Hamachi got bought out by LogMeIn, looks like it still works.

If you're a bit geeky and you have a router that supports it, you could also set up OpenVPN and have your brother remote into your LAN that way.

Well, this weekend was lovely - my PC decided to take a crap, and died on me. Panicked troubleshooting reveals that it won't even POST - the motherboard died. It's a Z97 board, and this is the 2nd time that the motherboard has died on me, and there's no way to source one fast.

I ended up going to Memory Express (they're still open, wtf?) and got a Ryzen 5 3600X bundle with the ASUS B450-F Strix motherboard, and 32GB of DDR4-3200 RAM to go with that too. Got a Wraith Prism from a friend who went liquid cooling to get more RGB... and built it all in a hurry.

Now I have RGB.

https://i.imgur.com/mWfPup0h.png

My router supports it but my brother is very not tech savvy, so I need the connection on his end to be as simple as possible.

were you able to get your data back? and how was it your data?

Data was fine - the SSDs and HDDs were totally untouched. It was just the motherboard.

Have to build a PC for a friend, looking for mostly a gaming PC

Where to start for a build around $1300-$1600 for tower alone?

PC Partpicker - and what games does he play? Take a look at the build guides.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/

Intel for the best gaming performance, Ryzen for more budget.

Attached a budget-ish Intel build. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/roa...d/#view=BGrRTW

I put this together for a friend

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/YtHZGc

$1200 to get Ryzen 5, 16GB Ram, 1TB SSD, RTX2060

You should upgrade that to the Ryzen 5 3600 and a B450 Aorus board, it's still less than $1200 and has much better performance.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/W4q33t

$1247.64 before taxes

Pretty much my build.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler
MSI B450I GAMING PLUS AC Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Western Digital Blue SN550 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Gigabyte Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card
Fractal Design Core 500 Mini ITX Desktop Case
Corsair RMx (2018) 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

That's my setup (but with a 3600X). I'd recommend something higher than a 2060.

With AMD's newer updates it seems that the 5600 xt is worth it now when it comes to Price/Performance

Good deal on some 8tb hard drives. I bought 4 and they arrived today. Going to use them in a Unraid setup.
https://forums.redflagdeals.com/stap...9-tax-2364068/

It looks like those are the Barracuda drives if you're running an Unraid setup would the Ironwolf drives be better for long term?

I'm looking to build a NAS soon any tips appreciated.

I don't use unRAID, but it depends on your use case.

NAS drives have higher reliability for 24/7 use, have higher vibration tolerance for larger arrays, longer warranty, etc.

For myself, I run two standard WD Blue drives in RAID-1. It isn't worth the extra dollars for me to get the Reds because I don't store anything important on my NAS that can't be re-downloaded. If one drive dies, I can easily rebuild the array.

Note that RAID is not a backup.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/tQzzCL

- could swap for a FD core 500 Case / ITX motherboard if preferred

I checked the Unraid forums and these drives seem to be popular. They are designed for one write many read. These drives are not good for other types of software raid setups.

I am also new to this. My understanding is these slower SMR drives work well in unraid because you have a cache drive (SSD). Files get transferred to the SSD then the files get copied to the other drives. I bought this raid controller so I can run 8 drives. Make sure it is in IT mode.

If you want to run plex you need an Nvidia GPU. GTX series GPU's will only do 2 streams but you can patch them to do more. A GTX 1050ti will go up to 15 when patched.

I also plan or running somthing like nextcloud so i can access my files from anywhere.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/132881844651...SHIPPED.R1.TR1

Anyone looking for cheap PC parts. Older Xeon CPU's with a motherboard and ram.

https://forums.redflagdeals.com/alie...8-usd-2365121/

Thinking about using it in my HTPC or UnRaid server.

Edit: looks like prices have gone up.

It doesn't matter what drives you use, if you're doing software raid, writes will tank to 20MB/s after the ram cache is filled. I didn't bother with a cache drive, I don't do much writing to it. If you want speed, skip the IT mode and run a hardware raid.

GPU is not needed to run Plex, only if you plan to transcode. You can run it on a raspberry pi if you want. If you need to transcode, a CPU is often good enough unless you're going from 4k to 1080p. You don't want to do that anyways because 4k rips are often in HDR and if you transcode that to 1080p, you get washed out colours. CPU transcoding gives you better quality but I don't think you would be able to tell. An Intel CPU with quicksync will transcode 4x 4k streams to 1080p without stressing the CPU. Hold off on the GPU purchase until you think you need it. If you find yourself transcoding 4k all the time, you probably shouldn't have grabbed the 4k version.

Thanks for the info. The CPU I have right now is a Intel 15 9400f and that does not have an IGPU. Luckily I have a bunch of GPU's I use for mining I can use.

For a case I am thinking of getting a Fractal Design Node 804. it can hold up to 10 3.5 inch drives.

What's a good in-expensive, energy efficient CPU would you recommend?

(Considering it'll do mostly 1080p mostly)

Well, if all your devices are capable of direct stream playback then you won't need to transcode and technically a raspberry pi would do since all it's doing is acting like a glorified file share.

If you do need to transcode 1080p to something lower then any i3 could do it. You could probably go lower than that but i3's are pretty cheap. I was running my Plex server on a 10 year old Xeon server and it was doing fine with 1080p. It wasn't until I started doing 4k that it started to choke. Prior to that, I was running Plex on an old laptop and it didn't have issues transcoding.

Should also note that hardware transcoding with Quicksync or NVENC require a Plex Pass subscription. I paid for a lifetime subscription but that's only because I wanted to sync stuff to my device to watch on flights. Without the subscription, you're limited to CPU transcoding.

I pretty much only use Plex on my devices and to share with family members. At home, I actually use Kodi because the interface is better for a TV remote and has the proper tone mapping for HDR. That and my HTPC is a 9700k with a 2070 Super that I use to play Wii U and Switch games in 4k. That's also what I'm currently running Plex on. May as well take advantage of the nVidia hardware codec.

Thanks! I'll take a look.

I've been running plex off an old mac mini but hoping to build everything to a single tower (including drives) to clean things up and not to have 4 power supplies (Mac, 3 external Harddrives).

I already have Plex pass so it's perfect!

Any opinions on this budget build. It is for my siblings who are in grade 3 and 5. Youtube, school work, and i guess some games. Aiming for a functional budget build.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/rvspWb

Roughly $550 before tax

i3 9100f
Cooler Master 212 EVO cooler
MSI Z390 a pro ATX Motherboard
1x 8gb Kingston FuryX 8gb DDR4 2666
Samsung 860 EVO 500gb M.2-2280
EVGA Bronze 500w non modular PS
GTX 1060 6gb *this is my old card, so then ill go find a used 1080ti for myself.*

I talked to one friend and they pointed out the 8gb of ram may not be enough and for the price its worth upping to 16gb. Money is tight for them, so trying to keep the price down.