[ale] upgrading desktop

Bob bobabc at bellsouth.net
Sun Aug 2 14:12:14 EDT 2020



Hi J.D.,


On 2020-07-29 5:53 p.m., DJ-Pfulio via Ale wrote:
> On 7/29/20 9:35 AM, Bob via Ale wrote:
>> Hi Jim,
>>
>> Both you and J.D. are suggesting that I not bother putting more memory 
>> in my current system, so I'll scrap that idea.  Both of you prefer an 
>> AMD cpu for the desktop.
> 
> AMD Ryzen has a huge cost advantage. Check the passmarks before doing 
> any sorts of upgrades. Considering that for $140, you can get a 17K 
> passmark CPU, perhaps spending $80 on upgrades really isn't a good idea? 

You and Jim have convinced me not to bother upgrading memory.


> We each have different cutoffs for spending.  Your current system is a 
> little over 4K passmarks, not bad for surfing. You certainly wouldn't be 
> unhappy. For non-gamers, more threads is usually a good thing. For 
> gamers, faster threads - which Intel CPUs provide - are a good thing.

I'm not a gamer.

> 
> I prefer Intel for laptops, but that could just be ignorance from always 
> using Intel and getting fantastic battery life. AMD was bad on batteries 
> for a very long time. If that isn't the situation anymore, then it 
> probably doesn't matter provided the laptop battery life meets your needs.
> 
> Desktops don't have batteries. The change from a 125W to a 65W CPU made 
> a huge difference in my monthly power bill. I leave them on 24/7.

This is something that I hadn't thought about.  I checked; my old cpu is 
77W, so it's not quite as good as the 65W Ryzen, but 77W doesn't sound 
too bad.  Also, the 77W on my old desktop includes integrated graphics, 
while the 65W Ryzen would need a gpu if I'm not mistaken.

> 
>> You're suggesting purchasing a 2 year old, off-lease machine with an
>>  AMD cpu and DDR4 memory.  Your philosophy with computers sounds 
>> similar to mine about cars.  I prefer to buy a car that's a couple of
>> years old, and then drive it until
> 
> I like the 2 yr old, off-lease purchase, if you want a faster system and 
> cannot upgrade due to physical case limitations. If the case is an ATX 
> or miniATX, then I would get that MB+CPU deal from the link already 
> posted. The Core i5 is an LGA1155. If you can find a faster CPU with the 
> same socket for $20, that could be useful. A quick search didn't find 
> any cheap enough to bother.  The way to a faster machine is either
> 
> a) New MB + new CPU + new RAM + new SSD - probably $270 all in for a 
> system about 4x faster
>    or
> b) New SSD

I think I'll try b) first.

> 
> Since you already have 8G of RAM, there really is little more to be done 
> unless you turn down the "cheese" and GPU fancy stuff.  More RAM is 
> unlikely to make things faster, but getting a handle on RAM abusing 
> programs may.  

I have a tendency to accumulate too many tabs in firefox.  I need to get 
better about not doing that.

> I think you have way, way, way too much swap. For a 
> desktop, 4.1G is the optimal amount of swap. The old 1990s idea that 2x 
> RAM hasn't made sense in decades.

I didn't realize that I had so much swap space.  Part of the problem is 
that when I installed a new OS alongside an existing OS, I was assuming 
that the new OS needed it's own swap space.  Since both 8G swap spaces 
seem to be being used, I gather that my assumption was incorrect.  I 
gather that all of the swap space is available to whichever OS is running.

Since I have sufficient empty disk space, I'm assuming that the extra 
swap space is not causing any harm currently.  When I check, the amount 
of swap space being used seems to be either 0 or negligible.

> 
> I'm do not like the super tiny, yet expensive, systems.  If you can live 
> with a "boot box" sized system (about half of a mid-tower case), then 
> you aren't limited nearly as much for upgrades in the future, as a NUC 
> or microITX would limit. No need for external DVD drives, etc.  Plus, 
> they aren't more expensive, unlike a NUC, which tends to be 2-3x more 
> costly than the same performance from a midtower system.
> 
> A steel midtower case, used, should be next to free.  People throw those 
> out for recycling.  I have back when I had too many around. I kept the 
> specifically purchased midtower cases and trashed the proprietary 
> "brand" cases because they were proprietary and would case issues with 
> future upgrades. Most of my ATX cases are over 15 yrs old. I bought one 
> in 1999, I'm positive.


> 
>> J.D. is suggesting replacing cpu and motherboard provided I have a 
>> decent case.  If I don't have a decent case, I think he's suggesting
>>  building a new desktop.  Building a desktop sounds intriguing since
>>  I've never done that; however, I think I should wait on a project 
>> like that until I have more free time.
> 
> Building a new desktop (case) wasn't suggested, but they aren't hard to 
> do. Usually take just about 30 - 45 minutes with a screw driver. These 
> days, all the connections are key'd so plugging things in wrong can't 
> happen.  With the Ryzen 5s, the CPU fan comes with it and already has 
> thermal paste. If you can do legos, you can assemble a PC.

I will think about this for my next computer.  My current computer still 
seems to have some life left---knock on wood.

> 
>> Both of you like having an ssd.   I'll look into that.  At least one
>>  of you doesn't think it's that important to keep directories that are 
>> frequently read from and written to off of the ssd, correct?
> 
> Read doesn't matter. It is all about writes.  On my video processing 
> system, I specifically don't use the SSD for that work.  It has a normal 
> HDD - spinning rust disk.

In the near future, I will need to be recording a lot of audio and 
video.  I don't plan on doing much, if any, editing; however, it sounds 
like I should ensure that the video is being written to an HDD if I do 
add an SSD.

> 
> After attending SELF conference and listening to a few storage vendors 
> talk, it seems that SSDs just don't fail often enough that RAID1 is 
> necessary, unless it is absolutely business critical to prevent downtime 
> and minimize data loss.  I don't use RAID for any of my SSDs.  Stuff 
> that used to run on RAID1 with spinning disks were moved to an SSD 
> without RAID.  I do have backup religion.  Daily, automatic, "pulled", 
> versioned, backups. I'm willing to have a day of downtime if storage fails.

Thank; you for the advice,

--Bob

> 
> 
<snip>


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