SergeyB

That looks like a great (if slightly more expensive than planned) result 🙂

Yeah, you can tell I've never done that part before 😅
 
These come from facebook marketplace actually. I found someone who is selling a bunch of hardware, including lots of these drives for about C$25 each and he says they were barely used. Well, for that price, I'm gonna go for it! Had another NAS built for another location with 6 of them. Works like a charm (for now).
 
Interesting. I'm gonna look into those for the future. Thanks!
 
Speaking of those temps, just as I wrote this post, I started seeing an issue I foolishly was hoping I wouldn't run into.
This case is actually made for 3 HDDs, but I put 4 of them in there using the extra space in the 5.25" bay, which does not have a fan. Once the drives started ramping up the work load, 3 of them went up to 40 degrees, and 1 up to 60(!!)
Also this particular CPU has a known overheating issue.

So what I'm gonna do is get a better case - Fractal Design Node 304 - that supports 6 drives with cooling, and a beefier CPU cooler from Noctua.
Too bad, I was hoping to avoid spending more money, but I guess if you care about your data to survive longer, you'd have to invest.
 
Other than that, thanks for for the input guys! Appreciate y'all.

Hey all!
 
I finished my new NAS recently. This project has some space limitations (See images)
Wanted to share and ask your opinion about this limited space setup and whether or not I should be... concerned about some of its aspects.
 
Shelf contents:
1. Main network switch (smart switch from TP-Link). 
2. Router (TP-Link) - routes traffic through ethernet to a fiber converter, then off to my ISP.
3. Grandstream gateway for VoIP telephony services.
4. UPS (below black shelf), in charge (pun intended) of power outages for the PC only.
5. PC (top of black shelf) - Runs TrueNAS and Ubuntu on Proxmox.
 
NAS Specs:
Case: Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced
Board: Biostar Hi-Fi B85N 3D (Mini-ITX)
CPU: Core i7-4790K (LGA1150)
RAM: 16GB (8GB x 2) 1600Mhz
HBA Card: Dell Perc H310
 
Storage:
1 x Crucial 500GB SSD (Proxmox VMs and ISOs)
4 x 3TB SAS HDDs (TrueNAS ZFS storage with 1 parity drive)
 
Air intake: 2 fans at the case front - air flows through the HDDs onto the motherboard
Air exhaust: 1 fan at the side of the case - for which, there's a gap between the case and the shelf wall
PSU exhaust: top of case
 
With all that in mind, what would be your thoughts about this setup?
Any input is greatly appreciated!
 
Cheers!
-Sergey.
 
 

That sounds like a good advice. The amount of sockets on the supply just made me wonder.
Thanks!

UPDATE:
 
So I ended up going with proxmox for my base platform. Thank you @Electronics Wizardy for that suggestion! I wasn't familiar with it but I love it now!

My hardware is an HP USFF machine with a Core i5 3rd gen, 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250GB SSD.
The SSD is showing to be the most crucial component for this build, since there's more need for responsiveness of each OS than the CPU performance since the tasks they execute don't require much processing power and only depend on architecture and the OS's kernel.
2.5GB of RAM for each VM seems to be on the edge of saving money while getting exactly what I needed.
 
Thank you very much everyone for the support!
Cheers!
-Sergey.

UPDATE:
 
So I ended up going with proxmox for my base platform. Thank you @Electronics Wizardy for that suggestion! I wasn't familiar with it but I love it now!

My hardware is an HP USFF machine with a Core i5 3rd gen, 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250GB SSD.
The SSD is showing to be the most crucial component for this build, since there's more need for responsiveness of each OS than the CPU performance since the tasks they execute don't require much processing power and only depend on architecture and the OS's kernel.
2.5GB of RAM for each VM seems to be on the edge of saving money while getting exactly what I needed.
 
Thank you very much everyone for the support!
Cheers!
-Sergey.

My dedicated Folding@Home machine officially working for COVID-19 now.
Folding for the LTT team of course  
 
Hardware isn't much, but it's what I have to offer:
Core i7 3930K 4.15Ghz 6-core
32GB DDR3
Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 Ti
 
This one has been purring all day for a couple of weeks now.
Cheers!

Cool! Thats more points then I have (Looking down at my signature)...

that's awesome, and you're awesome for building a dedicated F@H machine!
what's the PPD like on this configuration?

NVMe SSD will make a real difference as compiles and links can be i/o intensive.
 
Unless the build environment used supports multithreading, count one core per VM.
 
I would suggest at least 8GB of memory per VM. More would likely offer better performance. 

How fast do you want it to compile?
 
Id probalby go with ryzen, its normally a good amount faster for the price.
 
Id personally go proxmox as its mor compatible with hardware and fully free, but esxi should work.
 
How much ram do a single system need? Budget a gig or two per vm for the os, and then add athe amount the program needs
 
 
Do you mind used? A used server would probalby be faster for the price, look up used dell servers like a r720

You may want to consider adding another GTX 1050 and running in SLI configuration, the cost of RTX cards are quite high currently and you are paying a significant premium for ray-tracing, if the games you play don't have ray-tracing as an option and use traditional rasterization then I would recommend adding another GTX 1050 in SLI.

Hey everyone, 
 
So I decided to salvage my old laptop that turns off randomly and turn it into a desktop instead! 
I had sent it to a repair shop before and they told me that it had a problem with the cooling system, which they "fixed" and I paid for it, but it still turns off whenever it likes. Grr!

The specs aren't much at this point:
Core i7 3630QM
8GB RAM
GTX 650GT

but if I manage to find the following parts for cheap, I might have a working machine:
Case (preferably SFF) - The motherboard is 9" x 11", proprietary of course, so I'll have to have it custom mounted and probably even modify the case. Cooler for the pipes - As you can see, I have a couple of cooling blocks joined by 2 pipes that go to the heat sink.
I thought initially of having it water cooled instead and get rid of these blocks, but I realized I wouldn't be able to find blocks that would fit in these tight spots and some custom work for that would probably cost more than I want to spend. So I figured to just get a horizontal heat sink with a fan and attach it directly to the two pipes with some thermal compound or liquid metal. That might work since the original fan for these pipes was crap anyway. SSD - I used it's original one for my desktop, cause at least I could do that! USB and Ethernet panels on the back connected to the two modules in the picture - might be able to find something like that. So that's about it. Hope not to spend on this project more money than I could pay to get a better machine than that LOL
But this can be like my own scrapyard wars project! Muhahaha

Will keep you guys posted...

Cheers!
-Sergey.
 

140k PPD isn't much, but it'll add up over time I get 700k on my 1070, but that only runs when I'm using my system, which is far from 24/7. So those probably balance out.

My dedicated Folding@Home machine officially working for COVID-19 now.
Folding for the LTT team of course  
 
Hardware isn't much, but it's what I have to offer:
Core i7 3930K 4.15Ghz 6-core
32GB DDR3
Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 Ti
 
This one has been purring all day for a couple of weeks now.
Cheers!

Recently upgraded my workstation that I got from Amazon for $900 with a new case, CPU cooler and power supply.
The new case is MCB-B511D-KGNN-RGB from Cooler Master and the SPU is a 700W from Thermaltake.
This case with all of it's fans got my CPU temp down by 10-15 degrees, which is awesome!
and I don't even need a rear fan because the CPU double fan is close enough to the back to blow out a nice cool air shaft ...also RGB!

The specs of this machine include:
Core i7 7700
16GB DDR4
Nvidia GTX 1050

Stuff I do: 3D animation and rigging in Maya, Gaming and Coding.

Next item to upgrade would be the graphics card. I'd like a nice RTX and then I'm happy!  

I'm looking to upgrade secondly because of the ray-tracing capabilities, but mainly because I could use a nice boost of performance for games. My GTX 1050 is a pretty minimalist card (as seen in the photo) and it barely runs some games with medium settings. My budget is in the C$400's and originally I was thinking about the RTX 2060, but my plan is to check prices again once I actually have the budget... lol

What is your budget for a new graphics card, how much better performance do you want in improvement or are you looking to upgrade because of the added ray-tracing capabilities?
 

Recently upgraded my workstation that I got from Amazon for $900 with a new case, CPU cooler and power supply.
The new case is MCB-B511D-KGNN-RGB from Cooler Master and the SPU is a 700W from Thermaltake.
This case with all of it's fans got my CPU temp down by 10-15 degrees, which is awesome!
and I don't even need a rear fan because the CPU double fan is close enough to the back to blow out a nice cool air shaft ...also RGB!

The specs of this machine include:
Core i7 7700
16GB DDR4
Nvidia GTX 1050

Stuff I do: 3D animation and rigging in Maya, Gaming and Coding.

Next item to upgrade would be the graphics card. I'd like a nice RTX and then I'm happy!  

You probably need @LinusTech or one of his crew to answer this. 
But I believe its approx 80GB for an average LTT project....much less for a Tech Quickie since theyre filmed in close to a single take, and probably considerably more for a special like ScrapYard Wars....You would also need to account for the space for any extra B-Roll footage you might have
They also store the finished project as well.
 
Probably what you need to consider is how many minutes your average shoot is, and your finished videos.
4K RAW is approx ~350MB/minute
4K HEVC (H.264) is approx 120MB/minute....and less for H.265 which is even better for 4K as it supports HDR and 10-bit+ color.  

I would imagine that will depend on what kind of project this is, but just to give an idea: a 10 minute clip would be around 50GB on their RED cameras at 20:1 compression ratio.
That's 5GB a minute, or 84MB per second.
Source (timestamp at 2:55):
As per this video:
It seems like for editing they still use Cineform, namely 'Cineform Raw', which - according to that same quote - use up '50 to 70GB'.
Seeing as most LTT videos are between 7 and 12 minutes, that '10 min = 50GB' statement still seems quite valid.
 
EDIT: Oh I forgot to mention the obvious! A video of course is not just 10 minutes of footage, it's much more. 
Just to give an idea, Linus did a POV PC Build, which is 40 minutes in length. So you can imagine the other build guides are also around that length to film and are just cut up into pieces, which makes it a 10-15 minute video in reality.
But that is still is 40 minute of footage! Or is it.. They often during filming, they cut because they realize some things are just not that interesting to show...