[ale] upgrading desktop

Mon Aug 10 13:31:08 EDT 2020

A couple more questions relating to building a desktop.

1)  My wife is sensitive to noise, and we're often working in the same 
office at home.  She has mentioned that my current=old desktop is noisy. 
  Even though I don't notice it unless I think about it, I have to agree.

When building a new desktop, what things can/should I do to keep it 
reasonably quiet?

2)  I have to record several hours of video each week.  I'm using 
obs-studio, and I think obs-studio has suggested a lower resolution due 
to the weak cpu.

For the new desktop I'm leaning towards a cheap graphics card as 
suggested by several along with the ryzen 5 3600 on a B450 motherboard. 
(I'm not interested in gaming.)  Is the cheap graphics card still a 
reasonable choice if I have to record video?

BTW, something along the following is what I'm leaning towards building now:

>> I tend to think the most "bang for the buck" system today (in my mind)
>> would be a B450 motherboard with a Ryzen 5 3600, 16G RAM at about 3200 or
>> faster, and I would go for an NVMe M.2 SSD at around 500G.  You can use a
>> cheap video card (about $35) and the case and power supply as your budget
>> and preference dictates.  Power supplies and cases are a bit more expensive
>> these days, thanks to COVID-challenged supplies, but memory, ssd's and CPUs
>> are relatively cheap.  This system would cost you about $550-600 or so,
>> depending on your choices.  One example:
>> https://pcpartpicker.com/user/deepbsd/saved/#view=6tqG3C

--Bob

On 2020-08-02 10:45 p.m., David Jackson wrote:
> I tend to build a lot of systems, so my perspective is influenced by this
> bias.  But I'm unclear about your priorities.
> 
> If you were doing something demanding (say rendering videos or doing heavy
> computation or competitive gaming or whatever), you would be well beyond a
> 3rd gen i5 cpu.  Since 3rd gen Intel level of tech seems to suit you fine,
> it seems to me your performance requirements are rather low.  Another thing
> I'm curious about is how much change are you willing to tolerate.  Would a
> lot of added performance be a bad thing or a good thing?
> 
> I think you might be missing how easy it would be to get a *massive*
> performance upgrade with a relatively slight effort or cost by upgrading
> all your whole architecture.  A LOT has changed since 3rd gen Intel was
> current.  For about the cost in difficulty and dollars in upgrading your
> 3rd gen architecture, you could probably find a more current Ryzen system
> that would give this massive upgrade.   What has changed a lot very
> recently is that AMD Ryzen normally beats Intel in terms of performance per
> dollar (bang for the buck) nowadays.  (I'm trying to keep it simple here.)
> And the surrounding architecture has massively improved as well.  Current
> gen platforms are much more efficient and performant overall than a 3rd gen
> i5 was.
> 
> If you really prefer to "tough it out" on your current architecture, I
> would have to infer that your priority has more to do with "optimizing the
> last electron out of a potato" as I call it.  There's a certain level of
> pride geeks sometimes get over "doing the most with the least" technology.
> If that's you, then nevermind.  But it would help to know that "getting the
> last ounce of performance out of your potato" is in fact a priority.  If
> that's true, there are other layers of complexity that might be of
> interest, such as over clocking and water cooling, but cost and complexity
> quickly become factors here.  But if that seemed attractive to you, my
> guess is your questions would have been very different.
> 
> I tend to think the most "bang for the buck" system today (in my mind)
> would be a B450 motherboard with a Ryzen 5 3600, 16G RAM at about 3200 or
> faster, and I would go for an NVMe M.2 SSD at around 500G.  You can use a
> cheap video card (about $35) and the case and power supply as your budget
> and preference dictates.  Power supplies and cases are a bit more expensive
> these days, thanks to COVID-challenged supplies, but memory, ssd's and CPUs
> are relatively cheap.  This system would cost you about $550-600 or so,
> depending on your choices.  One example:
> https://pcpartpicker.com/user/deepbsd/saved/#view=6tqG3C
> I wager this system would make you grin each time you sit down at your PC.
> I'd also wager that the "grin factor" would quickly offset the dollar
> damage.
> 
> I would imagine your existing system might fetch $100 on ebay, possibly?
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 12:16 PM Bob via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> Charles has me thinking about upgrading my 8 year old lenovo desktop.
>> I'm thinking of increasing memory and installing an ssd.
>>
>> I don't know much about hardware, so I'm hoping some of you might give
>> me some advice and maybe keep me from doing something stupid.  I'm not a
>> gamer, so that might make things simpler.
>>
>> 1)  Memory.  Currently, there are  two 4 GB ddr3 1600 memory modules in
>> the two memory slots.  There is no graphics card in my desktop and the
>> integrated graphics uses some of the memory.  I can upgrade to two 8 gb
>> ddr3l 1600.  According to crucial.com, the crucial 16gb kit (2 x 8GB)
>> ddr3l-1600 udimm are compatible.
>>
>> I believe my motherboard can use either ddr3 or ddr3l.  Is there an
>> advantage of one over the other?
>>
>> (The power supply unit has been fine, but it's only 280 watts.  I don't
>> know if that would affect the above choice or not.)
>>
>> Microcenter has a variety of brands:  Neo Forza, G. skills ripjaw,
>> crucial, ....  Are there brands to avoid?  Are there brands that you'd
>> recommend?
>>
>>
>> 2)  ssd.  This seems more complicated.
>>
>> There are 4 empty pci express slots---one is x16 and the others x1.  I
>> do not believe that the motherboard supports pcie ssd.  The motherboard
>> does not have mSATA or m.2 slots.  So pcie ssd seems to be impossible.
>> (I don't know what I'd ever use these slots for.)
>>
>> The chipset on the motherboard only supports SATA at 3.0 gb/s.  There
>> are 3 SATA ports and one e-SATA port.  (There has been no update to the
>> bios/uefi firmware.)
>>
>> One SATA port is connected to the optical drive, and the other two SATA
>> ports are connected to the two 1TB HDDs Both drives have plenty of free
>> space.
>>
>> I don't know why I get slightly different info for the following.  When
>> I execute "sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep SATA", the result is:
>>
>>          Transport:          Serial, SATA Rev 3.0
>>
>> but on /dev/sdb, the result is:
>>
>> Transport:          Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5,
>> SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0
>>
>> The e-SATA port is connected to a usm hot-swappable bay where I'm
>> supposed to be able to plug in a portable SATA drive.  The connector is
>> supposed to be a standard SATA connector.  I have never used this bay so
>> far.
>>
>> It seems like I could either purchase an external SATA ssd and plug it
>> into the bay.  I don't know if I would have troubles booting from that
>> drive.
>>
>> OTOH, I could remove one of the HDDs and put the SSD into either
>> /dev/sda or /dev/sdb.  Presumably, I could put the HDD that was removed
>> into an enclosure allowing it to be placed into the swappable bay on the
>> rare occasions that it was needed.
>>
>> 1)  Does it seem better to remove an HDD and put the ssd into that space
>> vs. putting the ssd into the swappable bay?  Does it make a difference
>> if the ssd is put into the drive where /dev/sda is or /dev/sdb?
>>
>> 2)  Any suggestions on how large the ssd should be?
>>
>> 3)  Are there brands to avoid or brands that you would recommend?
>>
>> --Bob
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> 