You will have to look at the second hand market for sure, but you can probably get a decent 1080p 80-100fps medium/high build.

Something like (or equivalent):

Ryzen 5 3600

RX 6600

16GB DDR4

1TB SSD (probably not NVMe)

Whatever case

Whatever monitor, even if only 60Hz, for now

Whatever MoBo

Tier A PSU from the Cultists Network PSU tier list

You can most likely get everything used if you buy from a second hand shop that has a form of buyer protection (eBay and similar) and thoroughly check and clean and test everything you buy

Haven't seen this mentioned, but did you make sure to plug the display cable into the GPU and not the MoBo?

edit: nvm, just saw a comment with same suggestion

About RAM, Trident Z5 NEO @ 6000Mhz seems to be the best price/performance ratio.

About GPU, I'd personally go for a Sapphire as they're one of the historic AIB for AMD GPUs and I also dig a lot the design of the Nitro+ lol

See if you can save something on the MoBo (by getting a lower trim) and 2x2TB might be a bit overkill for gaming only (ofc it depends on your habits, but I personally don't have games installed for more than 500-600GB). Also, you picked two PCIe 4.0 NVMEs, so maybe consider a 970 Evo Plus if it's cheaper than the 980 Pro

About cooler, I'd prefer an old fashioned air cooler simply because it can't leak lol

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying "this account is being verified" and I coulnd't comment or anything else.

Anyways, I kept them. One drive loss won't be catastrophic (got two mirrored and also spare backup), so I decided to go for it!

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying "this account os being verified" and I coulnd't comment or anything else.

In the end I decided to keep them, considering the store provides warranty! Loving the gigantic storage amount I have now haha

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying "this account os being verified" and I coulnd't comment or anything else.

Anyway, yes, the store I bought them from is a legit store and provides warranty, so I decided to keep the drives!

That's fair, I paid three times as much though so I do care a bit more haha

Actually, I found something: "DOM: 07JUN2022". I guess that's "Date of Manufacturing"?

I was a bit off, they were 15% cheaper than the Ironwolf on the same website/from same seller (156, not USD, vs 179, not USD).

For a better comparison, I went to WD's official store and for what I spent on these two 8TB Exos (312, not USD) I can get two 4TB Red Plus (310, not USD). Can't make a direct comparison with other Seagates because their "buy now" section redirects me to Amazon, which, as you said, is not the best since they allowed third party sellers, but on there the 8TB Ironwolf is 250 (!!).

As you already know, I'm not in the US so I can't buy from there. Unfortunately, Seagate's "buy now" section (which should be official retailers) brings me to either Amazon or other chains that don't have much else besides portable drives.

At this point I have two options, really: try again the same online store (which is kinda like Amazon, many third party sellers), but getting Ironwolf, which should be more likely to be "legit", and of course check them as well when they arrive, or settle for two 4TB WD Red Plus (which isn't ideal as I'm already nearing 2.5TB total, but should allow me to get by a while longer) bought directly from WD.

edit: looking at the link you provided, I paid 30% less for my Exos. Would that sway you towards keeping it without warranty (apart from the seller's, which is one year I think)? Mind that I don't need enterprise-grade drives, and I think even NAS drives are overkill for my needs. For example a WD Blue with its 55TBW per year might be enough for me (that's 150GB a day everyday for a year, which is above my average writes), but those don't come big enough (I need 6TB min to be comfortable) nevermind, they do come in 8TB size, just at a lower spinning speed (5640rpm), but they cost more (267) than the Ironwolf, and are SMR and have 128MB cache. Sounds like a bad deal!

No I don't, I wrote it in the OP haha unless there's a way to know it by looking up the S/N. Have to check.

How can you be so sure they're older? They were sold to me as new and they did come in the usual sealed plastic wrap.

Anyway I don't think saving some money is worth more than a full warranty, so I'm basically set on returning them and get something else

Agree, I stopped buying Sony games because of that

I feel the pain: began my Linux journey some four months ago, tried Ubuntu first, played with it a bit for a couple days, abandoned it; then tried PoP!_OS, got it up and running, broke it, wiped it; tried again and it finally clicked! I'm now dailying it, and it's been pretty good so far!

Keep trying without forcing yourself, maybe try different distros depending on what you need!

I saw W11 in action on a different PC and that made me stay on W10. In the meantime, I researched Linux and dipped my toes in it for a while. Just made PoP! _OS my daily driver (installed on my main NVME), with much less pain than I thought, while I moved W10 on a secondary, old and small SSD, only for those games that don't work in Proton/Wine.

It is a bit difficult to learn everything from scratch, but it's a small price to pay, to be honest

Thanks a lot for all the help! You've been very patient and helpful, I appreciate that! Have a nice day!

Since you already got your answer (separate cables are safer), I'm absolutely loving the fit. Gigantic GPU and coolers inside small cases are the bane of my existence. I'm also about to shove a 7900XT into a Meshify C, plus I'm sporting a Dark Rock Pro 4 haha and I really like the way it looks

Apologies for the wall of text

Not at all, rather thank you!

I researched again for parts and, whichever way I go, it's all very expensive.

The "cheaper" options are still expensive considered the lack of expandability: I can get, for example, two 3.5" 4TB drives for around 90-100 each, or, slightly better, two 2.5" 4TB drives for around 120-130 each; the 2.5" drives would allow me to get rid of the HDD cage in my PC and mount a fan in its place. Either way, 8TB (actually 4TB + mirrored backup) for 200-250, and I can't expand it further.

Slightly more expensive: a one drive Synology NAS, for around 300 (including a 4TB HDD, bought separately); again, locked with no further scaling possible.

Then, a two drives Synology NAS, for 450-500 (including two 4TB drives, bought separately), no scaling. But it's getting closer to my needs.

Finally, a four drives Synology NAS, definitely fitting for my needs, which is 500 not including drives; once I add storage, for example just two 8TB drives (to which I'd add another two down the road), I'm close to 800 (and this is by getting the cheapest 8TB drive I can find, nothing with "NAS" in the name haha).

Shucking isn't really a financially good option, it looks like, since external drives are actually more expensive in my country.

tiny case

Well, the Node 304 can hold six drives. Realistically, that should be enough for me even if I decide to have two backups (so using two drives for storage and then the other four just to back up those two) and even if I get 8TB drives (at the moment I have just shy of 3TB of data and I think i can easily add another 2TB onto it, but further than that... not sure). Worst case scenario changing only the case is pretty painless, especially if I can sell the old one to buy the larger one.

gpu

Yeah, I know I can get an APU, issue is, with that MoBo I picked only PRO APUs support ECC RAM. For what I understand, ECC RAM, while not mandatory, is highly recommended. The data I have is not vital, but if I can avoid corruption and having to download it again, I'd rather do so. To be fair, I'm currently not using ECC RAM and I haven't encountered data corruption in the past two or three years... so I'm a bit torn on this point now

your config

That's a very expensive motherboard, wow! I can't find it for less than 350! Definitely over budget for me at the moment

larger case for my current setup

This is definitely something I'll consider, at least as a stopgap until I can build a proper NAS. This way would allow me to have many drives and I could also repurpose the ones I already have.

I think I'll have to put this project on hold for now haha but thanks for the huge help, I'll definitely watch that video in the meantime!

Thanks again!

edit: looks like I can shave off another 100 from the planned build, since I can get a CPU (Ryzen 5 2600) and a 550W PSU for free. Which is actually not bad. Remove one stick of RAM, since 8GB should be enough, and I can save another 30, bringing the total to around 500. Not that bad as a start! Actually, bring that back to 600, since it would make more sense to get 8TB drives since I'm already around 3TB. Still, saved money is money saved haha

I'm sorry about your experience! I actually have an IronWolf, a small 2TB one, and it's been a year without issues. I don't write big amounts of data daily on it though, so my experience might be different.

Good luck with your replacement though!

Thanks for thd in-depth reply!

whole extra machine add to an existing desktop

It boils down to two things: inexperience (apparently 8GB of RAM might be enough? Just to name one issue wih my build haha) and I've already maxed out my main PC's expansion slots.

I have a compact case, which is already housing two HDDs (a "landing" HDD, where I store and keep all the... Linux ISOs... until they reach a satisfactory ratio of upload, which has a 2y uptime and just recently encountered its first uncorrectable sector error, and a 2TB HDD where I keep my stuff, including the aforementioned... ISOs..., my GOG games and other media. This 2TB is backed up on a 2TB external drive, and it's already full). Since this 2TB internal is full, I plan on moving some files to a different external HDD so I can stuff more things in it, but that leaves me with no backups for this stuff I want to move; this second external HDD is very small (650GB) so moving that stuff will make it full and I'll have no chance to add onto that collection.

It's a pretty unorganized situation and if I could get rid of all internal HDDs I could get rid of the HDD harness and fit a fan instead, also reduce noise.

In addition to this, I have yet to understand whether or not external drives can sustain "high" rates of writes (when I download GOG games, for example, it can easily add up to 100GB in a day) and reads (I usually seed... Linux ISOs... for tens to hundreds of GB a day). Of course these numbers arent't for everyday, some days I download nothing for example, other days I don't even turn on the PC.

powerful machine

And I even went for the cheapest parts I could get haha! Only way to make it less powerful is getting an Intel CPU, like the datahoarder wiki suggests, based on LGA 1150/1151, I can get one for like $20, but I can't find used motherboards for a decent price, all around 130. That's why I picked an AM4 platform: parts more widely available.

raspberry pi

Checked it out, unfortunately it's out of stock in all the licensed retailers in my country. It does sound like a nice starting point, though, so I will keep an eye out for it to be restocked, but since it uses external drives I'm back to the previous question: are external drives sturdy enough to sustain the amount of data I write and read daily?

no GPU

Wait, how can you turn it on and configure eveything necessary on it without graphics? Is it all done remotely via a main machine?

Sorry for the wall of text! And thanks again for the help!

Oh, that's right. Nice catch! I can probably repurpose a 256GB SSD I have, can't I? Should be enough for OS + utilities

The plan is to get more down the road, this is a starter setup! 4TB are enough for all my data at the moment, and the second drive is for backup; I will add a third drive for redundancy and that should be enough as a starter

edit: forgot to mention that I'm not USA-based, sorry! Wow, US prices are amazing. In my country that one is just a little less expensive, adjusted for capacity (the ones I picked are 4TB and 120, the Barracuda is 8TB and 205)! That's a bummer haha but thanks for the suggestion! edit: let me check the 4TB though edit2: now that's better, the 4TB is only 89 compared to 120 needed for the IronWolf