davidst95

Hi, I have an AMD PRO 5965WX. It’s a long story, but I originally purchased an Asus WRX80 Creator 2.0 but soon after got a free Gigabyte WRX80-SU8-IMI. I can’t return either motherboard. Does anyone know which one is a better motherboard to use and which one to sell on eBay slight_smile: light_smile I already have 256GB (8x32gb) DDR4 3200Mhz ECC ram. I plan to run Proxmox and Unraid on this system. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks! David

Hi, I hope this is not an offensive question to ask, and I do not mean any disrespect, but is it safe to buy new sealed hard drives on eBay from China? They are sold about 20-30% lower than if I bought one from a US location. Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB https://www.ebay.com/itm/375046572875 Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB https://www.ebay.com/itm/374812232479 Thanks! David

Hi, thanks for the quick response and the link to the Linus video. This really puts my worries at ease David

Hi, about two years ago I built my parents a desktop with an AMD 5900X and an MSI Ventus 3x RTX 3080 TI with a Seasonic Focus PX-850. I want to swap the video card it out with an MSI GAMING TRIO RTX 3090. The RTX 3090 was my old card before I upgraded to the RTX 4090. My dad plays Microsoft Flight Simulator a lot and read that the increased VRAM and bus size can increase the performance in that type of game at 4k. The Seasonic website says I need a 1000w PSU, but the specs say it's only an increase of 30 watts of power over the RTX 3080 TI. The MSI website recommends 750W. Can I get buy with my current PSU, or is it safer to just upgrade to a 1000W? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance. David

Hi, I am considering getting the WD Ultrastar DC SN640 server NVMe drive for my desktop as data. They are considerably cheaper than the TLC NVMe drives of the same size ($250 for a 3.8tb or $399 for a 7.8TB new). I think all you need to get is a m.2 to U2 adapter. I was wondering if it makes sense or if I'm missing something obvious about why people don't buy them for consumer use. Can Windows or Linux automatically detect them easily? I know they will probably be slower than the customer versions, but I would just use it as storage and not for my apps. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/data-center-drives/ultrastar-dc-sn840-nvme-ssd#0TS1877 David

Ok, thanks. I think I'll return it and eventually putting that money to a PCIE 5.0 ATX 3.0 that has a 12VHPWR port. I don't risk damaging my card. David

When I bought my LG 37.5” 21:9 QHD+ UltraWide from B&H Photo a few years back, they said they usually sell the "B" versions to OEMs and are a little higher quality. I don't know if they told me the truth, but I haven't had any issues with my "B" model. If they sell them cheaper to OEMs, I would think they would use a little less quality parts, but I don't know. They say it's the same panel. I have the same question as you. David

Hi, I have a MSI RTX 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G and a Seasonic FOCUS 1000W power supply. The graphics card has a 12VHPWR to 3x 8-pin PSU plug adapter. I wanted to clean up my case and bought a Cable Mod 12VHPWR cable that connects directly to the PSU. I bought the 3x 8-pin version. They also sell a 4x 8-pin version. I already bought the 3x 8-pin version, but does it make sense to get the 4x 8-pin version of the cable? Would it increase either safety or performance? Also, is it a good idea to use this after-market cable? Thanks! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQWP1VDV

Thanks for the suggestions. I should have clarified how I back up my OS drive. I use Acronis True Image (or whatever it's called now). After it's saved to a local disk, it automatically clones the image to my UnRaid server. I have been using this process for years and have been happy with it. It's really simple to restore the OS if I need to. I'm not a big fan of Windows restore points. I have it not worked in the past when I really needed it to. Also, I forgot to mention I have a dual boot with a Ubuntu partition, so Acronis takes care of the whole OS drive in one backup. It also allows me to restore specific partitions in case I just need one OS reverted back on a certain day. I was just looking for a cheap big scratch disk for the initial backup and data I want to keep locally. I just use OneDrive for my documents and an extra copy location of important photos so I can access them on multiple machines. Thanks again, David

Thanks. Glad to hear that! David

Hi, I'm considering upgrading to a new LSI card and purchasing larger hard drives for my UnRAID server. I believe two of my current drives might be going bad. I want to go down from eight 8GB drives to no more than six 12GB or 14GB hard drives. I currently have the 9207-8i, which has eight 6 Gb/s SATA + SAS total connections. I have been looking at the LSI-9300-8i, which has the same connections but at 12 Gb/s. I am also considering purchasing SAS drives instead of SATA but was concerned about the noise. Is there a significant noise difference between a 7200RPM SATA drive vs a 7200RPM 12 Gb/s SAS drive? I read that SAS drives running at 1500RPM are read loud for home use, but I could find much information on the noise for a 7200RPM SAS drive. Also, if SAS drives make sense does it matter between Seagate or Western Digital? Currently, new SAS drives appear a little cheaper than SATA. I hope this makes sense. Thanks as always for any suggestions! David PS I don't know if I should mention I have a few SSD drives for the UnRaid cache.

Sorry for the delay. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check the drive out.

Hi, sorry for the delay. I have been on travel. Hi, sorry for the delay. I have been on travel. I primarily want to use the drive as data storage for nightly backups of my OS drive (Intel 905 480 GB Optane) and temporary downloads folder. I already have a 2tb Samsung 990 for my games and other apps. Thanks. David

Hi, I'm looking at getting a 4TB SSD to replace an old failing hard drive. It will mainly be used for data I don't usually use daily and nightly backups of my Intel Optane 480gb OS drive (which is usually about 200gb full) with Acronis True Image, so speed isn't really an issue I'm looking at either the 4tb Crucial P3 Plus NVMe or the Crucial 4TB MX500. The P3 is, of course, faster but it is dramless and is QLC and has 800TB TBW, while the MX500 is 3D TLC with 1000TB TBW. I have a 2TB Samsung 990 for games and VMs. I read some people say dramless QLC SSDs are perfectly fine while others say stay away from them. Both drives are similar prices, and I have space in my desktop for either one. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! David

Ok cool, thanks!