't fear it. Those excellent humans, as the CEO well knows, are integral to the channel's success. Listen to them please - they're also your family (not Colton no). Content pays the bills, sure, but in a few decades from now, nobody retired from LTT will be fondly reminiscing about x million views on Video A, B or C. They'll be smiling as they recall how much they laughed, and with whom, while they were making it.
  2. Like
    frokes reacted to Alan999 in Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity   
    I watch pretty much every video uploaded by GN and LMG. GN is mostly for reviews and LMG is mostly for entertainment. There is plenty of crossover with news etc. but that's the main categories, for me anyway.

    My (totally parasocial) take is that Linus and Steve's relationship fully broke down during their public dispute over 3070ti pricing a few years back. I'm sure the subsequent ramping up of the LTT lab and such things as the PSU tester didn't help the relationship either.
    During the "trust me bro" debacle, Steve announced he had decided to review LMG content and products differently and hold them to a higher standard. I'm not sure what the threshold was, earnings, employees or maybe a gut feeling, but it was certainly self-imposed by Steve.

    Just to be clear, I feel Linus handled "trust me bro" terribly. To this day, he suggests that even those who didn't know him or the company were basically stupid if they couldn't deduce they were covered. I don't know if it's manipulation or if he genuinely believes it, either way it was handled very badly.

    I also believe GN's handling of their recent recall was bad. It was more of a pat on the back and showcase on how well they handled it rather than cold hard facts. Ironic when you think how much Steve hates other companies marketing. The whole video didn't even make it clear if a refund was available. Sticker and a pin? I also think an incorrect wiring diagram can potentially do a lot more damage than a faulty zip puller. I can't find the video now either, has it been pulled?

    Anyway, there are many valid points made in the video. Also, some very serious allegations (Billet Labs) that will need to be addressed and (unlike many others here) I'll decide after hearing the other side of the story. Unfortunately, there is also plenty of supposition from Steve. Assumptions about sponsor relationships and employee ties to previous companies. Company valuations etc. that are not offered for any other YT channel reviews. In fact, GN don't review other channels or more accurately; they don't review competitors at all, except for LMG.

    I also really hate the way Steve cuts in the reactions of Luke. This was done during "trust me bro" too... "you can see Luke agrees". How does he know what he's thinking, it's pretty poor journalism and seems like petty playground behaviour. I think Steve's bias is showing and there is far more opinion, speculation, and sensationism than any previous topic they have covered.
     
     
  3. Like
    frokes reacted to LinusTech in Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity   
    There won't be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I've already said, and I've done so privately.

    To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication... AND the fact that while we haven't sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I've told him that I won't be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I'll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of 'Team Media'. When/if he's ready to do so again I'll be ready.

    To my team (and my CEO's team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we've been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it's clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, but that's no excuse for sloppiness.

    Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we're not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it's sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we've communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah... What we're doing hasn't been in many years, if ever.. and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn't materially change the recommendation. That doesn't mean these things don't matter. We've set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven't seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you're really looking for it... The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I'm REALLY excited about what the future will hold.
     
    With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I've already addressed above) is an 'accuracy' issue. It's more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again... mystery) would have been impossible... and also didn't affect the conclusion of the video... OR SO I THOUGHT...
     
    I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn't make sense to buy... so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn't really make a difference.
     
    Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn't mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip.  I missed that, but it wasn't because I didn't care about the consumer.. it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I've watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It's an astonishingly unforgiving market.
     
    Either way, I'm sorry I got the community's priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn't show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it's an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y'know, eat).
     
    With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient. 
     
    We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.
     
    Thanks for reading this.
  4. Like
    frokes reacted to Josysclei in Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity   
    First of all, the whole Billet Labs stuff is completely absurd if true. I don't think they would intentionally sell something they couldn't, probably some massive fuck up in communications happened between the team responsible for sending it back and the people choosing the items to be auctioned, but it's still a huge issue and 100% LTT's responsibility to fix it and make sure something like this never ever happens again. 
     
    About the rushed content, it's something that a lot of times crosses the border of "fun jank" to being just frustrating. Every single project they do seems to be rushed, unfinished, untested and plagued with issues and oversights. And that could be their content "brand", seems like many people enjoy the jank. But if they now want to present themselves as serious testers, someone the community can look up for reliable data with Labs, that mindset needs to change, FAST. How the hell can I trust someone who has to correct themselves almost every video? And makes errors that a basic review of the content could catch? 
     
    You need to pump out 7 videos a week? Sure buddy, but maybe allow more time sensitive projects to be properly planned, executed and reviewed and throw some "here's 10 fun crap we found on aliexpress" videos to make up for it.
  5. Agree
    frokes reacted to MadAnt250 in Im not sure what to go for in my upgrade   
    Get a better PSU, this one is shady.
    https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/anyone-got-info-on-the-aresgame-650w-power-supply.3674079/
     
  6. Informative
    frokes got a reaction from Reactive in Corsair Vengeance LPX Overclocking   
    What is your goal with the OC? What capacity and speed are the sticks? I've had mixed results with Corsair LPX in particular on B450 so it might not even be reasonable to go for any form of ambitious OC.
  7. Like
    frokes reacted to EddE171 in New beginnings XD   
    Thank you @frokes for all the help! I already have an 80+ platinum psu. The pcpartpicker link you sent me is probably what I will go with. The micro atx size or something is perfect. I always wanted a small pc but never had one, so this is the time! And I have an 180gb m.2 boot drive with a 1TB HDD so thats all good. Thanks again for the help! 
  8. Like
    frokes got a reaction from WhitetailAni in Powerful enough system?   
    stay away from A-series motherboards, the money you save on them is not worth the decrease in component quality. Any B450 should be fine as you won't need the features of b550 for the r5 3600, if you plan on upgrading to 5000-series cpu getting a x470 board might be worth it.
     
    I noticed that your PSU isn't on the PSU-tier list so you might want to have a look at that too. (
     
  9. Informative
    frokes got a reaction from Jasun in Powerful enough system?   
    stay away from A-series motherboards, the money you save on them is not worth the decrease in component quality. Any B450 should be fine as you won't need the features of b550 for the r5 3600, if you plan on upgrading to 5000-series cpu getting a x470 board might be worth it.
     
    I noticed that your PSU isn't on the PSU-tier list so you might want to have a look at that too. (
     
  10. Agree
    frokes got a reaction from curiousmind34 in New beginnings XD   
    I'd say upgrading from a 2c/4t core in 2021 is totally reasonable if you have the budget.
  11. Agree
    frokes got a reaction from boggy77 in PSU sudden retirement and what to get next   
    True, it has been the component that has aged the slowest so I guess I never really thought of upgrading it despite upgrading everything else.
     
    Oh yeah SLI is dead, I do  a lot of work in blender, ansys Fluent, etc however which are mostly parallell in their computation. I don't need to bridge the cards but by simply having 2 cards it gives me ~2x the computational power for rendering or 2 compute "nodes" for simulation. I'll have a look at the ones you linked to, thank you!
  12. Like
    frokes got a reaction from Bonfius in Building Case from scratch   
    Nice progress! The backplate from any case, no matter how cheap, will save you so much time and frustration later on :P Keep it up!
  13. Like
    frokes reacted to Bonfius in Building Case from scratch   
    @frokes @startrek03 @W-L
    so here is an update:
    all drawings (finally) done. Will go out next week to find someone ....
    bought a cheap case
    took it apart
    made rough 3D-models of the parts a want  to use and added them to my model (at least in the model everything fits fine)
    used this case as donor: https://www.notebooksbilliger.de/pc+hardware/gehaeuse+pc+hardware/inter+tech+b+30+pc+gehuse+414453
    to be honest: for the money its great. No sharp edges, its somewhat stable and has structural integrity. Definitely could be worse. 
     
    Jan
     
    (fun fact: it took me 12 min to take it completely apart. a decend 3mm drill does wonders for rivets)




  14. Like
    frokes reacted to Jason 57 in Scratch Built NAS Case   
    This is REALLY impressive!!
     
    I think it turned out really well. Who wouldn't love to have that on their wall!
  15. Like
    frokes got a reaction from Jason 57 in Scratch Built NAS Case   
    Hi!
     
    I have been thinking of building a NAS/renderserver for a few years and with COVID making me work more from home since march/april I finally got an excuse to do so! This build has been done for more than a month but I still wanted to share my journey and experience. One of the reasons I've never really gotten around to assembling a NAS has been the endless search for a compact case that still allows me to expand in future. Another factor was the overall look and size of the case as I live in a quite small apartment where I can't really hide the server anywhere. So I decided to build my own case!
     
    Server requirements and budget:
    Storage expandability (4 - 6 bays), my initial storage requirement was only 4tb but my storage delta is increasing each year VM Capable CPU to run rendering nodes in the future Decent cooling to handle summer temps and rendering workload Silence, as silent as reasonable for the price Use as little floor space as possible UPS as I do have 2 - 4 major powerouts each year Preferably less than 1000€  
    Initially I wanted to go for an ITX build but the lack of SATA ports and only having one PCI-e on ITX made me choose an M-ATX board instead.
    During the initial planning phase, a friend of mine mentioned the idea of theming the entire case around the IronWolf HDDs that I was looking at buying for the build. Things kinda snowballed from there, leading me to spend more time than I should have on making a mockup in blender for the entire case. Including lighting and material properties...xP

     

     
    I should mention that one of the reasons I even had the idea to build this case is that I have access to a complete maker space at uni with wood, metal and rapid prototyping tools. The primary tools used for this build was the laser cutter and most parts are made out of PMMA with only the backplate/wall mount and brackets being made out of 2.5mm/1mm steel. All of the parts were drawn in CAD and then exported to either paper for the metal parts or vector graphics for the laser cut parts.
     
    Having the layout and dimensions of the case I finally settled on the following components:
     - Ryzen 3 3200G
     - Asus Prime-B450-A
     - 2x HyperX 4gb ddr4 3200MHz
     - 2x Seagate IronWolf 4tb
     - Corsair SF450 (bought prior to recall but RMA was painless)
     - Noctua NH-L9a
     - Noctua A20 FLX
     - Kingston 64gb SSD (random ssd I had lying around from an older build, to be used as cache drive)
     
    While waiting on shipping I started lasercutting some of the parts to build some physical mockups out of plywood. Once the parts arrived I assembled them onto the plywood parts to double check my spacing and parts placement.
     

     
    I'm really glad that I did this as a few of the cable slots were a bit too small and kind akwardly placed. Those were ofc tweaked before the final manufacture.
    I also tried to "blue" the metal brackets a bit as they looked kinda boring before but because I used mild steel instead of stainless they kinda look a bit meh but I mostly did it to learn as they really aren't visible in the end anyway.
     
            
     
    Being nervous as f*** I started cutting the final parts out of PMMA and started soldering the RGB strips. Putting RGB on a Noctua might not be the most "correct" thing to do but in the end I think it worked quite well. I threw some more RGB into the GPU slot as I had not decided on a card at that point (I just bought a used RTX 2080 that's probably gonna end up in here, yes RTX 3000 is coming but honestly I don't think this build has the power or cooling to support those cards) and I think it looks quite alright in the end. RGB is handled by an Arduino running the FastLED library and in the end I settled for a super slow, very slight pulsing between white and slightly blue as the unicorn puke I had programmed earlier was distracting AF.
     
    Build wise that's it!
    Regarding software I ended up using Unraid after being very impressed by it during the trial and so far I've had no problems.
     
    Costs :
    Hardware : ~700€ (300€ for the Ironwolf disks alone) Material cost : ~100€ (I used mostly left overs, only the coverplate and baseplate were bought for this project) UPS : ~100€ Total : ~900€
     
    I hope this was interesting to read and see and if nothing else inspires you to build a case yourself!
     
     
     
  16. Like
    frokes got a reaction from Tech_Dreamer in Scratch Built NAS Case   
    Thank you!
  17. Like
    frokes got a reaction from Blue4130 in Scratch Built NAS Case   
    Hi!
     
    I have been thinking of building a NAS/renderserver for a few years and with COVID making me work more from home since march/april I finally got an excuse to do so! This build has been done for more than a month but I still wanted to share my journey and experience. One of the reasons I've never really gotten around to assembling a NAS has been the endless search for a compact case that still allows me to expand in future. Another factor was the overall look and size of the case as I live in a quite small apartment where I can't really hide the server anywhere. So I decided to build my own case!
     
    Server requirements and budget:
    Storage expandability (4 - 6 bays), my initial storage requirement was only 4tb but my storage delta is increasing each year VM Capable CPU to run rendering nodes in the future Decent cooling to handle summer temps and rendering workload Silence, as silent as reasonable for the price Use as little floor space as possible UPS as I do have 2 - 4 major powerouts each year Preferably less than 1000€  
    Initially I wanted to go for an ITX build but the lack of SATA ports and only having one PCI-e on ITX made me choose an M-ATX board instead.
    During the initial planning phase, a friend of mine mentioned the idea of theming the entire case around the IronWolf HDDs that I was looking at buying for the build. Things kinda snowballed from there, leading me to spend more time than I should have on making a mockup in blender for the entire case. Including lighting and material properties...xP

     

     
    I should mention that one of the reasons I even had the idea to build this case is that I have access to a complete maker space at uni with wood, metal and rapid prototyping tools. The primary tools used for this build was the laser cutter and most parts are made out of PMMA with only the backplate/wall mount and brackets being made out of 2.5mm/1mm steel. All of the parts were drawn in CAD and then exported to either paper for the metal parts or vector graphics for the laser cut parts.
     
    Having the layout and dimensions of the case I finally settled on the following components:
     - Ryzen 3 3200G
     - Asus Prime-B450-A
     - 2x HyperX 4gb ddr4 3200MHz
     - 2x Seagate IronWolf 4tb
     - Corsair SF450 (bought prior to recall but RMA was painless)
     - Noctua NH-L9a
     - Noctua A20 FLX
     - Kingston 64gb SSD (random ssd I had lying around from an older build, to be used as cache drive)
     
    While waiting on shipping I started lasercutting some of the parts to build some physical mockups out of plywood. Once the parts arrived I assembled them onto the plywood parts to double check my spacing and parts placement.
     

     
    I'm really glad that I did this as a few of the cable slots were a bit too small and kind akwardly placed. Those were ofc tweaked before the final manufacture.
    I also tried to "blue" the metal brackets a bit as they looked kinda boring before but because I used mild steel instead of stainless they kinda look a bit meh but I mostly did it to learn as they really aren't visible in the end anyway.
     
            
     
    Being nervous as f*** I started cutting the final parts out of PMMA and started soldering the RGB strips. Putting RGB on a Noctua might not be the most "correct" thing to do but in the end I think it worked quite well. I threw some more RGB into the GPU slot as I had not decided on a card at that point (I just bought a used RTX 2080 that's probably gonna end up in here, yes RTX 3000 is coming but honestly I don't think this build has the power or cooling to support those cards) and I think it looks quite alright in the end. RGB is handled by an Arduino running the FastLED library and in the end I settled for a super slow, very slight pulsing between white and slightly blue as the unicorn puke I had programmed earlier was distracting AF.
     
    Build wise that's it!
    Regarding software I ended up using Unraid after being very impressed by it during the trial and so far I've had no problems.
     
    Costs :
    Hardware : ~700€ (300€ for the Ironwolf disks alone) Material cost : ~100€ (I used mostly left overs, only the coverplate and baseplate were bought for this project) UPS : ~100€ Total : ~900€
     
    I hope this was interesting to read and see and if nothing else inspires you to build a case yourself!
     
     
     
  18. Like
    frokes reacted to Tech_Dreamer in Scratch Built NAS Case   
    Holy smokes that's good. didnt think you'd pull it off as good as it is from the initial planning layout. it looks even better. Nice Job m8.
  19. Like
    frokes got a reaction from Alphabear1978 in Scratch Built NAS Case   
    Hi!
     
    I have been thinking of building a NAS/renderserver for a few years and with COVID making me work more from home since march/april I finally got an excuse to do so! This build has been done for more than a month but I still wanted to share my journey and experience. One of the reasons I've never really gotten around to assembling a NAS has been the endless search for a compact case that still allows me to expand in future. Another factor was the overall look and size of the case as I live in a quite small apartment where I can't really hide the server anywhere. So I decided to build my own case!
     
    Server requirements and budget:
    Storage expandability (4 - 6 bays), my initial storage requirement was only 4tb but my storage delta is increasing each year VM Capable CPU to run rendering nodes in the future Decent cooling to handle summer temps and rendering workload Silence, as silent as reasonable for the price Use as little floor space as possible UPS as I do have 2 - 4 major powerouts each year Preferably less than 1000€  
    Initially I wanted to go for an ITX build but the lack of SATA ports and only having one PCI-e on ITX made me choose an M-ATX board instead.
    During the initial planning phase, a friend of mine mentioned the idea of theming the entire case around the IronWolf HDDs that I was looking at buying for the build. Things kinda snowballed from there, leading me to spend more time than I should have on making a mockup in blender for the entire case. Including lighting and material properties...xP

     

     
    I should mention that one of the reasons I even had the idea to build this case is that I have access to a complete maker space at uni with wood, metal and rapid prototyping tools. The primary tools used for this build was the laser cutter and most parts are made out of PMMA with only the backplate/wall mount and brackets being made out of 2.5mm/1mm steel. All of the parts were drawn in CAD and then exported to either paper for the metal parts or vector graphics for the laser cut parts.
     
    Having the layout and dimensions of the case I finally settled on the following components:
     - Ryzen 3 3200G
     - Asus Prime-B450-A
     - 2x HyperX 4gb ddr4 3200MHz
     - 2x Seagate IronWolf 4tb
     - Corsair SF450 (bought prior to recall but RMA was painless)
     - Noctua NH-L9a
     - Noctua A20 FLX
     - Kingston 64gb SSD (random ssd I had lying around from an older build, to be used as cache drive)
     
    While waiting on shipping I started lasercutting some of the parts to build some physical mockups out of plywood. Once the parts arrived I assembled them onto the plywood parts to double check my spacing and parts placement.
     

     
    I'm really glad that I did this as a few of the cable slots were a bit too small and kind akwardly placed. Those were ofc tweaked before the final manufacture.
    I also tried to "blue" the metal brackets a bit as they looked kinda boring before but because I used mild steel instead of stainless they kinda look a bit meh but I mostly did it to learn as they really aren't visible in the end anyway.
     
            
     
    Being nervous as f*** I started cutting the final parts out of PMMA and started soldering the RGB strips. Putting RGB on a Noctua might not be the most "correct" thing to do but in the end I think it worked quite well. I threw some more RGB into the GPU slot as I had not decided on a card at that point (I just bought a used RTX 2080 that's probably gonna end up in here, yes RTX 3000 is coming but honestly I don't think this build has the power or cooling to support those cards) and I think it looks quite alright in the end. RGB is handled by an Arduino running the FastLED library and in the end I settled for a super slow, very slight pulsing between white and slightly blue as the unicorn puke I had programmed earlier was distracting AF.
     
    Build wise that's it!
    Regarding software I ended up using Unraid after being very impressed by it during the trial and so far I've had no problems.
     
    Costs :
    Hardware : ~700€ (300€ for the Ironwolf disks alone) Material cost : ~100€ (I used mostly left overs, only the coverplate and baseplate were bought for this project) UPS : ~100€ Total : ~900€
     
    I hope this was interesting to read and see and if nothing else inspires you to build a case yourself!
     
     
     
  20. Like
    frokes got a reaction from Tech_Dreamer in Scratch Built NAS Case   
    Hi!
     
    I have been thinking of building a NAS/renderserver for a few years and with COVID making me work more from home since march/april I finally got an excuse to do so! This build has been done for more than a month but I still wanted to share my journey and experience. One of the reasons I've never really gotten around to assembling a NAS has been the endless search for a compact case that still allows me to expand in future. Another factor was the overall look and size of the case as I live in a quite small apartment where I can't really hide the server anywhere. So I decided to build my own case!
     
    Server requirements and budget:
    Storage expandability (4 - 6 bays), my initial storage requirement was only 4tb but my storage delta is increasing each year VM Capable CPU to run rendering nodes in the future Decent cooling to handle summer temps and rendering workload Silence, as silent as reasonable for the price Use as little floor space as possible UPS as I do have 2 - 4 major powerouts each year Preferably less than 1000€  
    Initially I wanted to go for an ITX build but the lack of SATA ports and only having one PCI-e on ITX made me choose an M-ATX board instead.
    During the initial planning phase, a friend of mine mentioned the idea of theming the entire case around the IronWolf HDDs that I was looking at buying for the build. Things kinda snowballed from there, leading me to spend more time than I should have on making a mockup in blender for the entire case. Including lighting and material properties...xP

     

     
    I should mention that one of the reasons I even had the idea to build this case is that I have access to a complete maker space at uni with wood, metal and rapid prototyping tools. The primary tools used for this build was the laser cutter and most parts are made out of PMMA with only the backplate/wall mount and brackets being made out of 2.5mm/1mm steel. All of the parts were drawn in CAD and then exported to either paper for the metal parts or vector graphics for the laser cut parts.
     
    Having the layout and dimensions of the case I finally settled on the following components:
     - Ryzen 3 3200G
     - Asus Prime-B450-A
     - 2x HyperX 4gb ddr4 3200MHz
     - 2x Seagate IronWolf 4tb
     - Corsair SF450 (bought prior to recall but RMA was painless)
     - Noctua NH-L9a
     - Noctua A20 FLX
     - Kingston 64gb SSD (random ssd I had lying around from an older build, to be used as cache drive)
     
    While waiting on shipping I started lasercutting some of the parts to build some physical mockups out of plywood. Once the parts arrived I assembled them onto the plywood parts to double check my spacing and parts placement.
     

     
    I'm really glad that I did this as a few of the cable slots were a bit too small and kind akwardly placed. Those were ofc tweaked before the final manufacture.
    I also tried to "blue" the metal brackets a bit as they looked kinda boring before but because I used mild steel instead of stainless they kinda look a bit meh but I mostly did it to learn as they really aren't visible in the end anyway.
     
            
     
    Being nervous as f*** I started cutting the final parts out of PMMA and started soldering the RGB strips. Putting RGB on a Noctua might not be the most "correct" thing to do but in the end I think it worked quite well. I threw some more RGB into the GPU slot as I had not decided on a card at that point (I just bought a used RTX 2080 that's probably gonna end up in here, yes RTX 3000 is coming but honestly I don't think this build has the power or cooling to support those cards) and I think it looks quite alright in the end. RGB is handled by an Arduino running the FastLED library and in the end I settled for a super slow, very slight pulsing between white and slightly blue as the unicorn puke I had programmed earlier was distracting AF.
     
    Build wise that's it!
    Regarding software I ended up using Unraid after being very impressed by it during the trial and so far I've had no problems.
     
    Costs :
    Hardware : ~700€ (300€ for the Ironwolf disks alone) Material cost : ~100€ (I used mostly left overs, only the coverplate and baseplate were bought for this project) UPS : ~100€ Total : ~900€
     
    I hope this was interesting to read and see and if nothing else inspires you to build a case yourself!
     
     
     
  21. Like
    frokes got a reaction from Prodigy_Smit in Transport Hypothetical   
    Yep! My bag was treated, let's just say, differently when it came out of the x-ray ^^ Got to keep the cheese in the end tough
  22. Like
    frokes got a reaction from starry in Transport Hypothetical   
    Yep! My bag was treated, let's just say, differently when it came out of the x-ray ^^ Got to keep the cheese in the end tough
  23. Like
    frokes reacted to Prodigy_Smit in Transport Hypothetical   
    Bro no jokes in canada's airport they made us throw away a sponge and some chargers incase it was C4 or contained a bomb.
  24. Agree
    frokes got a reaction from starry in Transport Hypothetical   
    Don't put any components in your carry-on luggage, don't know how a GPU looks on X-ray but Cheese and charging cables apparently look like C4 with wires...xD Just use check-in luggage and the parts should be fine given suitable packaging. Keep in mind that your luggage will be tossed around by ground crew to some extent so package accordningly.
  25. Like
    frokes reacted to zaidh99 in Upgrading my CPU/Monitor. Need help choosing.   
    Okay so 3100 it is. Thanks a lot for the help
     
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