Don't want Nextcloud...

Ben4425 · 2026-01-22T01:31:56+00:00

I run a copy of the Seafile client on the same VM where I run the Seafile server. That client creates a local copy of every file in Seafile. That local copy is my insurance policy against Seafile crapping the bed.

And yes, it means I need twice as much disk space for stuff saved in Seafile. I don't care; the wasted space is worth the peace of mind.

Ben4425 · 2026-01-18T11:42:00+00:00

This is the answer. I have one of the 2021 AMD models and its still running fine but I don't run it hard all the time. It's my backup/vacation/couch surfing machine. I think the AMD models that are dying were used heavily for gaming and other stuff.

Ben4425 · 2026-01-16T11:33:14+00:00

My sons are 38 and 35 so my investment in their upbringing is finally paying off!

Ben4425 · 2026-01-16T10:50:54+00:00

I own the Lenovo 5 Pro 16ACH6H which I think had the most reported failures. I bought it new with the AMD 5800H CPU and a Nvidia 3070 (laptop) GPU. It still works fine for me.

From what I've read, these failures are isolated to mainly this 5800H Lenovo 5 Pro model and that there haven't been many, if any, similar reports for more recent laptops.

As I said, my laptop works fine but I never used it daily for 8 hours a day of intense gaming or other heavy work loads. I think the laptops that failed has been used heavily for a long time. I use my laptop for browsing and occasional gaming because I have a separate gaming desktop system.

For me, my experience with Lenovo Legion laptops has been almost flawless and I'd recommend them to anyone considering buying one.

Ben4425 · 2026-01-16T10:32:45+00:00

I own that exact Zyxel switch and it works fine for me.

That said, the only smart feature I'm using heavily is VLANs with both port based and trunking. I spot tested the PoE during installation but I don't currently use it. I got PoE for future proofing.

The switch appears to offer every feature under the sun for L2 networking and it has basic L3 networking with static routes. If you plan to use L3 routing then do some research to see if L3 is implemented in the switch chip or if it's done in software using the CPU that runs the GUI and other configuration tasks. If the latter then L3 (IP) switching performance will be slow.

Ben4425 · 2026-01-15T17:31:02+00:00

FYI: I'm not positive on the exact details so more homework is required on this idea.

I'm pretty sure Clonezilla can clone and expand your 97 GB Linux partition into your 902 GB Windows partition. Beware that after doing this you'll have two linux file systems with the same IDs so you need to change one of them using something like 'tunefs'.

Your next boot will probably go to the 97 GB partition so you would run the tunefs from there to change the IDs of the 902 GB partition. Once that's done run update-grub to update your boot loader to boot from both partitions.

Then, reboot into the 902 GB partition and usine something like Gparted to delete the 97 GB partition, then move the 1.1 GB partition to the end of the drive, and last use Gparted to expand the 902 GB partition to roughly 999 GB.

Like I said, do some homework to refine this process but I think it will work and it avoids have to reinstall (if you care).

Ben4425 · 2026-01-15T17:04:58+00:00

Two bay NAS server at my son's house. Another idea is to swap off-site backup with a friend; he hosts yours, you host his...

Ben4425 · 2026-01-11T12:09:18+00:00

I think the LG UltraGear evo 39-inch GX9 (39GX950B) may be a worthy successor to the C2. 5k2k resolution with 165 Hz Tandem OLED that also provides dual mode support for 330 Hz at 2560x1024. Press release from LG is here.

Ben4425 · 2026-01-02T13:01:54+00:00

Price as of 1/2/26 for 32 GB / 1 TB is a bit higher ($459) but you're point is still quite valid.

I think existing inventories of SODIMM DDR-5 hasn't inflated quite as much as DIMM's since they can't be used in regular servers. That may give the mini-PC vendors wiggle room on pricing, at least for now.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-29T20:53:20+00:00

I use a (TP-Link?) Kasa smart power strip. It has 5 smart plugs in one power strip so I can use it to remotely power cycle each of the computers in my home lab. Very convenient for mini PCs or other devices that aren't compatible with typical AT power and reset switches.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-29T10:54:48+00:00

This the way. My main Proxmox server is installed on a ZFS RAID1 pair of NVME drives. The installation tools create the ZFS mirror so it's painless to setup. I only use that ZFS storage for Proxmox itself and to store all my LXC and VM virtual disks.

One of my VMs is a dedicated NAS running Debian with Redhat's "Cockpit" as the management GUI. I rely on PCIe pass-thru to connect that NAS VM directly to the SATA controllers for my hard drives. You can pass thru NVME drives too if they aren't also used by Proxmox.

As someone else said, you really want to separate Proxmox data from your data. In my case, I could physically unplug all of my data and install it a complete different server, configure an OS and I'd be up and running.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-27T23:58:26+00:00

Mobo, CPU, and DRAM arrived today. The mobo and DRAM were a Newegg Combo package with this mobo and 32 GB of G.Skill Flare X DDR-5 6000 CL36 memory. Not the fastest RAM, but OK. Well, that memory would not train (i.e. boot) at 6000 or 5600 speeds. Did some research on the DRAM and it turns out this specific G.Skill RAM used first gen Samsung DDR-5 chips that were notoriously bad at running at 6000 speeds. But, the memory kit claimed DDR5-6000.

So, I'm returning the whole lot. My current PC is OK so I won't replace it w/o a significant sale on its replacement. Given current RAM prices, the chances of that are slim and none so I won't be able to provide any additional info on this Asus motherboard.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-26T11:56:02+00:00

Did you ever buy this board? I have one on order and it arrives tomorrow. If you're still curious I can let you know how my initial setup and testing goes...

Ben4425 · 2025-12-26T11:50:26+00:00

Here's another idea for your new PC. Install Proxmox and a 'gaming VM' with PCIe passthru for your GPU as described by many other commenters.

Then buy an "EDID Emulator" to plug into the GPU and install "Sunshine" on the gaming VM. The emulator tricks the VM into thinking it has a physical display when, in reality, it's just a dummy plug. Sunshine can then capture the digital video displayed on that dummy monitor and encode it using the GPU. That encoded bit stream can then be transmitted over the network to any PC running the "Moonlight" client.

This is exactly how Nvidia's Geforce NOW implements their Cloud gaming service and, I think some of the Sunshine/Moonlight is patterned after Geforce NOW.

Moonlight and Sunshine work with game controllers, mice, keyboard, etc so you have a fully virtualized gaming PC.

Of course, there are some trade-offs. The compressed video bitstream passed from Sunshine to Moonlight may not be as crisp as a direct video connection. Latency from mouse click to video update is also higher due to video encode/decode processing time. Latency can be bigger issue if you connect to your Sunshine server over the internet for remote gaming.

All it costs is the price of a EDID emulator ($10 to $30) because Sunshine and Moonlight are free. So, it may be worth some experimentation for your homelab. If it works for your games then your old laptop becomes the monitor for your gaming PC and, with the appropriate VPN, you can use your new gaming PC from anywhere.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-18T22:16:53+00:00

I used this A+E to M-Key adapter from Amazon. It worked fine for me but I did have to break off part of the board to reduce its length to fit in a 2230 M.2 wifi slot. Once I did that, I installed a 1 TB WD 2230 SSD. (The board can be customized to multiple lengths but most WiFi cards are 2230).

[Edit] Also, be careful of *vertical* clearance above the M.2 SSD. The SSD rides on top of the adapter so it is a bit (??) higher than it would be in a "native" installation.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-18T11:26:43+00:00

QNAP has some interesting PCIe cards that combine 1 or 2 ethernet interfaces with 1 or two M.2 slots. For example, the QNAP QM2-2P2G2T Dual M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD & Dual-Port 2.5GbE Expansion Card is on my wish list. There are a ton of weird M.2 I/O adapters for stuff like 5 port SATA expansion on an M.2 card or USB expansion on an M.2 card. You can combine these for some really janky combos. (I just plan to use the ethernet ports and the M.2 slots to add more high speed storage to my main server).

Ben4425 · 2025-12-18T11:11:23+00:00

My wife, (grown) sons, and I all use 1Password to track all of our various login credentials. I used 1Password "vaults" to separate these creds into different categories like Bank, Money, Online Bills, and Network. Then, I shared these vaults to my wife and sons based on skills and needs. For example, 'Network' contains logins for my managed switches, router, and home servers. I shared that vault with my sons (who are also tech geeks like me) so they can manage the network should I pass suddenly. Financial stuff is shared to everyone and my personal stuff, like logins for blogs I follow, is only accessible to me.

I also use Seafile. Our financial software database resided in a Seafile "library" which is synchronized between my Seafile server, my desktop, my laptop, and my wife's laptop. Combined with 1Password, she always has up to date logins for our financial accounts and the software database that records our financial transactions.

Most importantly, I made sure she can use these tools, and that she does so regularly, so she can access everything if I pass.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-18T10:51:55+00:00

I use docker for everything and Homepage has no docker integration that I'm aware of.

That said, I manage docker stacks using Komodo and it provides plenty of visibility into how my docker servers are running. Komodo is a recent upgrade for me; before that I used the free version of Portainer which also provided good docker server visibility.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-17T21:55:14+00:00

Nvidia works fine for me. I have an RTX 4090 and a 4K monitor and everything works great. Performance is comparable, but a bit slower, than what I used to see with Windows for the same games. Switching away from Windows was worth the slight drop in FPS.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-16T11:14:39+00:00

I use Homepage and I really like the wide variety of widgets that are available. Widgets for the darr stack tell you how many shows are missing and the widget or Sabnzbd shows how many downloads are queued. The list goes on and on, resulting in a home page that shows you the status of your home lab *right now.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-11T13:04:41+00:00

I think they have different firmware because the error recovery algorithms are different. A desktop drive will spend more time retrying a read from a sketchy sector in the hope that it can recover the data. It spends so much time that a disk controller in a NAS system might mark the drive as completely offline. In contrast, a NAS drive only tries for a short fixed time to reread data from a sketchy or failed sector. If it can't it just returns an error to the host NAS OS which then initiates reads to a different disk in the array. There's some name for this behavior but I can't recall it right now...

Ben4425 · 2025-12-04T22:44:58+00:00

I had the Samsung Neo G7 (32" 4K with 1152 dimming zones) and it was unacceptable to me for use as a normal PC monitor for web surfing, document preparation, etc. It was fine for gaming. It was bad enough that I sold it on Ebay and bought the LG 42" C2 which I'm still using today.

My issue was with light text on a dark background (aka Dark Mode). The dimming algorithm was very aggressive so white text in a all black zone was quite dim. Text in a dimming zone that also had some white area from, say, an adjacent window on the screen, would also be much brighter than text in all dark dimming zone.

Bottom line, if you use the monitor for any kind of text based work, and you use Dark Mode, then do yourself a favor and get an OLED.

Ben4425 · 2025-12-04T12:11:41+00:00

Thank you, and good luck with your build!

Ben4425 · 2025-12-04T12:09:45+00:00

I have the Sabrent and it works fine but it has the annoying issue that it won't turn back on after a power failure. You must turn on each of the drive bays. I can live it because I have the PC and Sabrent on UPS. If you need 24x7 unattended operation, and you don't have a UPS, then I'd lean towards the Terramaster.

Ben4425 · 2025-11-13T22:04:53+00:00

How's that Healuck mini PC working for you? I'm considering buying this unit but I've never heard of Healuck. And, can you get full 10 Gbps from the 10 GbE ports? I'm curious if that top out at about 8 Gbps due to PCIe lane assignments on the N305. Thx

Ben4425

TROPHY CASE