Well, I’ve been busy and because of that projects like our TrueNAS Core build quickly get put aside for other things. But it is still important. The last time we took a look at it I went over the storage options that we went with. Well in order for everything to work, I need processing power. So today I’m going to go over what I’m planning on using for the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and for some of our cooling. The original goal for the build was to put to use some older hardware combined with new components on wear items like the storage into a new rack-mounted case. So some of this hardware isn’t going to be cutting edge, but that’s the point of a NAS build like this right? Putting your old PC hardware to use to get more life out of it.

Late last fall I set out to finally make a few big upgrades to our network and storage which was long overdue. In fact, around that time and over the winter I have had one NAS die and I’ve had 4 different hard drives and one SSD die. So saying it was overdue is an understatement and frankly dealing with each of those drives has been a big reminder that no matter how safe you might think you are being with your data that you most likely should be doing more if you don’t want to lose it. Anyhow our TrueNAS CORE build saw a big delay while waiting on the final parts. There are shortages all over the place, not just on the CPU and GPU side of things but today I can finally get back to work on the build. Today I want to go over all of the storage components. These are the most important part of a NAS and depending on how many drives you have planned they are most likely also going to be the most expensive part as well. So let’s check out what I went with for data storage and the OS drive.

When it comes to crazy RGB accessories for your PC full RGB extension cables always top the list. They are bright and in your face and if you hate RGB then they are exactly what you think of when complaining about it and if you love RGB it might just be your next pickup. I took a look at the Strimer Plus set last year which was Lian Li’s second RGB extension set. Our friends at Gelid Solutions which we haven’t seen around for a while recently jumped into the market with their own addressable RGB cable extensions that they call the Astra. Rather than doing the same thing as Lian Li, the Astra cable extensions have a weaved design that makes for a very unique and interesting effect. So today I’m going to check them out and see if they are worth the pickup for those of you who love your lighting.

I think just about everyone who builds their own PC eventually gets comfortable with a few different brands. They have a good experience along with having friends or family have similar experiences and then you start to favor a few brands over others when given the choice. I know in my builds there are a few that I tend to go with, it's almost like a superstition. For the most part, though, your PC is going to have components from a variety of companies, but recently a few of the brands have been branching out a lot to the point where you can nearly build an entire PC using just their components. Asus being one of those companies has in the last few years gotten into the PSU market, water cooling, and cases as well. I thought it might be fun to put together an all Asus build using the ROG Strix Helios, so let's see how it goes!

Most people store all of their data on their PC or maybe on an external drive and for a long time that was all I did as well. Eventually, because we have multiple devices on our network and because I would reinstall windows often I moved my important files onto the network with a basic server and later I moved to a NAS. But as a data hoarder, I eventually couldn’t fit everything together and split my movies and TV show backups on to their own NAS and everything else on what we call the collective. This has worked well, but our server rack has become a mess with three tower NAS taking up too much space as well as other makeshift servers. I’ve been needing to clean things up for a long time and to start that off I am finally building a rack-mounted NAS. It won’t combine all three of the current NAS, but it will get 2/3 and allow me to also get to know TrueNAS CORE which I’ve heard a lot about. This is a project build, so you can expect to see a few articles going over what is going into the build as well as the build and performance. But today I’m getting started by taking a look at the case itself, which is the Silverstone RM21-308. Let’s get started!

Last week I sat down and figured out the issues our build was having. I also started working on those problems by replacing the hard drive that had been making noise for over a year and replaced the dead SSD used for frequently played games as well as the OS SSD to catch it up to modern speeds. While doing that I figured out that the hard drive failure wasn’t helped by poor airflow so today's plan is to update the fans to add more cooling and to lower noise levels. I’ve also got a new power supply to see if that will fix a few of the intermediate issues to find out if the motherboard will also need to be replaced.

A few years back I ended up putting our Crush build aside for a new PC. This was a Threadripper based build but sticking with the Case Labs theme, like Crush this build also had a Bullet case, only it used the taller and more water cooling friendly BH8 in an amazing looking blue. This was actually going to be a project build at the time but I ended up not having time to get things out before the first generation Threadripper was outdated (it came long after the launch). It has been a reliable PC but recently I have been seeing slowdowns and issues. Especially when playing Microsoft Flight Sim 2020, which in a lot of ways brought this system to its knees. This has had me thinking about updates, especially with the 10TB hard drive inside which came from the original Crush build that has been making noise. So today I’m going to start things off with a few small changes before I look at bigger changes soon.

I’ve had the chance over the years to check out a wide variety of Crucial Ballistix branded memory. Being a part of Micron, they have always been priced well, and as far as memory goes been solid. Styling-wise I loved the old Ballistix designs and there are a few of the modern designs like the Elite and their Tactical Tracer RGB kits that I was able to 3D print and CNC carve custom designs for. But as a whole, their mainstream stuff, while not bad looking has looked dated for a while now. So back at the start of the year, they announced new memory kits with new heatspreaders and I was excited to see what Crucial had going on. It took a while to come in, but I recently finally had the Crucial Ballistix BL2K32G36C16U4B kit come in which is their 2x32GB dual channel kit running at 3600 MHz. The timing couldn’t be much better given my personal PC has been begging for more memory with Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 and chrome having full-on MMA fights for the memory. So today I’m going to check out the new design and see how this kit performs.

I’ll be the first to admit that the entire RGB scene has just been crazy, anything and everything you can think of now has it. It's not for everyone and for some of the people who don’t like it, it can even lead to an angry response. Three years ago, I wrote an article on the topic of why RGB can still be useful even if the idea of that rainbow look isn’t your thing. Last year Lian Li came out with one of the most outrageous RGB products with their Strimer RGB cable extensions and this year they have upped the ante by upgrading them with addressable lighting with a lot more effects. Today I’m going to check them out and see what they are all about and try to figure out if they should only be used on the craziest RGB builds or if maybe you can use them as an accent in a “normal” build.

Earlier this year I had the chance to check out the Ballistix Elite 3600MHz 4X8GB kit and I was impressed with the kit. The aesthetics were great while not going with RGB lighting or anything flashy. The Ballistix Elite kit has a military styling and that kit specifically ended up being solid in performance. Well, Crucial has a new SKU for their Elite lineup with a higher clock speed and they sent them over. I already know what to expect for aesthetics but the 16GB 2x8GB kit they sent is running at 4000MHz with timings that are a little loose. Today I’m going to check the kit out, test its performance, and play around with overclocking and see how the new kit holds up.

Patriot Memory s gaming focused brand is called Viper Gaming and in the past, I’ve had a few of their peripherals come into the office to check out but it was only recently when I had Viper Gaming RAM come in. I was curious about what they are doing to set their gaming lineup apart from the normal Patriot Memory RAM. They sent over their Viper Steel 2x8GB kit which is running at 3866 MHz. The Viper Steel lineup uses a simple styling that avoids the flashy lighting that a lot of other kits use and is available in up to 4400MHz which is the fastest kit in the Viper Gaming lineup. The kit I’m checking out today isn’t as fast as that 4400MHz kit but I’m excited to take a closer look at the new styling and see how our 3866Mhz kit performs as well.

At CES earlier this year Corsair’s biggest introduction was their new CAPELLIX RGB’s which drop the conventional package that PC LEDs have been using to create a much smaller, brighter, and energy efficient LED. Now smaller means the potential for much higher density and energy efficiency could mean you could see them used more in wireless devices. But the first product they introduced with CAPELLIX LEDs was the Dominator Platinum RGB memory kits. So in addition to being the first Corsair RGB kit to come into the office, I’m also excited to see what the CAPELLIX LEDs can do. I will also talk a little more about the benefits later as well.

Earlier this year Crucial I covered two sets of Ballistix Sport DDR4 and while I liked where they were going with the performance of the new kits I did feel the aesthetics were starting to look a little dated. Well, Crucial makes a lot of different styles of memory, especially in the Ballistix lineup and they sent over a new set which happens to be from their Elite lineup. I’m hoping their more premium kit is upgraded in looks (spoiler they are) and I’m curious how this 3600MHz kit performs as well. So let's take a look at them then run them through our testing.

About a month and a half ago Crucial reached out to me about an upcoming update to their product stack. They were looking at updating their Ballistix Sport LT lineup with 3200MHz models and they wanted me to check them out. They sent over two engineering samples, one of their 8GB single rank kits and a 16GB dual ranked kit, both in dual channel for total capacities of 16GB and 32GB. They wanted notes on their new kits and some independent testing. Well, I did both and sent it over and they recently reached out to let me know that those same kits are now going out to the market. So today I’m going to check out the new kits and see how they perform.

From time to time in the hardware market, there are weird and interesting products that come out that seem to break the norm. In the past, you used to see them all the time. For example All in One video cards with capturing built in, crazy multi CPU boards like the SR-2 and SR-X, Asus’s crazy dual GPU MARS and Ares cards and so on. Well right there along with them are the Hades Canyon NUCs from Intel. Okay, NUCs are cool, but what makes these so crazy and special. Well Along with the Intel CPU inside, they actually have AMD Vega graphics. Now lots of PCs being sold these days have Intel CPUs with an AMD dedicated GPU, but what they did here is different. They are both on the same chip! So it's not a big surprise they went with the Hades Canyon name, Hades is another word for Hell and its clear things have frozen over there for these two to be working together like this. So before things thaw out I’m going to check out its features, software, and performance then figure out if this SFF PC has a place in the market or my LAN bag.  

So today Corsair is introducing their new Spec case and typically I would check it out in one of our traditional case reviews. I’ve done this so many times in the past, in fact I counted, we have done 112 case reviews over the past 9 to 10 years. To do something different this time around I decided rather than do a review that we take a look at the case then do a build in it. So like the original Spec-04, the Spec-04 Tempered Glass model is a budget case. It has an MSRP of $59 so to go with that I thought I would put together a budget build to go along with it. I can’t wait to see how well it performs!

Wow, so it was all the way back in April when our last installment of this build was published. Back at that point Ryzen 7 was new, now we have Ryzen 3 and 5 as well as Threadripper. So things have been a little crazy. At the time I was looking at cooling options and the original plan was just to add an AIO cooler but at the time no one had AM4 brackets available. I ended up reaching out to Alphacool, they had contacted me a year or two ago about working together on a build but I didn’t have anything that really fit. It just so happened they had AM4 support early on, fitting this build perfectly. I will go into more details inside, but I ran into multiple delays and hiccups but Carmine is finally all together. It’s about time we catch up and show off what has been done to the build.

Now I know most of you have no problem building and upgrading your PC, hell for me that is half of the fun. But for everyone I know that builds their own PC, there is another person asking me or friends to help put everything together. Not everyone has friends that can help and some people just don’t have the time to do it as well. This is especially true with things like renovations around the house and working on or building cars but for some reason, there is a big stigma when people would rather buy a prebuilt PC. For me, it's not something I need to do but I completely get why some people would go that route and frankly I would rather people be going with boutique builders who use off the shelf parts that are easy to fix or upgrade later than proprietary PCs from other companies. Anyhow the Ohio bases AVADirect sent over one of their Avant builds a while back and we have been playing with it. It’s about time that I sit down and talk about the build, its performance, and the overall experience.

So last week I went into detail on the case, power supply, and the fans I went with in Iris. Those are cool, but it’s the components inside that determine how fast the computer is going to be. So today I’m going to go over the “go fast” goodies so to speak. I will talk about the reasoning on the motherboard and CPU and what else is going with it. Considering that my wife ends up playing more games than I do, making sure this build was extremely fast was important. I don’t need her getting angry at me when her games don’t work!

So 5-6 years ago I had a crazy custom painted build in the office and my wife came in and snatched it up. I like to tease her about it but the fact is she gets more gaming time in than I ever do so that build has been put to good use over the years. It’s had its video card upgraded a little but overall it has been extremely long in the tooth and as I was writing this is actually died on her. So a while back I started putting together plans to build something specifically for her, something more fitting than the rig she snatched up. So my base idea was something in your face, flashy, with lots of bright colors. This is just her style, always picking the crazy colors. She picked up her nickname (Koolaid) back when we were dating because her hair was never the same color. Anyhow with this project, I kind of set off with a theme best described as unicorn vomit, but she picked out the name Iris. In Greek mythology, Iris is the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods. I think that sums up what I was going for with this build. Anyhow! Today I’m going to just start things off by touching on a few of the base components and then we will come back later to talk about the go fast parts and what we are going with to get those crazy colors.