I got myself a new monitor, 2560x1080 (21:9). LG 25UM58-P on sale at NewEgg and NCIX, I paid $200CAD.

Takes forever. Finally completed the build. Got the cooler from newegg, which shipped from Taiwan.

Copy editors are essential. This is what happens when you lay them off.

My sister's laptop ate shit the other day and she ordered a new one. She got me thinking about my five year old rig, and how it was starting to show its age, so started half-heartedly pricing the stats I would want in a new machine on newegg and Amazon for fully assembled machines, and was always getting gouged or having to make some kind of sacrifice for another feature.

So after my wife responded to me trying to sound offhanded about buying a new computer by only rolling her eyes, but not actually raising any actual objection, I committed to the idea and started searching in earnest.

I realized that a fully assembled machine would always cost more, be underpowered for its price, be basically impossible to upgrade, be made of shitty parts, and always require some kind of compromise on my part.

Normally in the past, i would go to the barebones section on Pricewatch, order the basic stats I wanted, and fill it in myself after that. But it appears that Pricewatch might be dead. So, for the first time since probably 2002 or so, I'm building a computer in its entirety.

I'm really excited. Everything should be here by the middle of next week.

Kinda pissed. Ordered a WD red plus 8TB on November 20th from newegg along with some other stuff. He drive showed up DOA on the 26th, tested everything I could to make it work. But in the end I couldn't even get it to initialize.

Ok. No problem this happens. request a return and replacement.

Got that in today. Over 2 weeks later. Fucking EXACT same problem.

and just to make sure I'm not fucking crazy I grabbed a 1tb thats been sitting on my desk unused for years. Plugged that into my NAS. Works fucking perfectly. Even able to pull it and wipe it using my USB drive reader on my desk after. I can even fucking reinitilize it back and forth from mbr to gpt.

Not asking for replacement this time. Just refund. Gonna order directly from WD. If this one fucks up I'm switching to Seagate for a couple of years

Just scrolling through Newegg and well that's different.

Software RAID 1 is better than hardware RAID 1! Here's why:
1. Hardware RAID controllers do fail, and when they do, they kill all hard drives connected to them.
2. If your controller didn't fry your hard drives when it failed, you'll have to find the exact replacement, or you can kiss your data goodbye. You installed a hardware RAID array using second hand Broadcom controller three years ago, and now it failed? You better get on looking for the same controller of same revision running the same firmware version (of course you can't update firmware yourself) if you want your data back. Oh, Broadcom discontinued this model? Tough cookies. With software RAID, everything is easily recoverable.
3. You save a lot of money you can invest in other parts of your system. Good hardware controllers, even second hand ones, don't cost less than $200.

Performance loss is negligible.
RAID built into your motherboard is the worst of both worlds: it's just the software RAID you can't reallly control. Don't do that.

Hardware RAID is only worth it if you have a contract with your hardware supplier that says they're responsible for managing your RAID array. They have the resources to replace failed controllers properly. You know how IBM installs full rack worth of servers just to disable 70% of them because of your plan limitations? It's easier for them to do that than to physically go there and take servers away, just to reinstall them when you grow. Yeah, that kind of contract at that kind of level. If you're there, you don't need me telling you all that.

TL;DR: if you want to buy a two 8TB hard drives for $150 each on newegg and a used RAID controller to make RAID 1 array, you can make both 16TB _and_ make your system more reliable. Reliability is what you're after if you want RAID 1, isn't it?

What are you do... wha... no! stop! are you gonna buy a raid box from Aliexpress? are you fucking crazy?!

I MISS TIGERDIRECT! a haiku&rant

Tiger, so direct
Hardware haven, my tech friend
Killed, by poor Insight

I thought I had found ways to cope with it all... became a cert'd refurbisher at enough lesser operations to rebuild some semblance of my hardware connects. I even resorted to newegg to fill small voids... why is it so hard to find a quickly shipping, scriptable, 2 WAN in 6+ channels out, non WiFi noob crap, router... or even an L3 managed switch for <250$ not tied to some bullshit excuse for network management like a "cloud management platform" with some rando 'security' bloat?!?! Not even trying to force the PoE functionality (realistically i know I'll just wire that up myself after procrastinating too long)... i even tried newegg and damn amazon, neither seem to realise that real routers and switches arent interchangeable terms.

I even tried tolerating supporting the murderous, treasonous, obfuscating high prices and insisting you register as your business and let them trap you in the equivalent of a 'free' ski trip, with "short" timeshare presentation.

All bullshit and overpriced af trying to force some bloat down your throat so you "feel" like you're properly managing a network.

Anyone have an ace up their sleeve? For quick delivery (USA) minus bloat, pandering and ass-to-mouth rape???

I even tried stooping to a current Cisco OEM!

I mean, if it was *only* a bit of ass rape, I'm fine with that... but the bloat, pandering and shit-stained lollipop...

I'd rather just disappear from valid business obligations, get somewhat intoxicated, and hyperfocus tear apart my tech graveyards, go ghetto apocalyptic tech macgyver on that shit and emerge days later low on solder, in dire need of a flintstones size whetstone, more arduinos, a tetanus shot and a shower.

If there is tech support that is just plain awesome, it these:
1) Namecheap
2) Newegg
3) Nyko

The ones that are meh include:
1) Linksys
2) AOL
3) Microsoft