I think it was because people new the terms Read Only Memory and Random Access Memory, so they just grabbed RAM as a buzz word. DVD/CD-RW makes more sense really. Unless they were trying to bring attention to competition of tape storage being sequential access while DVD could be Random Access.

They were optimised to offer RAM capabilities. Much higher rewrite ceiling, write verification in hardware, no finalisation required etc.

Discontinued in 2019.

Is there a significance to the RAM part of the name or did they just need to differentiate from DVD-ROM? CD-RW is basically the same thing, right?

Just download more. What's the problem?

The way the prices are developing, at some point you will be more likely to be able to afford a RAM truck than enough RAM for a decent PC...

I bought the cheapest ups (APC) microcenter had on sale and am very happy with my purchase.

When the power flickers or goes out, the PC stays on. I think the hardware will last longer this way too.

As long as the antenna is 1/4 the wavelength of the frequency it will work well.

2.4ghz is a much longer wavelength than 5, and 6ghz so any antenna will work fine.

Anything marketed as a PC Bluetooth/Wifi antenna will work. They're basically just fancy pieces of wire cut to a precise length with a connector on one end (you can get more complicated ones, but there's usually no reason to).

Anything that looks similar to this will work fine. Just make sure it says somewhere that it has an "RP-SMA" connector.

They're interchangeable, I wouldn't worry as long as the replacement is for Bluetooth/wifi and has the same connector (probably rp-sma, just check if the card has a pin in the center or not and make sure the antenna is the opposite)

I believe the antennas are standard. If they screw on correctly, they should work fine.

Sounds like a good idea then to get a UPS! Don't go bigger than you need, I got a 360W UPS (smallest I could find) and that's comfortably looking after my NAS, router and a few Raspberry Pi units.

If you connect the UPS to your NAS via USB, it can signal the system to shut down automatically. I assume you'll be using TrueNAS or Unraid, both support it.

I'm also building my first NAS after having a Synology for years. Pro-tip: do the rough math on power consumption for all your components BEFORE you commit and buy parts. You might find that changes your perspective on upfront costs, eg. pushing you towards fewer larger drives, going with SATA drives vs HBA + SAS drives etc.

At work, we've had some refurb (CoastTec) APCs fail early, so buy new.

At home, I have a two APC Pros with the extended battery pack and they've been great on my homelab. I have a few Vertiv sprinkled around the house too- tv, htpc, and wifi ap. No issues with any of them.

I did have a lightning strike (blew the bark off of 3 trees) take out one APC unit. I think my PC would have been fine, but the USB connection was the weak link. The graphics card, PSU, and disks survived but mobo ram CPU did not. Nothing stops a hit like that, but I wasn't even using the USB port and wish I hadn't plugged it in.

In my opinion, stick to APC at work and cyberpower at home.

I have two cyberpowers at home right now. One of them is connected to my Nas and my primary desktop and the other is connected to my wife's desktop and our internet hardware.

We live in the middle of nowhere at the end of a power line that was installed just for us. So as you can imagine we don't get a lot of maintenance and the power here goes out multiple times every week.

Am trying to build my first NAS here (and no I’m not buying one off the shelf, cause where’s the fun in that when I drive Linux on the daily?), and I do have some spinning drives. I wouldn’t lose important work; this is just for my personal use, but it would pain me to lose some of my personal stuff. My important docs are already backed up on a personal cloud, and my side projects are on some public git.

But yeah, my plan is to have just enough power in the event of a power outage to gracefully shut down the NAS. Would be really nice if I could automate that, in case I’m not around.

IMHO I'd only bother for an always-on PC (eg. a NAS), especially if it has mechanical hard drives. The goal of it should be to prevent data loss by gracefully shutting down the PC once it detects the power has gone out for long enough.

I've got one for my NAS (a dirt cheap Cyberpower UPS) and it's done the job. I replace the battery in it every few years, as SLA batteries degrade over time. You have to be comfortable disassembling and reassembling the device to do this, kind of terrible design. But cheap!

What are you hoping to achieve with a UPS versus a surge protector or just rawdogging it? I think these days with most PCs being solid state, the risk of hardware damage is pretty minimal. If you're doing important work on the PC you should be backing it up regularly to the cloud or elsewhere anyway.

I've got two APCs, they both work pretty well. I don't remember the specific models, but they were both around $200 when I bought them at different times.

I had one for my business. Just be aware the battery worsens over time and they only keep power for a certain time. So, unless it is mission critical, they are not really worth it,.in my experience. For a work site that is depended on, like hosted service, it is certainly good, but you'd need it for all of the different parts of your stack including server PC, modem, router etc.

Desktops have too much free real estate and USB c takes up way too many resources.

What? desktops are supposed to be experimental.

Not any time soon. Desktops have too much free real estate and USB c takes up way too many resources.

That’s nice for a repairable portable option.

Probably not what you're looking for on a build, but I think the Framework motherboards are nothing but USB-C.

Looks like I will to have to buy usb c peripherals when the time comes.

Probably not, no. Many brand new peripherals still use USBA.

I wonder if there are any motherboards that only provide usb-c ports.

Not sure what you're asking. Most modern mobos still have several A ports and 1 or 2 C ports on the back. With maybe 1 more on the case.