Stupidest pc build thread, but didn't want to go OT on MMH thread

[ted_b]

So, the last time I tired to do something in MMH I was quickly told, by my Win 7 computer, that MMH (along with many other software products or updates) that my desktop was out of date. No kidding. I'll keep it, as I have sooo many tools, etc on it, but need a Win 10 or Win 11 box.

So...Friday I ordered a Win11 NUC from Amazon (Geekom PC was the brand) called a Mini IT 12. I received it on Saturday and spent much of the rest of the day doing the required updates, network setup, account setup, etc etc. Then I installed several packages that were no-nos on Win 7 (so I had them on inconvenient family laptops, etc). Things like MMH, mkvtoolnix, Turbotax, tsmuxer, Dovi_Scripts (for Dolby Vision troubleshooting and editing), etc.

Then I powered down and removed the bottom plate and installed a 2nd hdd, a new 512GB NVMe PCie SSD, and put the bottom plate back on. Easy peasy, right? NOPE! The power buttom will no longer work (and seems hinky, like it doesn't fully depress half the time). Although I also suspected a fuse, I have no idea where that would be in this tiny box (Not sure why I elected to go NUC, frankly). I also removed the new SSD.

I've put a few emails into Geekompc support but nothing so far except a reponse that gave me a new contact in their Amazon support team. Nothing yet.

Question: If I were to buy another identical IT 12 from Amazon, swap out the OS hdd and then return the bad NUC, with replacement NUC OS hdd, would that work (Amazon's return policy is so good)...or do things also get copied to the cpu, etc? Otherwise, it's not the end of the worlkd, I spent only a half day on it worst case. Thx
Ted

 

[LuvMyQuad]

AFAIK nothing can be written to the CPU.

 

[Electric Moo]

I'm still using W7 and an older PC, for many of the same reasons. You can get an older W7 compatible version of MMH

Obviously you won't get any of the new features

 

[ted_b]

Thanks. The Win 10/11 thing is a done deal; I need TurboTax, etc. I’m worried a simple hdd swap is forgetting about things like firmware, etc or anything into cmos? Dunno. I’m hoping support can enlighten soon

 

[Electric Moo]

Sorry, to answer your question: if the hardware is the same, it'll probably work. Pending driver & firmware/motherboard stuff. But their support should be able to confirm that with you.

You may run into Windows licensing funk though, tied to the MAC address

 

[MandrakeMan]

At the end of December, I was forced to finally update from W7 as some services I used, simply stopped at the end of 2023. It was a pain to find my old install files, but I took the opportunity to switch the main drive to SSD at the same time, and it's been a great move, so far. W10 seems very good and stable, and the SSD is obviously much faster. Finding some of the preferred drivers was a pain, particularly the realtek one for my motherboard surround capable card. As I find all the drivers and software I, this time around, put them all in a folder on an external SSD, to save the faff on future. W7 will only become more of an issue for you with time, so maybe start finding all the software etc. now and prepare to upgrade.

 

[mandrix]

I hope the swap works, and yeah unless you buy a full blown copy of Windows you often run into problems trying to transfer the license. I know....I have a row of old Win 7 OEM discs on the shelf that are basically useless. Is why I bought Win 10 Pro full copy vs OEM and later got the free upgrade to Win 11 Pro.
I used to rebuild the pc's with every new cpu/motherboard cycle so new copies of Windows. The OEM licenses are tied to hardware...with identical hardware you might pull it off though!

I've always sort of went the opposite direction from NUC's. My main pc stands in at about 42 inches tall on castors (as you can see in my avatar). Water cooling, custom wiring etc.
My second pc is in a tall tower case also on a home made base with castors.

 

[ubertrout]

I use a Mini PC in my home office to run 2 4K monitors, but I haven't tried to open it up - from what I've seen in videos they're rather janky on the inside. That said, before I went any further in a return I'd open it up again, check all the connectors including the power leads, maybe watch a video or two about opening up that specific model, etc.

If you're someone who has a large number of large digital files (which pretty much all of us do), I'd really consider something with a lot of drive bays - or at least one for putting 8 TB or larger drive in. Even if using a NAS it's useful to have the space on a physical drive. If I was just doing media transcoding and basic productivity I'd consider something like a refurb Optiplex - this upgrades free to Win 11 and is under $200: https://www.dellrefurbished.com/item/dell-optiplex-3070-sff-000004/dell-optiplex-3070-sff/1.html (promo code YEAREND3070). Pay another $100-200 for big hard drive and maybe $20 for another 8 GB of RAM and you'll be good to go for another decade.

Or build one one yourself! The Micro Center in Denver is always happy to help and has good bundle deals.

 

[ted_b]

Geekom support got back to me and approved my hdd swap idea. If it doesn't work I'll simply redo the setup again, a loss of a few hours of redundant work. No big deal.

Question: since I am targeting this box to do, at worst case, remuxing of video files like MKVs and BDMVs, (to play proper DV through my X800M2 it requires tsmuxering) should I reconsider the horsepower of the replacement box (anything but identical will cancel my idea of an hdd swap, but ok). This IT 12 is a 12th gen I7-12650H with 32GB DDR4 memory and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD (I'll install another SSD for any storage). No idea what sort of horsepower muxing and such requires, and from where. Thx

P.S. This machione will not require a lot of storage cuz it's not actually gonna play anything. The videos it readies will be played in the lower level music room/HT on sources like a Sony X800M2 and a Zidoo Z9X. It's those devices that have terabytes of storage hanging off them. All is copied on my Synology too, of course.

​

 

[ubertrout]

Geekom support got back to me and approved my hdd swap idea. If it doesn't work I'll simply redo the setup again, a loss of a few hours of redundant work. No big deal.

Question: since I am targeting this box to do, at worst case, remuxing of video files like MKVs and BDMVs, (to play proper DV through my X800M2 it requires tsmuxering) should I reconsider the horsepower of the replacement box (anything but identical will cancel my idea of an hdd swap, but ok). This IT 12 is a 12th gen I7-12650H with 32GB DDR4 memory and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD (I'll install another SSD for any storage). No idea what sort of horsepower muxing and such requires, and from where. Thx

P.S. This machione will not require a lot of storage cuz it's not actually gonna play anything. The videos it readies will be played in the lower level music room/HT on sources like a Sony X800M2 and a Zidoo Z9X. It's those devices that have terabytes of storage hanging off them. All is copied on my Synology too, of course.

​

You should be fine with that processor - as I understand it BDMV is h.264 encoding, which that processor's integrated graphics handles natively at a hardware level.

It may get a little hot when doing so in a mini PC, but it should stay well within spec.

 

[par4ken]

If you are like me you hate the start menu in Windows 10/11. You can make it like Windows 7 by using Classic Shell or Open Shell as it is now called.

https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/

 

[mandrix]

I use a Mini PC in my home office to run 2 4K monitors, but I haven't tried to open it up - from what I've seen in videos they're rather janky on the inside. That said, before I went any further in a return I'd open it up again, check all the connectors including the power leads, maybe watch a video or two about opening up that specific model, etc.

If you're someone who has a large number of large digital files (which pretty much all of us do), I'd really consider something with a lot of drive bays - or at least one for putting 8 TB or larger drive in. Even if using a NAS it's useful to have the space on a physical drive. If I was just doing media transcoding and basic productivity I'd consider something like a refurb Optiplex - this upgrades free to Win 11 and is under $200: https://www.dellrefurbished.com/item/dell-optiplex-3070-sff-000004/dell-optiplex-3070-sff/1.html (promo code YEAREND3070). Pay another $100-200 for big hard drive and maybe $20 for another 8 GB of RAM and you'll be good to go for another decade.

Or build one one yourself! The Micro Center in Denver is always happy to help and has good bundle deals.

I have 12 drive bays. Well I have 3 drive cages that hold 4 drives each, all mounted on a purpose made mount. Man I miss Case Labs!
As the smaller drives get older (<10TB) they get relegated to BD storage for backup and get boxed and put on the shelf.
I've got I think now 15 HDD's running between 2 pc's now, and a big handful of SSD's. But then I'm a pc geek.

 

[barfle]

I’ve built all my PCs going back to an 8088 with two 32Mb hard drives, two floppies, a 24kns modem and a RAM drive board, except for one laptop and one 286 model that never did much anyway. My main unit is an AMD processor in a tower with three drives, including a SSD for the Win10 OS. IIRC, I bought Win7 for that box, got free updates for 8 and 10, and have replaced the motherboard at least once, with no license issues.

I’m thinking about moving all the electronics to a slightly smaller tower so my keyboard can be straight with the desk, but it’s still not at the top of my list. Moving up, though. It also needs a new CPU fan, because on startup, it doesn’t always spin.

I don’t have it connected into my A/V system because I’m pretty happy with the sources I already have, although I may well use it for digitizing vinyl at some point. I currently use it for ripping CDs, editing audio and video, making CDs, DVDs and the occasional Blu-ray.

 

[ubertrout]

I’ve built all my PCs going back to an 8088 with two 32Mb hard drives, two floppies, a 24kns modem and a RAM drive board, except for one laptop and one 286 model that never did much anyway. My main unit is an AMD processor in a tower with three drives, including a SSD for the Win10 OS. IIRC, I bought Win7 for that box, got free updates for 8 and 10, and have replaced the motherboard at least once, with no license issues.

I’m thinking about moving all the electronics to a slightly smaller tower so my keyboard can be straight with the desk, but it’s still not at the top of my list. Moving up, though. It also needs a new CPU fan, because on startup, it doesn’t always spin.

I don’t have it connected into my A/V system because I’m pretty happy with the sources I already have, although I may well use it for digitizing vinyl at some point. I currently use it for ripping CDs, editing audio and video, making CDs, DVDs and the occasional Blu-ray.

I really enjoy building PCs so I built a HTPC and I really like it. Silverstone Milo ML05 case, cheap AM4 ITX Board from Asrock, Ryzen 5600G processor, 16GB of RAM, Noctua low-profile CPU Cooler, and Corsair SFX 450W power supply. The Noctua cooler is set to be essentially quiet, and the psu fan only turns on above a certain power level I never hit. So it's essentially silent in operation, and has no problem outputting 4K HDR content to my OLED.

Was it kind of a waste of money? Probably. It cost me about $500 and I would have gotten 90% of what I use that PC for out of a used HP EliteDesk 705 MINI - which you can regularly get on eBay for $130. (one of many such sellers: https://www.ebay.com/itm/334731109901) But what's the fun in that?

 

[mandrix]

I really enjoy building PCs so I built a HTPC and I really like it. Silverstone Milo ML05 case, cheap AM4 ITX Board from Asrock, Ryzen 5600G processor, 16GB of RAM, Noctua low-profile CPU Cooler, and Corsair SFX 450W power supply. The Noctua cooler is set to be essentially quiet, and the psu fan only turns on above a certain power level I never hit. So it's essentially silent in operation, and has no problem outputting 4K HDR content to my OLED.

Was it kind of a waste of money? Probably. It cost me about $500 and I would have gotten 90% of what I use that PC for out of a used HP EliteDesk 705 MINI - which you can regularly get on eBay for $130. (one of many such sellers: https://www.ebay.com/itm/334731109901) But what's the fun in that?

I could not begin to tally the money and time I have in my main rig. It's a Case Labs Merlin case with "pedestals" top and bottom. The bottom has my water cooling pumps & 480mm radiator and the top pedestal has the hard drive rack, power conditioners for the drives, fans for the drive cages, etc. Main case has a 240mm radiator. All rad fans are in push/pull. The case parts alone were somewhere in the $1200 range.
All the wiring was hand made, terminals crimped, and sleeved by me. Many hours of time just learning how to properly sleeve wiring. But I enjoy doing it.
I have a slide out motherboard tray so it's simple to change motherboards on a table.
The bottom pedestal water cooling lines are copper 1/2" and in the main case all clear acrylic that I formed the bends and everything myself with the proper tools and a heat gun.
I have two water cooled Aquaero fan controllers running 16 Nidec AP-15 fans.

Many years ago I used several layers of acrylic sheet edge polished to make a sort of "light board" for the bottom of main case by ringing it with led's. The main case of course has a large clear window in the door.

This was my project after I retired in 2011 and it's sort of just kept going, though I can't afford to change motherboards often these days.

In the old days before AI on motherboards, I used to overclock cpu's and sell the cpu/motherboard combination basically around the world. I have a great seller's rep on overclock.net.