Aaron_T

I use in my NAS devices Seagate Exos enterprise drives, and they have been champs!

I have no personal experience with Steelcase, but I can vouch for the SecretLabs Titan Evo (I have the XL). I'm a big guy, and a work from home software engineer. So this chair has a huge butt in it 5+ days a week for 8-10 hours a day. It's lasted me for 2-3 years now with no obvious signs of significant wear. I do have occasional back pain due to my "hobbies" of auto repair and home remodeling, and the Titan Evo has always been pretty comfortable when I was tired and sore. That being said, I have never tried a Steelcase, and it very well could be that those are even better.

I stand corrected. Makes things even cheaper.

Looking at the asus website, it doesn't look like your MB will support 5000 series CPUs. So might want to grab a kit like this: PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 3.4 GHz 8-Core Processor (£268.99 @ Amazon UK) Motherboard: Asus TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS WIFI II Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£115.98 @ Novatech) Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G GeForce RTX 3060 12GB 12 GB Video Card (£278.99 @ Amazon UK) Total: £663.96 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-02-14 19:09 GMT+0000 All your other parts look fine to go with the above core upgrade. And if you are only targeting 1080p, I'm not sure it makes sense to spend more on a beefier GPU.

Used Herman Miller chairs are a pretty good value, and their chairs are top notch. Example: https://nationalofficeinteriors.com/office-furniture/chairs/direct-ship-chairs/herman-miller-discount-shipping-mirra/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA5rGuBhCnARIsAN11vgS3q_k9-XapE_px1LkBcYpCOnRTtwfrA3NnrVfmGToPoLtmHT9MZoUaAudSEALw_wcB

In my opinion, running too many essential services on a single device always leads to issues, be it performance or just having a single point of failure. For your 6 specific use cases, I'd break them up across a few small devices, something like this: #1,3 and maybe 5: https://a.co/d/fBn6Y4f #2, 6 also maybe 5: https://a.co/d/bpB4wHg #4: https://a.co/d/2SRldUo or the UM790 you listed PROS to this scenario: -Top link gives you dedicated hardware to run a better router like pfSense or OpnSense which gives you lots of network tools for free. -Multiple devices gives you redundancy and more room to grow (IE #6) -You'll learn a lot more using dedicated devices instead of trying to make it all fit into a windows box -NAS vs DAS is better IMO because you don't have to worry about the machine your DAS is attached to messing up your raid. (gives more freedom to experiment) CONS: -Going to cost more -Likely to take a little more space EDIT: small note about the UM780 vs the UM790. The UM780 give you an Oculink port, which is awesome for external GPU enclosure that support it, the UM790 does not have this. And they both have the built in Radeon 780M iGPU

It's unfortunately a fair amount higher than your budget, but my Secret Labs Titan Evo XL has held up quite well for me. Had it for about 2-3 years. I'm 285lbs, 6'5". Not sure about QC on their latest chairs though. My daughter recently bought one and she loves it, but she's light, so not a good test. For known high quality, you could always go for a used Herman Miller. Their chairs are rated between 300 and 350lbs capacity. EX: https://nationalofficeinteriors.com/office-furniture/chairs/direct-ship-chairs/herman-miller-discount-shipping-mirra/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA5rGuBhCnARIsAN11vgS3q_k9-XapE_px1LkBcYpCOnRTtwfrA3NnrVfmGToPoLtmHT9MZoUaAudSEALw_wcB

VM = Virtual Machine It sounds like all you plan to do with this is store a little data. If you have more specific uses you'd like the server to be functional for, then please do share. The reason it's important to understand your use case is because the OS, and hardware for a "server" can vary a great deal depending on what you want to use the machine for. If you just want a NAS, there are a lot of good COTS(Commercial Off The SHelf) solutions, like Qnap and Synology. If you want run VMs you need more powerful hardware, if you want a media server then some device with transcoding hardware might be nice, if you want to install a k8s cluster and push docker containers to it instead of full fat VMs then you may want some other variation of hardware and OS. Also what you're using the containers for can make a big difference. Just some examples to illustrate why it's so important to understand the use case. And "I just want something to learn on" is a valid use case that would be a more general hardware config. But thinking through what your needs are, and being as specific as possible will help those here give you the best advice.

I have a 4tb GM7000, and anecdotally the performance is great, no loading time issues or any reason to think the drive it bottlenecking anything. One consideration though it that the drive is very thick as far as M.2 drives go. If you have a ITX motherboard where the drives are stacked, or a laptop with tight space tolerances like a Razer, you may not be able to get the GM7000 physically installed. in which case you'd need a single sided 4tb SSD like the Lexar NM790, or a 2tb single sided drive like a 980 or 990 pro.

I'd probably shoot for something like this: PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor ($159.68 @ Amazon) Motherboard: MSI PRO B550M-VC WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Amazon) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($40.99 @ Amazon) Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($62.99 @ Best Buy) Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G GeForce RTX 3060 12GB 12 GB Video Card ($289.39 @ Newegg) Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($44.98 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 (2024) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Newegg) Total: $798.01 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-02-09 19:33 EST-0500 Still have the 5800X3D to upgrade to for more performance in the future. And plenty of GPU power for 1080p and 1440p high refresh in esports games. Unfortunately at the lower price point both AM4 and Intel 12th/13th/14th gen are EOL, so you have to buy AM5 for future products at this point in time, but that puts the price point higher. AM4 still has a lot of life and performance to give though, and this should be more than capable for the games your brother plays, with room to grow.

I found this: https://a.co/d/b8mlaCc Which seems like it has the correct functionality and formfactor for me. But I know nothing about this brand, and it has questionable reviews. But figured it would be a good example of the ballpark I am targeting with this device.

How would this be done? I could see splitting a MIC signal out to two devices, but it doesn't seem to me like it would be possible to get the audio from two devices into the same headset with passive cables only. I don't really have a budget. I can spend what it takes for a functional, reliable, and elegant solution. This seems like it would work, but is significantly larger than I'd prefer to add to my backpack. Also, this will be sitting at an office desk, sometimes un-attended, so I don't want anything that will draw too much attention.

This seems like the best path forward to me. Most GPU VRAM you can get in budget, 16 fast CPU cores, and lots of fast RAM. Since prices are lower than I estimated in your region, it may be worth seeing if you can fit an AM5 CPU like a 7700x and new board in the budget, with DDR5. But I suspect that the newest gen parts will be much costlier. In which case, I think what you've got here is going to be your best path forward.

Pretty much an audio newb, but looking for a cheap (don't really have a set budget, I just don't want anything very complicated or large) basic, but reliable, mixer to accomplish the following. 1. Connect to 1 MacBook and 1 PC tower. AUX preferred. 2. Output audio to a headset over AUX or USB. AUX still preferred. 3. Pass through MIC from my headset to at least the MacBook. If this could be done with AUX combo jack that would be ideal so I don't need another dongle for the MacBook 4. Basic volume adjustments for PC and MacBook audio. I don't need anything fancy here. General info, this is just for a desk job work scenario (think Zoom calls on the MacBook and Spotify on the PC). I don't want to carry two head sets, or constantly switch plugs. I don't want a mixer that adds much weight to my backpack. The mixer can be battery powered, or wall plug, don't care too much. Definitely open to suggestion on IO types, or other considerations. Mostly shooting for a convenience tool with this. Very much appreciate your time, thoughts, and suggestions.

Based on a quick look at prices in Turkey on Newegg's website (no idea if these are good prices for the region). And a read through the linked article on after effects performance considerations. It seems like the two best path's forward within the budget are: 1. If you use a lot of GPU accelerated effects cpu - 5800x gpu - RTX 3060 12gb ram - 64gb 3200mhz kit 2. If you do not use a lot of GPU accelerated effects cpu - 5950x ram - 64gb 3200mhz kit and some more SSD space, or save your money https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/video-editing-workstations/adobe-after-effects/hardware-recommendations/ An AM5 build based on region prices is barely doable, and leaves little room past cpu(7600x)+mb+32gb ram.