StiggyAzalea

what if I wanted to play around with pihole or home automation like home assistant? Would that require an upgrade, especially if I want to multiple of these at once?

The mobo is an Asus prime z270a for those curious. Got it for cheap for an old mining rig project so the cpu is a celeron g3900, which idles at around 100% utilization lol. As for the build, basically I just want something to work as a NAS, but Ill probably want to play around with Plex and hosting a personal minecraft server. What would be the most optimal 6/7th gen cpu to get? Should I go ahead and get a 16gb kit of ram too? Also, while Im asking, would software raid be good enough or should I get a raid card? Nothing extremely critical will be saved here and either way it would be better than what Im doing now.

i want the internal drive, not really for any practical reasons I just like having one on the front of my pc. I'll probably just end up using a usb ethernet adapter for my other usecase

That is a little too jank for me, though I appreciate the effort in finding it lol.

I meant that I need to free up a sata port, not a usb port lol. 2 sata ports are on a switch with my last pcie slot, which i want to use for a network adapter

Oh yeah idk why I completely forgot about that.

I need Sata data to internal USB header. I need to free up a sata port so that I can use my last PCIe slot. The blue ray drive can't be powered off a usb port so I cant use one that has both sata power and data. I can find $30+ cables that have an external USB but I don't wanna go that route if I don't need to.

Video/company idea, but since you always say that best data security practice is to have an off-site backup, I think it would be cool if you did a video setting up a server that you divide up and give each employee there a set amount of data to use for their own private stuff as said off-site backup (the site being their home). I'm sure that's an administrative nightmare but I think the video would be super cool, not to mention the practical benefits for employees.

the two current cheapest new b450 motherboards. They're both great for the chips you're looking at. they're made by asrock and gigabyte respectively, I have experience building with both.

If you're targeting 1080p, you'll just have to look at reviews to see if the 3300x or the 1600af does better in the games you want to play. Either way you'll want to go for that and the HDV or DS3H.

Is your $200 just for the board or for the board and cpu both? If you have $200 for just the board, put that into the cpu instead and get a 3600 and a cheap board.

The 3100 is 4c/8t. Its the 3000g thats 2c/4t. If you can find one and it's MSRP, go for the 3300x and a cheaper motherboard. Literally the cheapest new b450 board, the Asrock HDV r4, is more than adequate for that chip. There's also the Gigabyte ds3h if you want 4 ram slots, but it's a little more expensive.

I'm going off to college this year, and all of my classes are online only. I'm still going to be living in a dorm, and with questionable power in the room, I want a battery backup that will last me a minute or two if I need to save a document or project if the power goes out. My PC draws about 450w under max load, so I need one that can handle more than that through the battery. What would be the best battery backup for me? I need one that has several plugs on it. On amazon the only one I'm seeing above 450w is 900w (linked), which seems like a way I could cut some of the price. Is there one around 600w with nearly as many plugs (8 minimum, 6 if it has two 5v USB ports) for less than that? I'm not opposed to spending that much if it's the best one for my needs but I'd want to know if there's a more suitable option before pulling the trigger. Thanks for the help.

I realized that all the cool, interesting cards seem to be PCI. I’ve got a card for the 1x slot. I looked at the manual and I realized that the remaining 16x slot is on a switch with the empty m.2 slot, and I’d much rather leave that open for storage upgrades than have an extra pcie card in there. Thank you all for the help, feel free to keep relying with interesting cards.

I saw that before but I didn’t read it close enough. I just bought it, I’ll see what I can do with it

I’ve considered sound cards but I’d rather something more interesting

I’ve got 1 16x slot and 1 1x slot.

I hate the empty space currently sitting under my GPU in my case. I have WiFi, I have 2.5gb Ethernet. I have a 5.25" bay USB hub. I don't know what else to buy. There's always a sound card, but to get anything better than the motherboard will cost a lot more than I'm willing to spend on aesthetics. What is the weirdest/coolest PCIe cards out there that have at least some semblance of an actual use? I've seen the wacky ones like the card that has non ports and just a bunch of capacitors. What're some cards I could look at and say "yeah, I COULD use that." If a PCIe FM radio receiver exists, please link it. No clue how that would work but I want one if it exists.