Z-library was a massive pirate repository for ebooks.

I had GFiber for a bit and had no issues with torrenting via private trackers and no VPN.

Not sure if that was a typo but OP mentioned OnlyOffice, not OpenOffice. I don’t think OnlyOffice has ever tried to get me to make an account or do things on the cloud. I keep both Only and Libre installed. I like the UI of Only better, but Libre is more functional, at least as far as spreadsheets go which is my main use.

Or Nicotine+ (a great Soulseek client)

I can’t comment on questions 1, 3, and 5 but I have been using Real-Debrid for around four years now (through Kodi mostly because I don’t want to have to manage a huge server again, occasionally I download directly to watch later/on a different device/non-video stuff) and I’ve been pretty happy with them so I’ll answer from that perspective.

Quality is great. As you mentioned in Q4, it works via torrents so if a torrent exists you’re free to grab whatever you want. You can stream or download from RD once it’s been cached by them. Even 50+GB Bluray remux streams fine directly from them. As for file naming, in the thousands of downloads I’ve gone through, I think I’ve come across two incidents where something wasn’t named properly and I ended up with something I didn’t expect but I believe both of those were Kodi issues, not RD. One was a movie where I got a foreign movie of a similar name and one was a TV series where it kept trying to play the wrong season/episode. In both cases I was able to just manually add the torrent/magnet and RD had it fully downloaded basically instantly or I was able to manually select another file in Kodi. The file names are what you expect with a torrent though with the title/year and all the quality and codec info in the filename so it’s hard to get the wrong thing. I don’t think I’ve ever come across deliberately misnamed files. It would get nuked pretty fast, trackers usually take stuff like that pretty seriously.

Assuming something is relatively available RD seems to be able to grab it very quickly. Like as fast as the page refreshes after adding the torrent/magnet. You also download very quickly from them; I typically see over 100MBs down over my wireless connection in a house with several other people using our connection which is pretty much fully saturating our bandwidth lol. Occasionally I have had issues getting something, but like with most things, the older and more obscure you get the harder it is to find sources for. In that case you may want to be on certain trackers. This is kind of why I like Kodi because there are plugins that focus on different types of media and some may have better luck finding, say, old 90s cartoons while others are better for anime. Once it gets added to my debrid I can go back and grab it/rewatch later. But for more popular stuff, I typically just use one of the big name public trackers. RD grabs it and I get it securely and privately from them. I’ve never bothered with a VPN and have never had issues.

One thing that I didn’t see mentioned was downtime. Occasionally RD has had some downtime. If you’ve ever been on the addons4kodi subreddit you’ve probably seen the posts with people freaking out about it within minutes of it going down. Downtime is typically minimal and usually back up within minutes to a few hours. In a few instances (like maybe twice?) it went down for like 12 hours or longer? Not really sure, if it goes down I just find something else to do and check later in the day or the next day and it’s back up. RD has also been known to compensate days worth of service for hours of downtime which is pretty nice. I haven’t heard the same about Alldebrid or Premiumize.

RD also gives you tokens based on the service package you buy (called fidelity points). 1000 points will convert to 30 days of service. I buy 180 days at a time which is currently around $17.33 USD and I get 800 points, so buying a year (~$35) gets me an extra month with points left over. Then the next several 180 day purchases also get extra months with them.

Also a Control D user. OISD full has worked great for me!

Unsafe site: 1377
All-purpose: 1337

Have used a couple of hot coffee vending machines in the US and all of them were absolute garbage.

Probably not what you’re looking for, but I’ve been really happy with my JBL 306Ps for the last three years. They sound great and can get way louder than I’ll ever really need. Sometimes I wish I went for the 308s for more low end but like 90% of the time I’m satisfied.

Hope you can get your issue resolved. Audio issues are so incredibly annoying.

It can complicate things, but there are small cases out there with larger/more powerful components in mind. There are good designs and bad, same with any size, just have to keep your component choices in mind. I’m a big fan of ITX builds with high end hardware. At some point it becomes sort of a puzzle, balancing your components for size, heat output, and air movement. Not worth the hassle for some but I find it fun.

As others have said, AM5 will give you DDR5 and PCIe 5 options for some future proofing, but the 5800X3D is still an excellent CPU and would save you some money in the short run. If you go AM4 I wouldn’t bother with anything but the 5800X3D unless you’re on a really tight budget, which doesn’t seem to be the case.

And yes, rebar is a thing now. Improvements vary but it’s there and works.