Custom90gt

We always need more drives...

I believe a handful of us joined this forum because we still love laptops even if TT doesn't, lol. While I do agree the forum was slower than it was, it still was far too much for even a handful of mods to moderate at time, and there were always posts about the latest and greatest. I'm hopeful that if anything came out of the downfall of TT, it will be some renewed interest in community. And that certainly seems to have happened based on the last postings and the creation of these forums.

So I've had my Plex/home server up and running for a while now and I've been pretty happy with it. Outside of being reliant on wireless (can't figure out a way to run ethernet to my TVs without a ton of work), I really haven't had any issues with it. Having said that, I'm not a huge subscriber to the if it ain't broke don't fix it thought, I love to tinker. Initially I started out with the smallest case I could go with and still having enough storage. My next case was a Fractal Define R5 which held 8 3.5" drives and thanks to a 2x5.25 to 2.5 bay it also held 8 2.5" drives. So out with the old: Well I'm finally hitting the point where I'm going to start needing more hard drives so I figured it would be fun to upgrade to something with some future proofing. Enter the Supermicro 846 4U 24 bay case. I wanted to do the test fit first. My next phase was sleeving the power distribution cables and figuring out the fan wall. The fan wall was pretty easy to make with some 90* wood trim that I had and my jigsaw. Not the best looking thing, but it works. I also forgot how much I dislike sleeving stuff, my molex tool broke 1/4 of the way through and using a sim tool was a pain. I also had to add a Corsair Commander Pro to control the fan speeds. I was fortunate that my scythe mugen 5 fits in this 4U case! Great cooler for a good price. This thing was super loud at full blast: Specs: Case: Supermicro 846 Backplane: BPN-SAS2-846EL1 Mobo: MSI z690 pro ddr4 CPU: Intel i7-12700k RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 64GB (16x4) 3600mhz GPU: EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Power Supplies: 2x Supermicro PWS-920P-SQ 920W Platinum (much quieter than the stock power supplies) Fans: stock 80mm San Ace fans in the rear, 3x Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 PWM that I need to create a better mount for Drives: 1TB SX8200 NVMe for OS, 12x10TB Hitachi SAS drives, 6x8TB Hitachi SAS drives, 2x400GB SLC drives for cache/journal drives, a couple 256-512GB SSDs for caching/temp drives. SAS controller: LSI 9400-16i I'm still running storage spaces in Windows 10 on it, one parity setup for the main storage and another parity as a backup (I also have a handful of 12TB external drives as backups of the backups). I would love to do a ZFS setup, but I like running windows natively as I also use it as a Steam Stream machine.

I'd love to pick up another Subaru WRX STI since it was such a fun little car (I had a 2007 STI Limited that I regret selling). My wife is next in line to get a new car though, thankfully she wants a CT5-V (sadly not the blackwing, lol), but that will be a fun car. I often drive her 2013 Cadillac ATS with the 3.6, it's pretty fun and super comfortable. Ugh then I really want a Ford Bronco Raptor, lol...

I've been using this thinkbook for a few months now and I honestly like it a fair amount. It's not the smallest laptop, fastest laptop, or even the best when it comes to battery life; but it works well. I got a great deal with it from Lenovo with a 3 year warranty and so far I may just keep it for that long (if you know me, that's a pretty bold statement considering I usually upgrade every 6 months to a year at most). This is my mini-review just for fun. If you've got questions, let me know. Specs: Ryzen 5 5600H Nvidia 3060 Max-Q 16" 2560x1600 IPS screen 16GB memory (8GB soldered, bummer) Things I like: The build quality is great. It's quiet, even at "full tilt." The screen looks nice, it's not the brightest but it doesn't ghost like my Inspiron 7610 did, and the extra screen real-estate is very nice for work. It runs the occasional game well enough for me. Things I don't like: Soldered memory, what were they thinking. The sound is lack luster compared to my XPS 9510. The battery life is mediocre, but it gets me through the work day when I need to be unplugged. Some benchmarks: Just for fun I compared the stock setup vs installing a single 16GB of faster HyperX ram (for a total of 24GB), and as expected there really wasn't any difference:

I believe it was started by TT when they actually cared. When I joined in '06 it was under TT and they did have editorial staff and did pretty good reviews. You're right about it going down hill, Charles put in reasonable requests (in my eyes) such as getting HTTPS and the like but it never happened. It was basically Charles single-handedly getting them to keep the lights on for the past couple of years.

Which is why TT likely dropped NBR, lol. Oh well, I'm not a fan of catering to the man so to speak anyway.

Maybe we can get a "post your build" under the desktop section? I know this is a laptop forum, but some desktop love never hurt anyone 🙂

I've been watching the Witcher season 2 finally. I think it's great, but I've always been a fan of the games and I enjoyed season 1. I enjoyed the GoT series though, I didn't really even mind the last season, maybe I'm just a simple person, lol.

Sadly it was known before the forums crash that TT was going to shut down the site, we were just holding our breath they would allow us to purchase the domain/data, but that was obviously futile. I'm just glad they decided not to do it early and fixed whatever caused that down time.

Started Far Cry 6, unsure about it so far. It seems like more of the same, but I've only put a handful of hours into it.

Hah 0 in my desktop, but at least 18 in my server.

Mostly my 2018 Chevy Colorado ZR2 with the baby diesel.

More Ruckus Wireless access points, not that I need them... On and some Cat7 cable to have 10GBe at my desktop.

In the end, TechTarget didn't care at all what our moderator team thought or wanted. Even just posting links to all those other places was a slap in the face for maintaining their forums.

This is a huge effort and I totally appreciate it!

Hah, I can relate. I'm starting night shift at the hospital and man it's been rough already. Only 8 more weeks to go, lol.

Totally agree, both of you are stand up people.

Thanks for standing this forum up. Look forward to continued time with my NBR buddies.