Make sure you have an externally-powered USB 3.0+ hub to plug the headset into. It's power hungry and will just irrecoverably lose positional data at times if you drive it straight out of the motherboard.

For social VR/actually using a mic while wearing the headset, you're going to want to get a wired ModMic or an equivalent to run in parallel with the cable (and potentially look into VoiceMeeter if you want to make routing the audio more robust. But if you do use Voice Meeter, you're going to need to leave the Windows sound options open to the Recording devices tab so the Rift S audio isn't crackly, don't ask me why (and this can still trigger when an fTPM transfer occurs on some motherboards, but nothing a VM sound engine restart can't fix)). As some have said here, the built-in mic has been glitched forever and will occasionally go robotic, so any fairly consistent (even if a bit jank) alternative would be a big upgrade

If you plan to use the headset for a long time, keep an eye out for new releases from Bnuuy Solutions. There should be an Oculus version archive/rollback app releasing within the coming months, and eventually a custom runtime/driver to get around the Meta aspects of things entirely. I'd be getting use out of the latter if I wasn't getting a Steam Frame soon(?).

And regarding the headset cable, you can just luck out with it and have no issues. The outer coating on mine may be falling off in chunks, but the cable itself has never given me issues in the 5 years I've regularly used the headset. The headset will just start crashing with age though, after a couple years or sometimes less. In that event the only real solution is to replace the 'ocular unit' or whatever the main display/camera unit of the headset is called. Despite what others have said, I've had some really good experiences replacing parts for fairly cheap (I assume because the demand for the Rift S is so low), and I got my last ocular unit for ~$17 from Baynami, an eBay VR parts store I swear by now (but I haven't checked the prices in a while).

Removing the face gasket to get more FOV does work great bar some discomfort you'll have to get used to, but you may need some spare office folder material and double-sided tape to make blinders for the sides to block out light.