PC Building / Home Labs

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
10 Year Member
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Jan 16, 2014
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Any of you fuckers build computers/servers?

I've been building for the last 15+ years and while this is the worst possible time to be in the market, I've been considering upgrading my home server to a rack-mount with a new switch (my current one I built when I bought my house lives out in the shed), a 16-drive NAS setup, a UPS and a couple of blades to run VMs, a media server and enough storage to RAID backup about 40TBs worth of files.

Happy to help people who have questions about PC building, curious if people have any recommendations for homelab parts.
 

kernow

The Goob Hunter
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You've heard of cloud right.
Wtf do you need 40TB local storage for
 

Hattori Hanzo

AEShole
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Porn is the right answer but you can also legally download drm free movies & stuff from different media libraries. BBC has the complete Doctor Who series and it's 235GB for example. You just need a matching IP. Also put my digital music collection on the NAS and listen to it with my Denon DNP-730AE. Pretty convenient.
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
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Back in the dark days of sourcing media I dreamed of 1TB, 2TB etc as I was filling up my 100GB drives but now I am the opposite. I wouldn't have more than a few TB's worth of crap and if it evaporated tomorrow I'd barely shrug.
 

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
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You've heard of cloud right.
Wtf do you need 40TB local storage for

Piracy mostly. I do have a cloud storage account but that's only for personal information in case of catastrophic data loss. Don't trust those companies for shit.

10TBs of 1080p video (and that doesn't include the pr0n).
15TBs of ROMs/ISOs/PKGs
500GBs of lossless music and karaoke files.
3TBs of personal backup (camera/phone backups, old software/PC games, copies of all of my tax, legal and personal information... and yes, pr0n)

My media server fucks.
 

kernow

The Goob Hunter
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Holy shit people are still downloading, storing and watching porn in 2020
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
15 Year Member
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Piracy mostly. I do have a cloud storage account but that's only for personal information in case of catastrophic data loss. Don't trust those companies for shit.

10TBs of 1080p video (and that doesn't include the pr0n).
15TBs of ROMs/ISOs/PKGs
500GBs of lossless music and karaoke files.
3TBs of personal backup (camera/phone backups, old software/PC games, copies of all of my tax, legal and personal information... and yes, pr0n)

My media server fucks.
Sounds like a liability, personally I encode all of my data into crystal form via way of nucleic laser carboxyl-deposition.
 

SpamYouToDeath

I asked for a, Custom Rank and, Learned My Lesson.
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I had a PC in a Lian-Li X2000 case with a giant RAID array at the bottom. I very rarely used any of the crap I had stored. I got rid of it and built a Mini-ITX system in a little cube-case instead. It's functionally identical for me, except I can cram it in my backpack and take it places. The only thing I miss is the internal Blu-Ray drive, because now I need an external one to burn backups.

UPS is a must, though. The power went out so frequently at my old place that I put a cheap AmazonBasics UPS in every room.
 

basic

back to basics
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Piracy mostly. I do have a cloud storage account but that's only for personal information in case of catastrophic data loss. Don't trust those companies for shit.

10TBs of 1080p video (and that doesn't include the pr0n).
15TBs of ROMs/ISOs/PKGs
500GBs of lossless music and karaoke files.
3TBs of personal backup (camera/phone backups, old software/PC games, copies of all of my tax, legal and personal information... and yes, pr0n)

My media server fucks.
what does the offsite backup and recovery situation look like?
 

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
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Holy shit people are still downloading, storing and watching porn in 2020

Compared to other stuff, not really. Porn is what I'd be the least upset about if I suddenly lost all of my shit. Because, well, it's porn. However, when you have niche interests, it's often difficult to find stuff for the spank bank (and porn has a tendency to disappear from the webs) so having something in reserve for when the need arises never hurts. Plus my wife shares some of the same kinks so she uses that isht too and adds her own.


what does the offsite backup and recovery situation look like?

Right now, I have a pair of external HDDs (one 8TB and the other 16TB) that get backed up to once a week (one for critical files, one for the media drive). Plus the media drive is 2 16TB drives that run in RAID 1 so there are a couple of points of backup. In the last ten years, I've only had one drive failure so I'm probably due but I've been able to maintain for the most part.

I have a UPS but it's almost a decade old at this point (from when I built my current server) and needs to be replaced.
 

NeoSneth

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
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logicalincrements and pcpartspicker are my favorite sites when reviewing PC builds. I have never really needed something in a rack. consumer NAS is so easy to use.

Im due for a rebuild, but I'm not paying $2k for a GPU. I looked at prebuilts just to get access to cheap GPU's, but the rest of the system is so shoddy its not worth it.
 

100proof

Insert Something Clever Here
10 Year Member
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logicalincrements and pcpartspicker are my favorite sites when reviewing PC builds. I have never really needed something in a rack. consumer NAS is so easy to use.

Im due for a rebuild, but I'm not paying $2k for a GPU. I looked at prebuilts just to get access to cheap GPU's, but the rest of the system is so shoddy its not worth it.

Cosign all of this. Hoping that crypto continues to implode so that GPU prices can return to MSRP. I have a couple of friends who are currently ready to build who looked at prebuilts just to get somewhat sane GPU costs but just said fuck it and are waiting. Prebuilds ALWAYS cheap out on anything they can (PSUs, mobos, expandability, etc.).

Please elaborate.

lol Knew that was coming. Nothing illegal, disgusting or creepy. Just specific enough to be uncommon.
 

JoeAwesome

I survived Secret Santa, It wasn't Easy.,
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3,116
you save the good shit. a lot of great stuff got deleted when pornhub banned unverified accounts.
Right? Everybody collects something, and expecting something to be hosted online forever by someone else isn’t a guarantee.
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
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Right? Everybody collects something, and expecting something to be hosted online forever by someone else isn’t a guarantee.
This raises the issue of the internet age, data retention. There is so much of it and it's expansion has been an exponential wild west even after 25 years of functional use.

One day the original internet will be in a museum in fragmental form.
 

JoeAwesome

I survived Secret Santa, It wasn't Easy.,
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3,116
I view downloads and streams as consumables in a marketplace that can, and will, one day be gone. Enjoy them for their convenience while they’re there. I appreciate those who archive online, but being online, it’s an effort still not guaranteed.
 

kernow

The Goob Hunter
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This thread made my penis grow inside
*Cringe*
 
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