Hi all, since ya’ll are self hosters, I’m sure you all deal with all sorts of different pieces of hardware, accessories, peripherals, and what not; just wondering if you could please share your favorite, solid, “go to” brands for overall things you need for your setup such as cables (all types), adapters, dongles, power accessories, hubs & docks, flash drives, you name it! I’m sure it varies depending on exactly what type of equipment you’re looking for but just looking for overall good brands to stick with for such things. I obviously know the main ones like Anker, Cable Matters, Ugreen, maybe Belkin, Idk. Would love to hear your recommendations! Thank you
I believe Kingston has the fastest and smallest USB drive out there. I’ve never had an anker product that lasts long but Belkin seems to be good to me. I pick my WiFi routers based on what is supported by OpenWRT. Nitecore makes great batteries and chargers. My Caldigit dock is fantastic
Yea I’ve read Caldigit is the gold standard for docking stations; a bit pricy for me ATM though. I think I shall get a dell dock, which should work good with my dell laptop :) What about cables and adapters and chargers? have any specific favorites for those types of things?
Besides Nitecore for various battery types and cameras I don’t have a preference as long as it’s a quality brand so I don’t fry anything. I am waiting for higher output GaN chargers for USB-C specifically. I have yet to find any though if anyone else knows of any.
I need to look into GaN chargers. I keep hearing about them but not too sure why they’re so popular
As far as I care or know about they’re just incredibly small for how much power they can output.
I hear Ugreen has a real nice one, but you’re probably already aware of that.
I think I’ve seen the company in the past but wasn’t really aware of them. Sadly their one port output still only maxes at 140W with the GaN unit. Thanks for the tip
What USB drive is the Kingston drive? I looked years ago but all of them sucked on write speed. The best one I found was SanDisk Extreme PRO USB 3.2. I think it is actually a solids state drive vs a traditional USB drive. It definitely isn’t the smallest flash drive, but I am not waiting 30 minutes to copy of 4GB ISO file to it.
I totally get you with not wanting to wait ages to copy stuff. The Kingston Data Traveler Max. It’s USB 3.2x2. I suppose it’s not as fast as the new USB4 devices but I suspect they’ll eventually release a new version. It’s the same speeds as the SanDisk Extreme V2 (non Pro). So very fast but not quite besting SanDisk but it has a smaller footprint going for it without a dongle essentially.
Oh wow that is really fast drive. I will have to take a look at that one. Glad to see other companies are starting to come out with fast drives.
A few years ago when I was looking the SanDisk was the only drive that was actually fast on writing. Every flash drive I found basically lied about the write speed. They would say oh it is 300mbps but when it would only be able to sustain that speed for a very short time then it would would drop to a slow crawl of 10mbps sometimes even less. One drive was 3mpbs. Or they wouldn’t advertise the write speed at all and just focus on read speeds.
There was those portable SSDs but they were still a little big and I wanted something small I could carry with keys.
It is nice to see more companies making them. I had to search a long time to find that drive. A good reason to have different options is that a firmware update it now available for those SanDisk drives we were talking about because a critical flaw was found within them.
Luckily is wasn’t those but the flash drive version. Why SanDisk has the same name for like 4 different products is beyond me.
https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-128GB-Extreme-Solid-State/dp/B08GYM5F8G
Oh yeah that is confusing. Sadly these ones are only USB 3.2x1
Oh I also got a Belkin RT3200 router because I read it is the best budget router for OpenWRT, but I realized I am way in over my head with OpenWRT lol so I’ve backed off from that project for now. I shall get to it someday though
It’s definitely complicated for me too. It took me many videos and articles to figure out how to set it up. I realized ram and on board storage is very important for how many plugins you can use.
Thanks. could you clarify the ram issue? you mean just by setting up a swap? and on board storage, are you referring to creating a separate partition for storage? how would you get all three distros to automatically store things on that drive?
Memory and storage are the two big potential limitations. As you install various plugins under the “Software” section (If you choose to) your memory and storage space will quickly start to get eaten up as visualized under the “Software” and “Overview” sections. For instance, Adguard Home could be something worth installing but it’s also a heavy program. It requires 50MB of free memory and over 100MB of free storage. I have the memory but not the storage space required (even before any other plugins were installed). However there is a way to add extra root storage to your router via a USB drive but it’s also quite a process to get that sorted.
Very informative, thank you. Idk how you guys know all this stuff lol
Haha I am by no means a tech expert. I just get focused on something and learn all about it. I do tend to forget a lot about it later too!
The feeling I get from Belkin is that the hardware is decent, but their software is always atrocious