BombOmOm

The UPS should have a USB plug in the back. Plug that into your computer and it will read the battery status as if it was a laptop. Then in your OS, set the standard shutdown options when low on battery.

A note on the fans specifically, you can buy quiet fans. In general, the larger the fan, the lower the speed you can run it and the quieter it is. You can also setup fan curves so they are only doing anything of note when the computer is pumping out heat (given your statements, that would be basically never).

The electricity usage is a pretty notable thing. Though, if you take the graphics card out of a desktop (use integrated graphics, a dedicated graphics card in a server is just wasted electricity) and set the OS to power saver (this mostly means it won’t boost the CPU to higher clocks), it really won’t use much power. Compared to buying dedicated NAS hardware, you may never recoup the energy costs between the hardware you have and the lower-power hardware you need to buy.

If you don’t already own one, a Kill-A-Watt is a great tool to have. Tells you how much energy a device is using. Biggest thing I found was my TV had a vampire draw of 15W. Literally draws 15W while off. This got the TV put on a power strip I turn off when I’m not using it.

Now, with all that said, sometimes you just want what you want. And there is nothing wrong with that. My goal here is to make sure you don’t feel you have to pick one option over the other.

If you have a desktop, throw a hard drive or two in it and you have a NAS. Software (like you mentioned Plex or Jellyfin) does the rest. Even if you only have a laptop, a hard drive in a standard USB enclosure will perform this role just fine.

What are you intending to run on this server?

• If it is just PiHole, you can basically get the weakest computer you can find.

• If you want lots of storage space, you will need to make sure you have a case and motherboard that will accommodate the drives.

• If you are running encryption on those drives as well, you will need a CPU more powerful than what comes in a Pi, but nothing crazy.

• If you are running lots and lots of VMs, you will want lots of RAM. A linux VM will use maybe a few GB each depending on what software each is running internally, a windows vm will use a bit more.

• If you are doing AI workloads, you will need a graphics card.

Those are both solid pieces of hardware. However, I would suggest getting a Ryzen 5600 for a notable per-core CPU buff over the 3600x, which should help quite a bit with games like Civ’s AI turn time. And since that CPU, Motherboard socket isn’t latest-gen either, you can buy used for cheap still.

Ryzen 3600x vs Ryzen 5600.

On a slightly different note: The 7k series Ryzen CPUs get you on the latest slot, AM5. This will get you future upgradability if you want it, but it will also come with higher costs as AM5 is the newest socket, so people aren’t unloading them onto the used market in quantity. Such cost considerations are best determined by you. Both are a solid choice though.

For the GPU, I think the Radeon 6600 is a good choice. Radeon stuff works better in linux and that particular one is plenty strong for what you listed.

I highly, highly recommend PassMark’s benchmarks for comparing hardware. They are the first place I look to get relative numbers. And from there I determine what I need/want.

Single-thread CPU chart

GPU Chart

Reseat the button cell for the bios?

This is a good one too! And if you have a volt-meter, see if it’s low (or just replace it if you have a spare).

Since it is something with the computer itself and not the OS, some things to try:

• Check for any motherboard status lights.
• Reseat your RAM.
• Run a memtest. Let it do a full pass, takes ~3 hours. If you see anything more than a single error, it’s the RAM.
• Reset your BIOS to factory settings.
• Update your BIOS.
• Reset your CMOS.
• As redxef said, unplug from the wall, hit the power button a few times to fully drain the system, then plug back in.
• Unplug everything you possibly can. Leave just a single monitor, a single stick of RAM, the cpu, and the power cable plugged in. Literally nothing else, not even a keyboard. (You will need to keep your graphics card plugged in as the 2700x doesn’t have onboard graphics)
• Swap to a different single stick of RAM and put it in a different slot.
• Visually inspect for any exploded or bulging capacitors.
• If you have gotten to here, swap in any spare parts you have from the prior list. Different graphics card, different ram stick, different monitor, different cpu or mobo if you have one.
• Unplug/replug your internal power cables, and unplug any unnecessary internal cables (fans, rgb, etc) (Is it this? Probably not, but we are getting to the desperate part of the list.)
• Reseat your CPU (don’t forget to clean off and re-apply thermal paste)
• Cry a little

The goal is to narrow down which piece of hardware is failing.

The Framework 12 has a touchscreen, which the OP wants. I have the 13 and can vouch for it’s quality and upgradibility.

Though, OP also only wants to spend 300€ max used, so, both of our posts are out of the running.

Make a textfile you sync between your devices. Save the URL, book name, or whatever; each on a new line.

So tags and the option to filter them would be nice!

You can tag them at will. Put “#TagName” next to an entry and later you can ctrl-f “#TagName” (or anything else) in the file. Notepad++, grep, and other tools will even give you a list of everything that matched your search criteria if you want to see all items that match at once.

I like to keep things simple!

no distro is best

And the nice thing is this isn’t like MacOS vs Windows. Knowledge gained in one distro is transferable to other distros. Just pick one and get started, you can always change later if you wish.

Ok, he actually did a good job with the sponsor slot, writing a script for it complete with ascii art.

• This has been my yearly allotment of saying nice things about an ad.

Run it via the terminal, this will usually give you some more detailed error messages to work with. After doing that, post them here and we can help better.

All I did for that one was search “Threadripper” and look at the pictures for ones with 4x x16 slots that were not hella expensive. There are technically filters for that, but, I don’t trust people to list their things correctly.

For which chipsets, ect to look for, check out this page. If you click on Learn More next to AM5 for example, it tells you how many PCIe lanes are on each chipset type which can give you some initial search criteria to look for. (That is what made me point out x670E as it has the most lanes, but is not newest gen, so you can find used versions.)

Yeah, adding to your post, Threadripper also has lots of PCIe lanes. Here is one that has 4 x16 slots. And, note, I am not endorsing that specific listing. I did very minimal research on that listing, just using it as an example.

Edit: Marauding_gibberish, if you need/want AM5: x670E motherboards have a good number of PCIe lanes and can be bought used now (x870E are newest gen AM5 with lots of lanes as well, but both pale compared to what you can get with Epyc or Threadripper).

Basically no GPU needs a full PCIe x16 slot to run at full speed. There are motherboards out there which will give you 3 or 4 slots of PCIe x8 electrical (x16 physical). I would look into those.

Edit: If you are willing to buy a board that supports AMD Epyc processors, you can get boards with basically as many PCIe slots as you could ever hope for. But that is almost certainly overkill for this task.

Absolutely!

Here is a feature comparison between the two.

tl;dr: It’s a great piece of software that does everything the vast majority of people will ever want it for. For the other percent, it does some things MS Office can’t do and vice versa.

Seconding Framework, they make great laptops.

Highly recommend getting one with an AMD processor, as AMD drivers are built into the Linux kernel updates. Driver updates will just work without you having to think about them.

Yeah, going along these lines. There is probably a USB header on the motherboard. These have pretty darn good speeds. You can get an adapter that lets you turn those into a USB-C port and then use a standard USB-C to Ethernet adapter. Something like this or this. No guarantee on either of those specific adapters being good though. Looks like slim pickings for such things and both of those are garbage brands.

If you have a USB-C port on the back of your motherboard, you can get an adapter for that directly.

Also, motherboards generally come with 2.5Gb/s ports now too. Some even have two. Something to consider.

Am I correct in understanding that the card will run at PCIe gen 3 X1 if I do this?

Correct. The situation you described in the original post would result in Gen 3 x1 speeds.

The interface will always default to the fastest standard that both sides can support. If one is gen 2 and the other is gen 4, gen 2 is the highest that can be supported. If one side is x8 and the other is x4, x4 is the highest that can be supported.

What can I do if the card is PCIe gen 2 x8?

If you put a Gen 2 x8 card in a Gen 4 x1 slot, you will get a Gen 2 x1 link.