DonnieDarkmode

So as I look to build my first dedicated media server, I’m curious about what OS options I have which will check all the boxes. I’m interested in Unraid, and if there’s a Linux distro that works especially well I’d be willing to check that out as well. I just want to make sure that whatever I pick, I can use qbittorrent, Proton, and get the Arr suite working

So I have a fresh Windows 11 install on my PC; I did it to attempt to fix another issue I was having, but it turns out that was due to faulty RAM. Since I’ve been on the fresh install though, I've been encountering hard crashes that I can’t diagnose.

I’ve installed drivers (Chipset, CPU, GPU)

Updated my SSD firmware (though not on my boot drive or for my hard drives)

Updated BIOS

Reset CMOS

Have my GPU running stock and very well-cooled

I do have XMP enabled, as well as PBO on my 5900X. There was no issue with these for the year+ I was on my old Windows 11 install, or on Windows 10 before that, and I’d really prefer to leave these on since I game on this computer.

I leave my computer running with the monitors off most of the time, since it also functions as a Plex server. Recently I’ve been leaving the screens on, and caught a DPC_Watchdog_Violation blue screen which had evidently hard-crashed once it reached 100%. A post from Tom’s Hardware recommended going into Control Panel to install “Standard SATA AHCI Controller” for my SSDs, which I did, but I’m still getting the hard crashing.

I’m at a bit of a loss here; the only real common factor is that my displays are turned off when the hard crashes occur. I left them on all day yesterday with no issue, turned them off through the night, turn them back on the today, still with no issue, and then had a hard crash this afternoon during the 1 hour period I had them switched off. Also, this issue has never occurred while I’ve been using my PC, and it seems to happen at random intervals.

I’ve had issues with hard crashes in the past related to GPU temps and messing with the GPU voltage, or playing with CPU voltage, but never something like this. This didn’t happen while I was using my PC like this on the previous Windows install.

EDIT: Did 2 runs with memtest (all tests selected) and it passed both times. Also ran OCCT with the more demanding workload, and again no crashes

EDIT 2: I finally found a solution. Having tried a ton of different fixes, nothing could make the problem go away, and it resembled previous issues I’d had when components weren’t getting enough voltage. Finally I found this post, and after changing the settings in BIOS (setting Power Supply Idle Control to “Typical”, and Global C-State control to “Off”), I’ve had no further issues.

I leave my computer running for long stretches because it also acts as a plex server. I turned my monitor on last night to open steam, and the window didn’t render in; I didn’t think much of it, but before I could restart my PC, I got a “memory management” BSOD. I turned off XMP, as well as taking out each RAM stick, but I continued to get BSODs. Either “memory management” or “critical process error”. Some other things I’ve attempted:

I can’t reset the PC; when I try, I’m told “there was a problem resetting your PC”.

I can’t use a system restore point; that also fails.

When I open the terminal and run

sfc /scannow

it finds and fixes corrupt system files every single time (I’ve attempted 3 times now), but I still get a “critical process error” BSOD.

I attempted running

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

before “sfc” but this got an error 87 and didn’t work.

When I turn on the PC, my lights for DRAM and VGA stay lit up for maybe 5-10 seconds, but turn off while I’m in BIOS or the windows startup repair screen (and my monitor is plugged into the graphics card; my CPU can’t do display out).

I’m at a bit of a loss here. My next guess would be to attempt to reinstall windows, but I don’t have another windows PC handy to create bootable media, so I’m hoping I have a thumb drive laying around with an ISO on it, or I’ll need to wait to get one from a friend.

Also, in the event that reinstalling windows is the fix, should I disconnect the drives holding my plex media beforehand? Wouldn’t want to risk them getting wiped

An update: I have a drive with installation media for Windows 10 laying around, but when I got to the point where it was installing files on my boot drive, partway through it said it didn’t have the required files and cancelled.

THE FIX: Turns out it was an issue with my RAM. I plugged in a thumb drive containing memtest, and after running the test received a ton of errors. Swapping in a new RAM kit seems to have totally resolved my issues. The PC boots up perfectly fine now

Just a note in case anyone is worried I’m adding a mage to every encounter, I very rarely use counterspell against my players; it’s one of the spells I consider to have high “fun-ruining” potential.

I’m struggling a bit to decide on how to handle this interaction in a way that feels fair. From my understanding RAW, a character doesn’t know what spell is being cast. I think you can use your reaction to make an arcana check to discern it, but of course then you can’t counterspell it. For enemy spellcasters I generally describe what’s being cast, instead of naming the spell right away, but it can slow combat down, and is a bit one-sided since when a player casts a spell they lead with “I cast X”. This leads to an imbalance where I’m aware of what’s needed to counterspell something while the players are not, and can cause some awkwardness trying to decide how to play around that without metagaming.

I can think of a few different ways to handle this, each with its own drawbacks, but I’m curious to hear what y’all do at your tables!

I’m feeling a bit torn myself. I understand the thinking behind the vanilla rules; it helps balance out some of the spellcasters’ power, especially at higher levels. But my understanding of balance in 5e is that it’s to balance the players against each other, to avoid having 1 or 2 players be so clearly better at so much that it naturally pulls the limelight away from the rest of the party and causes people to lose interest their own character.

I think totally unrestricted spellcasting carries the potential for imbalance, but doesn’t guarantee that outcome, and if I’m not making my spellcasters manage their resources then I’m doing something wrong. Something like Matt Mercer’s house rule “spells of 2nd level or lower” would also be a good compromise because it allows the utility of things like Misty Step, or for a Gish to summon a shadow blade etc.

What do y’all do at your tables, and why?

I’m looking to run a prewritten campaign for 3-4 people, because I think it would improve my DMing as well as work on some of the basics for my players. What adventures do y’all like that start at lower levels (not level 1)? Ideally on the longer side, but shorter campaigns are fine too.

So I’m looking to finally build a dedicated plex server, instead of using my personal desktop, but I’m having a hard time deciding on components (for a tower). I would say 3 simultaneous 4k remote transcodes would be the goal.

There are some 12/13600k and Arc A380 bundles on Newegg that have caught my eye; at the very least I think I’d like an A380 to ensure AV1 10-bit support for the future. Am I missing out by not hunting for the perfect deal on an old Xeon or something off of eBay? I’m not really familiar with server components, and I don’t know to what extent I would benefit from features like ECC RAM.

I also figure that a hard drive array (RAID or Unraid) would be best, because it’ll be more than enough speed for my application and give me some data protection. I’ve got around 10TB of content right now, and have a 6TB and 8TB drive (both Seagate Ironwolf). If there’s a solution that would allow me to incorporate those instead of just buying all new drives I’d be especially interested in it. Also, from what I understand I can get some decent enterprise drives for a reasonable price?

Finally, OS; I’m most familiar with Windows, but I’m willing to try something Linux if there’s enough of a benefit

I torrent (on the same PC that I run a Plex server from), but also auto connect on my devices whenever I’m on public wifi, so speed and avoiding blocks/captchas is also important. From what I understand having port forwarding will make a big difference in my torrent transfer speeds and ability to connect to peers.

I’m currently using Nord, but I’d like to make the switch to a company with a better privacy track record. I’m still really drawn to PIA because of the speeds and port forwarding, but I know their ownership is pretty sketchy, even if there’s nothing to point to there (yet). Mullvad dropped port forwarding, which seems to leave ProtonVPN. But now I’m hearing that the influx of Russian users post-invasion has increased the number of sites and services that block PVPN servers?

It seems like despite the huge amount of choices, nothing checks all the boxes except PIA. Am I missing something, or misinformed?

Playing through as Gale. In tabletop DND, all wizards are able to use ritual casting from the start, but I’ve picked up Find Familiar and I’m not seeing the option to do that, nor do I see it listed in his character description (N isn’t pulling up a character sheet for some reason)

EDIT: Ritual casting confirmed, just works differently than I had assumed

What set of English subtitles should I be looking at to use with the 2015 Japanese Blu Ray release? There are a lot of English releases over the years, but are there any that I could basically just drop in without needing to figure out syncing?

So I’ve got a rip of the Japanese Blu Ray of Evangelion, and I’d like to turn it from a jumble of numbered .mts files into something more useable. How do I get started going about that process? As an example, if I download a raw CD rip, I can use cuetools to turn it into a list of .flac tracks ready for listening. Is there some similar software (or multiple programs) for Blu Rays? I’m not really familiar with working with .m2ts files and don’t know where to start

EDIT: makeMKV worked (just to test, handbrake did as well, because the version I have has no DRM, but bear in mind that HandBrake is going to transcode/compress the resulting file by default). This turned the contents of the disk into 1 MKV file, which I could then run through MKVToolNix and split into individual episodes

I’m on a custom-built windows 11 PC (Ryzen 5 x570) and have recently been having an issue where the PC will become totally unresponsive; it’s still “on”, the fans and lighting still work, but it won’t output to the display and can’t be accessed remotely (Plex and TeamViewer both consider it to be offline). The only fix for this is a hard reset. I haven’t witnessed what happens to put it in this state.

This seems to have started after trying out the Curve Optimiser built into Ryzen Master in combination with PBO, as well as using the OC scan in ASUS GPU Tweak, which also affected voltage. The CPU OC has been reverted, so that seems to leave GPU, and I’ve dealt with weird PC behaviour related to cooling/OC with the GPU before (I haven’t been able to check because I’ve been out of town).

One strange bit about it is it’s seemingly random nature. It’s never entered this state under load; it only ever happens more or less at idle (my PC is on all the time because it doubles as my Plex server)

EDIT: I’ve removed the GPU OC from ASUS GPU Tweak, which had messed with voltage. So far the hard crash hasn’t happened again, but I’ll try to remember to update this again if it does occur, for the sake of future googlers

EDIT 2: It’s been about a month now and the issue still hasn’t occurred, so I’m pretty confident it was the GPU OC