Use the comments on protondb. They often list tweeks and troubleshooting steps that have been taken. Check steam community posts for specific games. You can also make your own post if nobody else has had your issue. General searches will usually get you where you need to go. I use kagi but generally anything not google works.
Yeahboy92
The only thing that I've encountered that may be relevant, the flatpack version of steam on popOS had issues and after installing from apt my games started working as expected. So possibly reinstall steam with apt vs the popshop.
If there is a pin set, decimal on the numpad, else Ctrl or ESC.
It's easy to recover... if you're on site.
A used Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy should be pretty cheap. Just make sure they support whichever version of Android you want to develop on. Pixel 6's are under $200 USD on eBay currently and should all be upgradable Android 14.
Krita is pretty good.
Stars Without Number is a fun system. Traveller can be a bit complex but the character generation is the best.
I would double check that the cpu isn't too hot for the cooler. I know the i9's would likely throttle with a single tower cooler but I am unsure of the i7's. Everything else seems fine.
There are places in the city that are worse than others for performance but I've only ever noticed stutters and the like while driving. Do you use power utils? I don't have an overclock but I make sure the governor is set to performance. Could just be luck on my end though.
Watch a truenas setup for it snd compare the permissions maybe? I got it working on my truenas server but it takes a long time to spin up so it seemed borked but was just slow to start. Not directly comparable, I know, but any port in a storm.