How much did you eventually spend for everything combined?

Hard question to answer because it’s the server of Theseus at this point. My first NaS/Homelab was probably about $300 in cheap parts. It had 3 TB of SSD storage in a 6 bay 2.5 in SSD caddy that fit in a 5.25 bay of a Optiplex. It booted from a single NVMe drive and had 2x 4tb spinning disk drives.

My current server is a little over $1500 I think. It has 2 gpus (5060ti 16GB and 3060 12 GB for AI and hashcat stuff), 8x 4tbHDDs, 8x 500gb SSDs, an EPYC 7302p CPU, all noctua fans (3 case 2 CPU).

What are the running costs?

Electricity is cheap in Kentucky. I think this might cost $10-$20/month to run. Jellyfin is my most used service so I moved it and the production nas that fuels it onto a much more power efficient setup (Optiplex 3000 with a single 12tb HDD) and that probably costs a couple bucks at most a month. I have all the data backups on my big server so if the second hand HDD dies I can just point there server at my big server while I reload a new 12tb HDD.

How much space does it gobble up?

Not much more than a normal gaming PC. It fits in a Gamemax Titan or any other E-ATX case really.

How loud is it?

Not very. The stock fans of the Gamemax were fine but the Noctua flex is always funny. I keep my server right next to my gaming PC which is right next to where I game (duh) and work from home. It’s only noticeable when one of the HDDs is dying and trying its best. This is why I went with consumer components in a consumer case as opposed to a rack mount solution. I worked in a data center and so I have some rack mount servers but they’re loud as shit.

Backup/redundancy plan?

I pay for 500gb of Proton drive. All my important documents are backed up there. Most of my TBs of data are movies and shows. It would suck to lose the collection but it’s not worth setting up an off site backup for terabytes of meaningless things like that. Honestly, I only really need sub 100 GB of cloud storage for photos and tax documents. It was just a good deal to get the 500 from Proton.

Internet connection good enough (upload speed)?

My internet connection is dog shit. That’s why I started my NaS. I got sick of the show I was streaming being interrupted by Spectrum shitting the bed again. Websites I run are hosted on GitHub or a VPS until I can get something less bad.

How many hours did it take you to set everything up?

Well, I’m very cheap. I mean VERY cheap. My HDDs in my big server were pulled from some NetApp appliance that used a weird blocking format for HDD data which don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that cause I didn’t either. Took a few days to figure that out and then a few weeks to run a auto reformat on Truenas to put them in the right blocking format for anything other than a NetApp appliance to use.

And that kinda stuff is what you deal with when you want a beefy server but you don’t want to buy new. If I had bought this server new in 2018/17 when most of the parts were new, this would probably be a $10k-$15k server.

Can I recommend doing this? Only if you want to learn. I’ve dealt with so much weird shit. I have a memory leak that eats up 70% of my usable ram. I can’t get the 5060 to run properly and the AI I have running on the 3060 is too stupid to help. Everything is virtualized which was a weird call, I virtualized Truenas and passed through a SAS controller to use my NetApp drives. Why? I got convinced by a Homelab YouTuber and it seemed fun.

But that’s what what I wanted. Weird and jank to play with. I’ve probably put in a couple hundred hours of work into it. I put 5-6 more just today trying to learn Cloudflared tunnels to open my Jellyfin server to the web. But I might try my AI server next.

“Drive backwards on the track”

That’s literally the first thing people do in racing videogames. That would have been SECONDS

Yes it was way better than watching him play Atari Joust for 30 minutes but still!

I wanna see the flight scene in one of those shops now where someone gets embroidered during the fight.

I also work with industrial embroidery machines (not directly, we just have them at work) so I know the like 10 seconds under a needle wouldn’t be enough time to do anything really, but I’m imagining a room full of machines making military name strips, hero blocks a goons punch and shoves his hand under a needle while the goon yells in agony. Camera focuses on how horrified face as he lifts his hand to reveal “Maj. Payne” embroidered across his hand. The goon then faints.

Not that guy, but I bought a bulk order of used hard drives on eBay for about $1/TB

Granted, a lot of those drives died on the way so it was more like $1.50/TB after I sifted through it. I’ve only had one more die in 3 years

That feels cursed as a fandom dot com wiki

Yes you have. They’re just better about it.

I’ve met so many mother daughters, including my own mother and grandmother, who just alter their own name a little bit instead of going for a “Junior” type deal.

For instance, my Nana’s name is Elizabeth but goes by beth. My mom is Eliza Beth-Ann but goes by Eliza or Liz.

(Also yes I’m from the south)

That was a tech demo I’m pretty sure and not just a thing they do btw. A company was trying to make a more efficient sound based comms for AI(?)

Not gonna convince me to play overwatch this way

But I am happy for them

Well there’s all the problems then

Asking a AAA studio to make their game sub 128 GB AND optimize it in anyway is a tall ask

Do they even make disks with enough space for a modern game? Secondly, would a spinning disk be fast enough for it?

I feel like the only way for truly physical media in the AAA space to be a thing again is if people are willing to pay an extra $60+ for an external SSD that holds the game.

What do you think the odds are that some of these make it state side?

There are legitimate reasons not not want to use or not be able to use Linux.

Calling the very real privacy issues presented by windows as a “conspiracy theory” is not one of them.

Also these people are delusional. They don’t understand why the steam deck is popular because quote “the main appeal of PC Gaming is modding and using a Keyboard and Mouse.” Which is a bold claim because I thought the point was having better control over what you play instead of hoping Microsoft, Nintendo, and PlayStation release those games on chosen console.

Do these people have an idea how many Stardew Valley Clones I can play on PC that will never touch an Xbox?

I voted for Harris

It is the DNCs fault Trump won.

The DNC has spent years kinda sorta offering enough social and popular policy. And then half heartedly pushing it, but ultimately giving up when there’s resistance because it’s better to promise those changes then actually do them.

Abortion rights for example. That’s been a carrot on a stick for decades and it ultimately was attacked and the Biden admin didn’t get it codified or push for a new federal legalization.

Or student loan forgiveness. He kinda pushed it and then the courts said nu-uh so it died.

I’ll admit they did do lots of cool stuff but they didn’t do anything that an actually progressive candidate would do, but they promised they would. This has kept an actual lefty progressive candidate off the ballet for decades and this cycle of ineffective, dispassionate campaign apathy has failed to get anyone enthused to vote.

“People should just vote! It’s their duty! They shouldn’t need to be excited to vote!”

Okay but consider. They weren’t enthused. They didn’t vote for another useless Democrat. Trump won.

It’s the DNCs fault because this is the second time they’ve ran a candidate less progressive then Obama and just hoped the strategy of “You should want to vote for the first Woman president! Please ignore she did terrible in the primaries or all why we didn’t do another primary”

It’s unfathomable to me how someone could spend that kinda money without talking to an expert or a government surveyor or something!

I spent a month considering if I should get a $500 GPU and I still fucked that up as it isn’t even working on my Linux server yet.

Its how you can tell PDP fans weren’t paying attention. He promoted it a few times but it didn’t gain any traction and he abandoned it.

Or maybe it just didn’t help with the fascism allegations from the bridge moment and the Fiverr incidents since those all happened about the same time.

Hell, he had Ben Shapiro host an episode of LWIAY. Sure it wasn’t peak genocide apologizer we have now Benny Boy, but he was still a verifiable dick head grifter.

Bethesda game runs like ass

That’s not news

That was among the most brain rot tier shit I’ve ever seen.

He’s also promoted the books of fascist talking heads like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Steven Crowder through his book club.

There’s a reason the Christ Church shooter yelled “Subscribe to PewDiePie” besides being a topical meme.

They didn’t say they’re poorly dressed. Just ugly

Sick! I’ve added both to my list.

I’m almost done with “Tracers in the Dark”