A. Cole

Yeah I'm considering either underclocking pretty much everything to run cooler, and draw less power, or figure out enough ways the PC has to work so it makes it "more efficient" for running 24/7 at its power draw. Hadn't really considered needing a ups, hopefully I can find just a small UPS for safe shutdown operations if the power goes. In terms of the UPS though, am I better just getting a single socket ups (so only the PC connected) or one with enough sockets for the amp etc so the speakers don't pop on a power surge/failure? Just a quick look and the APC Back-UPS BX - BX500CI looks like it should suit my needs, is it enough though?

Yeah it is very triangular, but my case as allot of angles (and is white) so should look nice in the same set up The Denon system doesn't seem to be very future proof, it only has two speaker channels for the speakers its paired with, which means I would need another amp for the centre speaker which isn't ideal really. On-top of that, the difference between that bundle and the speakers as a pair without the amp makes it £226 for the Denon amp, which is 30w, where as the limited edition X7 is £289 (£60 more) for 2x50w (100w), many more channels and a much smaller footprint with the non limited being £239, 2x38w (76w). Budget doesn't cut it, because the RTX cards are the worst for making background noise in the PC, these are cards at like £1-2k so should have enough in there budget for proper shielding.

I think I might have found my good entry point, there's a bundle at the nearest Hifix if anyone can give an opinion on the Denon DM41DABwith 2x Dali Spektors and im thinking of pairing it with the spektor vokal centre speak all coming to £595 which seems like a good entry point. I might still get an external PCI-e sound card just because I've always liked keeping up to date with them, I've got like 5 full sized PCI-e slots (mix between x8 and x16 bandwith) and i'll probably try and excuse myself for it by saying its extra shielding for the data before it leaves the pc (because RTX cards have been known to interfere with onboard audio) but deep down they just look cool and I remember seeing my cousins ugly old ass gaming pc with sound cards and all the 5.25" populated with fan controllers and shit, it was brown and hidious and i pre-2000's gaming pc and I loved it XD plus gives me more budget for HDD's and shit XD and as much as i love RJ45 cables, fiber is better on paper for pretty much everything, and there's spare fiber NIC cards at my work if I ever want one XD EDIT when I was looking into the Denon DM41DAB I noticed it only had two channels. Going back to the creative labs - sound blaster X7 It seems to plenty of connectivity for the future, would this work with the Dali Spektors? I think it would look good near a lounge TV

Hey all, Some of you might have seen my other posts, I plan on converting my current system to a NAS/media centre/server when I build a new system. This post is particularly for the NAS side. Anyone with an AMD board who uses StoreMI, do you know if its a licence key that I could use on an intel system or does it need to recognise an AMD chip? the reason I ask this is I plan to actually purchase fuzedrive1000 on my next build to test if my theory of pairing a gen4 m.2 with an SSD will see improvements due to the difference in read write speeds, so I was hoping I could use the storeMI licence from my next build on my intel build instead. If not does anyone know of a tiered storage system that works on intel and specifically x99 boards? as mg 500gb SSD will be staying in the NAS anyway so I was hoping to use it as the cache. Or am I limited to intels optane drives? I don't really want to have to use Raid0 to increase HDD performance, as I would rather use redundancy raids like 1, 5 & 6.

ok made a separate post for the audio side, back to the main topic then. This is my current specification for the NAS (parts I already own I have omitted the price) CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE II ATX LGA2011-3 Memory: Corsair Vengeance LED 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory Storage: MyDigitalSSD SBX 128 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£24.95 @ Amazon UK) - intended for OS and drivers only Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 6 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£162.49 @ Box Limited) Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 6 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£162.49 @ Box Limited) Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB Dual Video Card Case: NZXT Phantom 530 (Black) ATX Full Tower Case Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£74.99 @ AWD-IT) Case Fan: NZXT FN-200RB 166.2 CFM 200 mm Fan Case Fan: Phanteks PH-F200SP_BK 110.1 CFM 200 mm Fan Case Fan: Cooler Master MasterFan MF200R RGB 90 CFM 200 mm Fan I'm hoping I can use the SSD as a tiered storage some how, rather than using raid 0 for the HDD as I would rather have a redundancy raid like 1, 5 or 6 for the HDD is there enough ram? is the CPU powerful enough? are the 2x1gb built in NIC enough or should I get a 10gb NIC card? Do I need anything like a raid controller card or will the built in controller on the X99 board suffice? Anything else you can find that might need improved? Am I better getting larger capacity HDD or smaller? Majority of use case as a NAS will be movies, music and steam library

Hi all This is following on from my post in Servers and NAS, In short when I make my next build, I plan to convert my current X99 system into a NAS and media centre. I'm quite musically inclined with experience in a few different instruments, but I have never really ventured into the audiophile section. Also my father bought a load of music from a radio station that closed down years back, these seem to be FLAC or WAV files as often a single track fills the HDD (the largest HDD i saw in this box was 68gb) on-top of this I have a decent small vinyl collection which I would like to play on the system, Is it easy to switch from PC to Turntable? also I've seen these turntable to digital converters, are they crap or not? The closest two examples would be a custom speaker set up in a car (JBL), and a old hi-fi turntable system and when I say old its pre 1970's (some Japanese brand I can't remember the name for) and believe it or not when I checked online, that particular Hi-Fi set could be bought with a cylinder player as an additional extra LOL But in short, I discovered how much range some of my favourite music can have on a good system and was wondering what would be a good entry level audiophile system. I'm also particular to brand matching, but I'm only familiar with a few speaker manufactures including; JBL (car only), Rainbow (car only), Pioneer, Harmon Kardio, Bose (which I was kind of put of by the Mazda RX-8 system) and Klipsch which is way outside my price range. Thats not including manufacturers in the music industry like Peevey etc. Note - I'm not too fussed about the set up, as I've helped set up stages indoor and out including finding acoustic sweet spots. Budget is flexible as this will be an ongoing project, It will be going in a lounge set up, I would say up to £500 for a 2.0 system, up to £1200 for a 2.1 or 3.1 system and max £2000 for a 5.2 or 7.1 system, but preferably I wouldn't want to exceed £1000 so future upgrade-ability/addition is preferable I have no DAC other than whats built into my X99 board, so that would need included in the budget. Questions: Should I get a sound card? I know most people say go external dac, but I'm thinking more a way to connect to a Hi-Fi controller rather than a small external DAC. In particular I have always wanted a Creative Labs card. AMP? Sound blaster X7? is this a complete waste of budget or would it be a good head unit? Would I want a higher wattage amp? Software? what software will I need to run FLAC and other high fidelity files? will media player work or do I want something that's more like serato? Optical? right this one I have no clue about, I know how Fibre optics work but would you ever use the optical port on these speaker systems? what connection method's would you recommend ? DMX, Jacks, copper wire etc. Speakers? this I probably need most help with, can you achieve "entry audiophile" level with these home cinema systems, or can I use Cabs and Amp's that musicians use or will these not have the right range? because I can get my hands on some Vox cabs. How do you tell apart audiophile speakers from regular bookshelf/desktop speakers? (it is resistance, or range, or anything else that can help me identify them) what wattage should I be looking for a medium sized room (something that's below the VR recommended size but would still be playable without breaking anything) I'm not really going for loud, I want clear audio. Also, would you even recommend an "audiophile" set up for a home lounge?

I wonder if you could stack more than 2 radiators (would need really long screws) but what if you tried sandwiching multiple layers of fans and radiators till the back was full?

@traha9 you show enthusiasm in a topic I enjoy discussing, so plenty glad to help. I think at this point, you might not know enough to get a perfect build with no bottle necks or faults (which I don't think anyone really does know the perfect build) but I think you should know enough now that you don't accidently make a bad choice. No matter what you choose at this point I think you will love it and enjoy it, and we can never 100% future proof something because if you can then those IT companies development teams aren't doing there job right. Since your new to all this, things like StoreMI and overclocking can always be played with at a later date, and I'm glad you feel like you've learnt from us all. I'm quite new to the forum (been watching linus since NCIX days) but everyone on here seems very nice and jumps at the opportunity to help, I didn't need to join this forum but im glad I did oh as the last foot note, I haven't really looked into CyberpowerPC in a long while, if there still going it means there not trash, just one itty bitty thing. The link I clicked on was fine specwise but watch out for "flashy" cases because some of the nicest looking cases have the worst airflow (corsairs crystal line up for example) which is why I've always like NZXT, very few of there cases suffer from suffocation. but keep us update if you do go for a system (there's a forum for that somewhere) and enjoy joining the PC master race

Crocks, Socks and RGB the Linus lifestyle

OSU! its a music game which involves clicking and tracking, allot of pro gamers recommend OSU to improve aim, timing, tracking etc admittedly not the best sound tracks even if your an anime fan, but you can supposedly download track maps for western titles

I've had good experiences with pioneer in the past so there a brand that I trust, for a long time I always just assumed BOSE was out of my range like Harman Kardon, but not quite Rainbow prices. Though I went of Bose very quickly after hearing the Bose systems in most Mazda RX8 (i know its old tech but still) and I was surprised my cheaper aftermarket JBL system sounded so much better I use to own a Celica before she died, with a nice sound system in that was all JBL, (2x) tweeters, (2x) 4", (2x) 6" x 8", a 4 channel 600w amp and (2x) 12" subs (I know well overkill on the subs, but I got them for an amazing deal, I believe I got both for £90, one was still sealed in box and other was missing its box) How does JBL translate into the home audio? or would you recommend against JBL? Also this is a long shot, but I have a few musician friends who have some good CAB's like Vox (speakers only without amp) would these be any good for a home audio system or am I being stupid? Also whats your opinion on me going for a sound card and external DAC? I really like creative labs so I was thinking a creative labs card paired with there sound blaster x7, is this overkill or would it be a good start point? How exactly do high end audio book shelf speakers work? should i be looking for higher impedance? is there a way to tell audiophile speakers apart from desktop other bookshelf/home audio systems? Do i need a large room for good acoustics or can you have an audiophile setup in the average lounge? how do these compare to home cinema systems like the Samsung Q90R? I'm assuming a good entry level audiophile set up will be around the Q90R price of £1500 Also though its not related to this build, the mini itx build I plan on making in the future might feature the sound blaster Katana or the Razer Nommo for desktop speakers. I've always wanted to listen to Santana on an audiophile system P.S should i be making a new post on a different part of the forums to ask all these questions? XD

I plan on going for 2x 1tb gen4 NVMe (likely the sabrent rocket ones as there £30-40 cheaper than corsair and gigabyte) and until I get these gen4 NVMe I'm going to be using my Kingston 256gb m.2 for the short term, so I don't want to buy another m.2 that I will end up replacing later down the line. Plus I'm always sceptical pairing AMD and Intel components (i know there wont be problems but it just doesn't feel right) the SSD is meant to be for redundancy and extra room, if I wasn't going SSD I would probably go for a 10tb but as stated before that will be better in the current build I have when i convert it into a NAS/Media server etc. It's a bit complicated how I plan to set up the storage on this build, but I plan on buying the extended store MI licence (fuzedrive 1000) and seeing if Raid 0 is even needed for gen4 (probably not) then pair the SSD to make the vSSD. If raid 0 is pointless then 1tb of gen4 will be used for the vSSD and the other 1tb will be used for OS and intensive/large programs that aren't games, like AutoCAD, Solidworks or sketchup, Sibalius, unreal engine etc. And to finish this of I want to have a network connection to what is my current system which will be turned into a NAS for steam, movie and audio libraries. There's no point using the gen4 m.2 as the network directory because a 1gb/s network will bottle neck the 4-5gb/s read write of gen4 NVMe so it will be going from NAS to SSD then if that file/program/whatever is used often enough it will move from SSD to NVMe

main airflow for the tower 900 case is the rear compartment, where it can fit something daft like 2x 480mm radiators and you would either hot cold isle it, or have it all flowing one direction. The only intake for the main compartment is those grills at the bottom, so the 120mm is the only thing providing airflow in that front compartment (which is why some reviewers didn't like it, because even if you water cool there are some components like chokes that wont be cooled and still need airflow) some people try putting a fan above the HDD rack but it doesn't realy improve much unless your modding the case. If I was going to mod that case for more fans, me being me I would try and put a 200mm fan on the bottom as an intake, but i've always loved 200mm fans for there massive airflow and sound profile.

@HumdrumPenguin thanks for coming in and helping with this, I wasn't aware of a difference in IPC but thanks for bringing that up, something new for me to look into. But I'm sorry, but where did you get the AMD cards are hot runners? that's just not true anymore (AMD show junction and edge temperatures unlike Nvidia, but if you translate that into the same avg temp Nvidia use, the Rx line up is much more efficient and cooler) Glitches yes, but there a brand new architecture and they havent had as many bugs as Nvidias Pascal architecture did out the gate. Yeah the blower coolers suck but that's the same on any card, AMD are just not afraid to show there temperatures and they have a sensor almost directly on there die, so yeah that reads hotter than Nvidia would ever dare show (look at heat camera images) there also 7nm like the ryzen 300 series, I say this because the 3000 series dropped in temperatures and increased in efficiency, this is the same on the new RX cards which have been marketed against the rtx 2060 but been seen competing with the 2070 super (even on allot of the nvidia favouring games) I would still recomend a 2070 super mind, even if its just for the amount of support nvidia cards have compared to AMD @traha9 I wouldn't go for a 2080 super, it has very little gains over the 2080 and the 2070 super performs very well. Supposed i should of asked if you would be focusing on FPS games or more free roam? because at the moment RTX on kills frames and is unusable I'n most high pace fps games. going back to something penguin mentioned, the jump rom generations with Nvidia have been getting smaller, with that point the 1080ti still performs on par with the 2070 super (the 2070 being slightly better at newer games and the 1080 slightly better at non directX12 games) I think going from a 2070 super to 2080 super is to little gain for the extra cost. The only 2080 card I would recommend is a 2080 ti, the 2080 super was a flop compared to the other super cards, and the 2070 super pretty much a 2080 (non ti or super) but usually cheaper To your SSD question, no neither of them are gen4 m.2 SSD's, as far as I'm aware there is only sabrent, gigabyte and corsair who currently offer gen4 SSD's and an easy way to tell (other than the hammering of Gen4 advertisement) is gen4 SSD's often come with beefy coolers, to compare the 1tb gen4 sabrent rocket is $229 compaired to the non gen4 at $109. The difference between normal NVMe and SSD isn't realy enough for StoreMI to see a performance gain on either, I'm not even fully sure pairing a Gen4 m.2 with SSD will have use of StoreMI, something I'm going to be testing in my next build. but comparing avg read write speeds (very simplified) HDD at 150mb/s (on a good day) SSD at 500mb/s NVMe at 2gb/s (200mb/s) gen4 m.2 at 5gb/s (5000mb/s) There's a 4x speed difference between SSD and NVME but a 10x speed difference between gen4 and SSD. StoreMI became popular to pair HDD with a NVMe because you would see gains, but pairing SSD with NVMe doesn't seem to be popular. On the monitor, I agree with penguin there's not really a reason to get a 240hz display (if you find a great deal ne then go ahead but dont budget your build for a 240hz monitor) the refresh rates you want to go for are 120hz, 144hx and possible a 165hz (i only included the 165hz cause there is some nice monitors in that range, but again don't focus on getting that refresh rate) something thats probably going to be more noticeable is pixel response time, you want to get a monitor with 1-4ms response time (this is allot to do with ghosting) If you have the desk space, those ultra wide's are incredibly immersive (and often come with in built systems to switch the display multiple virtual monitors) Back on the CPU, there's a clear reason AMD has taken over the consumer market, these Ryzen products are the best things to come to computers since AMD announced the first dual core, Intel is not in trouble per say because there business scope is more than just desktop/server processors, but last year ryzen 2000 series outsold intel, and this year will be the same and AMD deserves this because they innovated where intel said "nobody needs that" time and time again Case fans, most cases ship with 1-3 fans depending on the manufacturer and case tier, normally a fan on exhaust and an intake fan, but dont forget AIO's (and air coolers) come with there own fans as well, you shouldn't need to worry about fans out the gate, and you can always buy a cheep pack of fans (they dont have to branded like corsair or noctua, but the cheep fans understandably don't normally last as long) Cooler even a decent air cooler (not even a high end air cooler) could give you some overclocking head room on ryzen chips, but I would still recommend a 240 or 280mm AIO because even your idle temps will be a good 10 degrees cooler, and radiators are just better to reduce heat stack on long loads This is again something most don't look into, and these figures are not accurate and just used for descriptive purposes, say you load Tomb raider and as you start playing, your air cooler says 65*, after 1 hour that air cooler can "creep" in temperature to 75*+ (normally not that bad) AIO's however have less creep because of how they work, you will see that temperature difference between the input and output of the radiator, but 10 mins playing compared to 1 hour an AIO will not increase in avg temp by as much as and air cooler. The bigger cooling solution you have the less creep it should see. It's why water cooling will always be applicable because your spreading that heat dissipation more and more, so there is less chance for your heat to stack up (that the actual heat loss coolers are designed for) because even before you actively cool something, the amount of area that heat can fill means it takes much longer for the avg to increase, its like getting a bucket of tap water, and adding boiling water till the buckets hot compared to doing the same in a bath tub, takes allot more heat or allot longer for that water to increase in temp.

if your not going coloured coolant (which plain water is better for long term anyway) then might I recommend matting/frosting your tubes (I believe you can get this effect by sanding them) as these look wicked with RGB glow (no idea who/what that build is, just searched frosted hardline) 2 loops wont work as a redundancy, not unless you realise a pump has crapped out and jerry rick the loop to the second pump, single series loops will run redundant of one pump limping as you say, but if your GPU loop is dead and you power on your system that can very quickly mean dead GPU's Dual loop is almost like Raid 0, more performance as your GPU and CPU are getting cooled separately, but there's no redundancy if a pump fails.