I saw W11 in action on a different PC and that made me stay on W10. In the meantime, I researched Linux and dipped my toes in it for a while. Just made PoP! _OS my daily driver (installed on my main NVME), with much less pain than I thought, while I moved W10 on a secondary, old and small SSD, only for those games that don't work in Proton/Wine.
It is a bit difficult to learn everything from scratch, but it's a small price to pay, to be honest
Thanks a lot for all the help! You've been very patient and helpful, I appreciate that! Have a nice day!
Since you already got your answer (separate cables are safer), I'm absolutely loving the fit. Gigantic GPU and coolers inside small cases are the bane of my existence. I'm also about to shove a 7900XT into a Meshify C, plus I'm sporting a Dark Rock Pro 4 haha and I really like the way it looks
Apologies for the wall of text
Not at all, rather thank you!
I researched again for parts and, whichever way I go, it's all very expensive.
The "cheaper" options are still expensive considered the lack of expandability: I can get, for example, two 3.5" 4TB drives for around 90-100 each, or, slightly better, two 2.5" 4TB drives for around 120-130 each; the 2.5" drives would allow me to get rid of the HDD cage in my PC and mount a fan in its place. Either way, 8TB (actually 4TB + mirrored backup) for 200-250, and I can't expand it further.
Slightly more expensive: a one drive Synology NAS, for around 300 (including a 4TB HDD, bought separately); again, locked with no further scaling possible.
Then, a two drives Synology NAS, for 450-500 (including two 4TB drives, bought separately), no scaling. But it's getting closer to my needs.
Finally, a four drives Synology NAS, definitely fitting for my needs, which is 500 not including drives; once I add storage, for example just two 8TB drives (to which I'd add another two down the road), I'm close to 800 (and this is by getting the cheapest 8TB drive I can find, nothing with "NAS" in the name haha).
Shucking isn't really a financially good option, it looks like, since external drives are actually more expensive in my country.
tiny case
Well, the Node 304 can hold six drives. Realistically, that should be enough for me even if I decide to have two backups (so using two drives for storage and then the other four just to back up those two) and even if I get 8TB drives (at the moment I have just shy of 3TB of data and I think i can easily add another 2TB onto it, but further than that... not sure). Worst case scenario changing only the case is pretty painless, especially if I can sell the old one to buy the larger one.
gpu
Yeah, I know I can get an APU, issue is, with that MoBo I picked only PRO APUs support ECC RAM. For what I understand, ECC RAM, while not mandatory, is highly recommended. The data I have is not vital, but if I can avoid corruption and having to download it again, I'd rather do so. To be fair, I'm currently not using ECC RAM and I haven't encountered data corruption in the past two or three years... so I'm a bit torn on this point now
your config
That's a very expensive motherboard, wow! I can't find it for less than 350! Definitely over budget for me at the moment
larger case for my current setup
This is definitely something I'll consider, at least as a stopgap until I can build a proper NAS. This way would allow me to have many drives and I could also repurpose the ones I already have.
I think I'll have to put this project on hold for now haha but thanks for the huge help, I'll definitely watch that video in the meantime!
Thanks again!
edit: looks like I can shave off another 100 from the planned build, since I can get a CPU (Ryzen 5 2600) and a 550W PSU for free. Which is actually not bad. Remove one stick of RAM, since 8GB should be enough, and I can save another 30, bringing the total to around 500. Not that bad as a start! Actually, bring that back to 600, since it would make more sense to get 8TB drives since I'm already around 3TB. Still, saved money is money saved haha
I'm sorry about your experience! I actually have an IronWolf, a small 2TB one, and it's been a year without issues. I don't write big amounts of data daily on it though, so my experience might be different.
Good luck with your replacement though!
Thanks for thd in-depth reply!
whole extra machine add to an existing desktop
It boils down to two things: inexperience (apparently 8GB of RAM might be enough? Just to name one issue wih my build haha) and I've already maxed out my main PC's expansion slots.
I have a compact case, which is already housing two HDDs (a "landing" HDD, where I store and keep all the... Linux ISOs... until they reach a satisfactory ratio of upload, which has a 2y uptime and just recently encountered its first uncorrectable sector error, and a 2TB HDD where I keep my stuff, including the aforementioned... ISOs..., my GOG games and other media. This 2TB is backed up on a 2TB external drive, and it's already full). Since this 2TB internal is full, I plan on moving some files to a different external HDD so I can stuff more things in it, but that leaves me with no backups for this stuff I want to move; this second external HDD is very small (650GB) so moving that stuff will make it full and I'll have no chance to add onto that collection.
It's a pretty unorganized situation and if I could get rid of all internal HDDs I could get rid of the HDD harness and fit a fan instead, also reduce noise.
In addition to this, I have yet to understand whether or not external drives can sustain "high" rates of writes (when I download GOG games, for example, it can easily add up to 100GB in a day) and reads (I usually seed... Linux ISOs... for tens to hundreds of GB a day). Of course these numbers arent't for everyday, some days I download nothing for example, other days I don't even turn on the PC.
powerful machine
And I even went for the cheapest parts I could get haha! Only way to make it less powerful is getting an Intel CPU, like the datahoarder wiki suggests, based on LGA 1150/1151, I can get one for like $20, but I can't find used motherboards for a decent price, all around 130. That's why I picked an AM4 platform: parts more widely available.
raspberry pi
Checked it out, unfortunately it's out of stock in all the licensed retailers in my country. It does sound like a nice starting point, though, so I will keep an eye out for it to be restocked, but since it uses external drives I'm back to the previous question: are external drives sturdy enough to sustain the amount of data I write and read daily?
no GPU
Wait, how can you turn it on and configure eveything necessary on it without graphics? Is it all done remotely via a main machine?
Sorry for the wall of text! And thanks again for the help!
Oh, that's right. Nice catch! I can probably repurpose a 256GB SSD I have, can't I? Should be enough for OS + utilities
The plan is to get more down the road, this is a starter setup! 4TB are enough for all my data at the moment, and the second drive is for backup; I will add a third drive for redundancy and that should be enough as a starter
edit: forgot to mention that I'm not USA-based, sorry! Wow, US prices are amazing. In my country that one is just a little less expensive, adjusted for capacity (the ones I picked are 4TB and 120, the Barracuda is 8TB and 205)! That's a bummer haha but thanks for the suggestion! edit: let me check the 4TB though edit2: now that's better, the 4TB is only 89 compared to 120 needed for the IronWolf
Yeah, the only thing they say is "For Ryzen Series APUs (Cezanne and Renoir), ECC is only supported with PRO CPUs.". That's why I didn't pick a Ryzen with integrated GPU (I can't find PRO models in my country). 2666 speed is supported, so those RAM I picked should work. Thanks!
Yes, those are cheaper but I also want reliability, so I prefer spending a bit more for the actual storage to get something known to be good!
Eh, performance isn't really an issue. I have a 5400rpm drive in my main PC that I use as storage and it's good enough for what I do with it!
I feel the pain: began my Linux journey some four months ago, tried Ubuntu first, played with it a bit for a couple days, abandoned it; then tried PoP!_OS, got it up and running, broke it, wiped it; tried again and it finally clicked! I'm now dailying it, and it's been pretty good so far!
Keep trying without forcing yourself, maybe try different distros depending on what you need!