Re: seeking desktop hardware recommendation

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 at 14:42, Robert Swindells <rjs%fdy2.co.uk@localhost> wrote:
>
> Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost> wrote:
> > My system has a 2010 4-core CPU, 24G RAM and aside from being worried
> > about thermal issues, my only real complaint is that I'd like more CPU.
> > Once upgrading of course I want more RAM, but I'm not really bothered by
> > 24G right now.  So:
>
> I upgraded a similar vintage desktop to your one a couple of months ago,
> a capacitor looked to have blown on the motherboard and it wouldn't
> power up. I could have just tried buying a used motherboard but took the
> opportunity to upgrade.

Looks like another note in favour of AMD boxes. I have a (2020?) box
used for gaming and I just test booted a netbsd-10 USB key on it, it
came up with display, disks & network working.
- MSI B550M-A Pro
- AMD Ryzen 5 5500
- Radeon RX 5700 XT
- M2 & SATA SSD

Would recommend a board with 4 DIMM slots, so you can put in 2*32GB
now and another pair later. Also there are boards with 2 or even 3 M2
slots, which opens up more options

I was in the area as I needed to test if
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08DFK4LZ7 would attach six SATA disks to
a single pci-e card with netbsd (related news, it seems to work fine
for initial testing, will leave it being busy overnight), as I'm about
to replace my rather aged Dell T320 with its current 9x8TB spinning
rust.

In that area I'm tending towards an Intel build with:
- Antec P101 Silent Tower (quiet and 8x3.5 + 1x5.25 + 2x2.5" bays)
- PCIE 4X 6 port SATA card (ASM1166 chipset)
- "be quiet!" Dark Power 13, plus 80 titanium 750 W PSU (this is going
to run 24/7 so high efficiency)
- Intel Core i5-13500 (seems the right price/performance point)
- Something like the ASUS PRIME B660-PLUS D4 Intel B660 LGA 1700 AT -
I know the ethernet is unlikely to work, but 4 * DIMM slots, 3 * M2
slots, 4 * SATA, 2 * PCIe x16 and 2 * PCIe x1 is tempting...

I'll also make a note in favour of refurb Dell OptiPlex and similar.
They are absolutely dull enough to send you to sleep just looking at
them, but I've bought a few over the years for "Just need a box to sit
there and be a PC" and they really do that well. The SFF models tend
to be quite tight inside, but the optical drive can be swapped out for
another disk. I'd recommend looking up the CPU and in particular
generation (an older i7 can be much slower than a more recent i3 :)
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare is a simple enough way to get a
reasonable idea for comparing (helpfully provides single core vs
overall numbers)

David