cole0622

no problem, there is a bit of a learning curve for both, I think sophos is easier, but there should be some good you tube videos to get you to where you need to go

WiFi is not made to go thru concrete. So you might want to consider a mesh solution or running Ethernet, which is the best solution. 
 
Transmit power is controlled by.... The Government. So, Id assume most decent routers are probably up near the max. Smallnetbuilder.com is a great place to look for stats, but your not going to find info on range as that differs house to house. 
 
I personally have the Synology RT2600 AC and it works great and gives me good range. BUT I live in Murica where we build houses mostly out of wood and drywall. 5Ghz which is where the speed and performance on WiFi is, will probably not be able to penetrate the concrete. 2.4 Ghz is built for penetration and range but is going to be much slower. Most Mesh systems use a dedicated 5Ghz radio to talk between the main unit and satellites. 

heeey. nice! we got a real genius over here. hahaha

If you have a modem then a router chances are your modem could be a modem/router in which case you will have to change the modem config so it also port forwards.

Same issue, it depends if the router supports a cellular modem either in RNDIS or serial mode.

@hirusha.adikariI read your other post about a local web server, to make it easier buy/install a router, especially if your going to upgrade to a 24 port switch in the future. It will make configuring things a lot more easier.

You're planning on tearing up flooring? Depending on how the house is built and how far your getting into that you could run some Ethernet cable while your doing that, also have you wired into your router to see if it's the isp?

Do what @ddennis002 suggested. DDWRT will give you the level of control you seek. You can set the radios for a lower transmit setting very easily. 
 
Personally the whole WiFi causes cancer is bull shit in my honest opinion. I have a router in my room and I have no health issues other than being fat. I at one time when I used WiFi on my desktop had the WiFi antenna pointed in such a way it had to go thru my body as I slept. No health issues have been found, I get a physical once a year with blood work. 

that's bizarre does it wine in a different system?

a common depth is 29" for servers so if its fully enclosed I would get something a little bigger to allow more room for cables

dell dimension 4100 from 2001 fully functional boots windows xp, original 20GB HDD

yeah, with what was mentioned either 3 4TBs or two 6TBs mirrored, the mirrored is going to be 6TBs (obviously less after formating ect.) with my rough calculation 3 4TBs are going to be around 7TBs (this is based on rough calculation of my raid 5 setup)

Nope, ICS does that on its own and starts a DHCP server on the interface for clients to connect to. 
That's why he recommended it, it's one click and no manual config.
 

Well I don't need to have super loud music so my usb to audio card woks well with just straight speakers. idk exactly what you need but it sounds like you need an amp and some bigger speakers. A DAC is just a converter to go from a digital signal to an analog signal so I don't think you need that.

He wouldn’t have completed anyway.  The man picks up hobbies like road gravel in tires.

If you don't mind doing a little wiring you can find cheap led "rope" (cant think what its called, but whats normally used outside) then using a relay board for adurino. then using an adurino you can program the lights however if you want a raspberry pi can usually be used in place of an adurino if you want to take that route. there are plenty of sources out there

its probly fine what are the fans connected to?

the slower drives are going to be quieter can you put the 3 drives in a raid 5?

I have one with an active fan... so depending on the fan it can be loud or quiet lol
 
To add on to this they also have cases like the flirc case which have a metal body that contacts the cpu and acts as a passive cooler. I am probably going to move towards that more. The one I am using stays nice and cool with the fan, but I have one that is mostly quiet and another one that is loud as hell. It is a shame since they are the same fan and case.
 
Then again I have actual servers at home I can put this stuff on if needed... I just use the pi's since they are fun to play with. I will say though Pi hole is a must and if you are savvy enough with a 4gb pi4 you can put some Ids/ips systems in place too provided you have a way to get the information to it (like a span port).
 
*more talking*
Me being me though I am currently working to deploy my own SIEM at home using ELK and if I can make it correlate correctly I want to place a PI Ids before and after my router. If I can find a way to setup up some type of MX sandbox I will also have it checking various emails that come in. Will just need to make sure gmails are routing into O365 and then coming in that way.
 
Do I need that much security at home? Nah, but it makes for fun projects and with a teenager it is ALMOST needed.

I mean it might not be able to handle it at full gigabit speeds, but chances are it can handle it faster than the upload limitations on his network (my guess) at least.
 
Found 
looks like 200mbps or so is the average speed depending on which encryption method you use.  Still 200mbps is more than enough for what Op needs.
 
 

I'm running a gtx 1050ti 4gb oc version. in msi core voltage set 0, power limit set to 102, core clock set to + 152, memory +155, and im getting 1911-1925 mhz clock stock cooler working fine

that is true
 
interesting I was thinking inbound not outbound like you said in which case you would want to vpn to the remote site (parents house) and if that's where you want to go then you could do. you > openvpn > parents house > rdp server. with pfsense you can make an openvpn server

I use Velcro myself. This way it doesnt fuck the wall up. 

Yep come to think of it even most small 5 port switches have holes so you can hang them on a wall/ceiling me personally never done that but it is an option

As far as to how one simple way is to use windows resource monitor to see its throughput if there is a pc on the network since they are the ones commonly sucking bandwidth, additionally some routers will show throughput of connected devices in settings.