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[Mr Skrunts]

Been contemplating buying a couple of items towards building myself a new PC (Wont be for a while yet) but the parts I buy can be used in my current PC (Faster/more RAM and a bigger M2 Drive (Gen4))

Added them to the basket + next day delivery.  Found cheaper RAM at another retailer so emailed my supplier and got a price match (Gets me over £18 back).  Then as you do I had a nosy round to see what was on offer, found a kingston USB 3.2 256GB (£36(5 Year warranty)) whist cossidering the USB the buggers have put the carriage price up

[Broomies Mate]

Do you actually have any USB 3.0 ports on your Motherboard?  If not, it's not worth paying the extra for the faster data transfer speeds.

Anyway, Here £40 including next day delivery.

Or a Scandisk Here for £27 delivered.

[Broomies Mate]

Then again, if your Mobo supports Gen4 NVMe, than it will more than likely have USB 3 support.

[STEMO]

What, exactly, do you do with this mega fast stuff?

[Broomies Mate]

What, exactly, do you do with this mega fast stuff?

Niche Porn, at a guess. 

[Mr Skrunts]

Last PC (this one) is now 3 years old. 
Z370/i7 8700K
1060 6gb GPU 
16gb ram
Bluray & Bluray Writer (never writen a disk)
iT was takeing ages for the Z390 to emerge (Extra core support)So built this one.

Saved a few quid during lockdown - cant take it with me, so either a better monitor (but the market still getting better speced (Refresh rates) or keep upgradeing bit by bit.

New system will be Z590 and have Gen 4 M2 Support. (Hopefully x3)(Also aiming for 8 x SATA if poss) Contenders also have WiFi 6 on them and 2.5Ghz Lan.

CPU will be 11th Gen but not out yet, but will support onboard vid till the GPU market settles.

Memory is 3600Mhz, considered 4000/4400Mhz but seems there is no benifit from the extra speed from what I am seeing. (currently 16gb 3200)



But basically doing home work to see whats out there.

Just reading this write up and comparing boards, people posting on forums suggeting that boards are mainly equal (for the BIOS) etc etc, but in this article I have picked up on the different number of VRM's on each board.

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/features/intel-z590-motherboard-and-chipset-overview-45-rocket-lake-boards-detailed/2

Head now spinning and eyes getting sore.


Some of it may be overkill, I have a lot of decent stuff allready Bluray Writer etc 28" 4K monitor.

But would be happy to abandon the upgrade idea if I see a Low Mileage 3.2 Elite with leather, all the toys and 1 owner from new was offered to me. (As long as its not white)

[Mr Skrunts]

What, exactly, do you do with this mega fast stuff?

Niche Porn, at a guess. 

Nah, same story line every time.  She does, he does, turn round, he does, she does. Off for a cuppa, same all over again.  than off for a chat.   Boooooooring.

[Broomies Mate]

Last PC (this one) is now 3 years old. 
Z370/i7 8700K
1060 6gb GPU 
16gb ram
Bluray & Bluray Writer (never writen a disk)
iT was takeing ages for the Z390 to emerge (Extra core support)So built this one.

Saved a few quid during lockdown - cant take it with me, so either a better monitor (but the market still getting better speced (Refresh rates) or keep upgradeing bit by bit.

New system will be Z590 and have Gen 4 M2 Support. (Hopefully x3)(Also aiming for 8 x SATA if poss) Contenders also have WiFi 6 on them and 2.5Ghz Lan.

CPU will be 11th Gen but not out yet, but will support onboard vid till the GPU market settles.

Memory is 3600Mhz, considered 4000/4400Mhz but seems there is no benifit from the extra speed from what I am seeing. (currently 16gb 3200)



But basically doing home work to see whats out there.

Just reading this write up and comparing boards, people posting on forums suggeting that boards are mainly equal (for the BIOS) etc etc, but in this article I have picked up on the different number of VRM's on each board.

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/features/intel-z590-motherboard-and-chipset-overview-45-rocket-lake-boards-detailed/2

Head now spinning and eyes getting sore.

I am an Intel fanboy, and I can't believe I'm saying this..... but seriously consider the later AMD series of Processors.  More cores/threads, cheaper (unless you go Threadripper), and generally seem to be A-OK.

What's your main use for the computer Skruntie?  I'm guessing you game a bit, from the 1060 Graphics Card.  Good luck if you want to upgrade that at the moment!

As for the Mobo.  I've recently been using either MSI or Asus.  My goto a few years ago was Gigabyte, but they are not in the running anymore.

Best bang for buck would be the Asus ROG Maximus XIII..... it doesnt have Gigabit LAN though, which is a shame, but not important if you do everything over WiFi.

If money is no object, then the MSI MEG Z590 GODLIKE is the bogs doo-daa's, although the MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Carbon is a great board also.

[LC0112G]

I built a couple of PC's, one for home one for work during last summer. Both based on ASUS PRO Q470M C/CSM motherboard. No good for overclocking, but does have the all important on-board serial and LPT ports and old school Dsub15 video output :-) One is running an i5-10600K, and the other an i7-10700.

There is no point buying the 'K' version of anything unless you're intending to overclock. They just get hotter, and need bigger CPU fans and more powerful PSUs. I only bought the i5-10600K because it was being offered at the same price as the i5-10600, and the minute I realised I needed a bigger heatsink (K chips don't come with a heatsink!) I got buyers remorse.

The i3/i5 have a maximum memory frequency of 2666, whereas the i7/i9 can use 2933. Again, no point in paying extra for memory faster than your processor can support, unless you're going to overclock. I'd also be cautious of buying memory faster than you really need because you're then relying on the memories SPD definitions to support the speeds you can use. If it doesn't then it'll drop down to an even slower speed, and you'll have to poke about in the bios to get the speed you want.

I've used ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO m.2 PCIe3x4 SSD's - Intel chipsets don't support PCIe-4 yet.

The biggest thing I've discovered is that unless the applications you're running are new enough to exploit the number of cores or threads the processor has, you're just wasting money on more cores. Single threaded apps run on a single thread/core, and won't any run faster if you run them on a multi core processor (excepting the slight improvement in that OS may exploit other cores). What matters for single thread apps is single thread performance. Also, not all cores are equal - typically two or three of them will boost to higher frequencies than the others.

I don't do gaming, so on-board graphics is all I ever use. However, be aware it's almost impossible to get Windows 2K or Win7 to run on anything after Gen-8. 

The 11th gen CPU's when they do come out will have fewer cores than the 10th gen. They're promising faster single core performance, but the multicore performance is only marginally better.

[Mr Skrunts]

Was an AMD for years, in fact still got most of what I have bought, even got an FX8850 system as a back up (Black edition)

This system I have now is fine . . . to a degree.  A new GPU would make a biggest difference.

My biggest issue in backing up/storage.  I have 100's of 1000's high res picture & photos, some on external drives, some in boxes on Hard drives.and multiple copies all over the place from over writting folders.

DVD writing and storage seems have fallen by the way side as builders are not fitting optical drives any more, even windows is supplied on USB pens now.

So Having tried all sorts/combination of drives even the SSHD hybrid type thingys (2 x 6TB seagates) one of which failed with in a week . . . wont touch Seagate at all now (An external Seagate - 1 month old) died on me as well. (I agree with TB at this point, any brand of drive can fail at any time)

Tried a 250Gb M2 Samsumg EVO and was impressed from the start.  Got 1 in the 8850 and the next model up in this PC as the boot drive

Idea now is 2 x Gen 4 (Probaly a 500GB boot drive & a 1 or 2 TB Data drive (I allways move my document wallet to a slave drive)) & then SATA drives as backup drives (Currently 2 (6TB Toshiba & 6TB WD))  Just waiting for the M2's to drop in price.

Just fed up with the External drives, but will probably still have backups for spread sheets etc.

Some of this wont be added for a while,

[Mr Skrunts]

ASRock Z590 Taichi was the Mobo that I was looking at.

I heard that Asrock when they came out were a sub company of Asus.  Never had an issue with them, build possibly about 30 systems for mates and never had an issue.

Had a couple of MSI boards over the years.

Became a Asus fan but Ended being a Gigabyte user, Last one being Aorus Z370, but not hearing brilliant comments on the new ones.

Tried the 7700K overclocked, ran stable, proved its good and run it normally ever since.

Runs nice n cool, only using a 212 Hyper cooling fan

Issues in the past (Various systems)  Once ran 4 ram sticks and found I had heat issues, Tried the same again in a different board with heatsinks fitted on the ram so prefer running 2 sticks these days.

Not bothered about all this RGB stupidity the forums brag about.  Dont mind a bit of activity in the case (I just have the RAM in heart beat mode and nothing else)

Current case (HAF cube ) isnt big enough for the future but I have the full tower version for more drive space

[Mr Skrunts]

AND!!!!!!

If money were no object the I would build this

But use 24 8TB SSD drives and loads of RTX 3090 24GB GPU's and the best spec everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eULFf6F5Ri8

[Mr Skrunts]

I just Love the Mega PC performance to play 3D Tetris.

[Mr Skrunts]

I've used ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO m.2 PCIe3x4 SSD's - Intel chipsets don't support PCIe-4 yet.

Just reading this.

I am so far behind and out of date with todays tech.




https://wccftech.com/z590-motherboards-pcie-gen-4-0-compatibility-intel-rocket-lake-core-i9-i7-i5-cpus/

[Mr Skrunts]

They went from putting delivery costs up next day and 2 day delivery. (Delivery was 2 days in both cases)

Price gone back down & goodies arriving Thurday (Just ordered)

[Marks DTM Calib]

Do NOT use SSD for any media or files you want to keep 

[Mr Skrunts]

Do NOT use SSD for any media or files you want to keep 

Why though? value your view as well others on all things technical.

Personally I dont trust any hard drives, for various reasons.

I dump them on a HD, copy them to SSD to work/sort with and then copy back to a backup drive.

[TheBoy]

AMD processors haven't been ever worth considering until last year.  Despite the specs and synthetic benchmarks, the real life performance has always been lacklustre compared to the equivalent Intel.

They are definitely on a par now though, as Intel have stumbled a bit.

Jury is still out on reliability.  AMD traditionally have woeful reliability - in a professional capacity, I've had 2 Intel CPU failures, and probably around 1000 AMD ones.  However, now they use TMSC foundries, that hopefully is a thing of the past.



SSDs tend to fail catastrophically, for reasons other than wear. No chance of recovery.  A spinner usually gives you plenty of warning, and most data is recoverable.

All consumer grade SSDs are TLC, so lower reliability and lower endurance.  But the speed makes them worthwhile for day to day use.

Any current flash device is not suited to long term storage, and subject to bit flipping, hence use them for fast online storage, but back them up regularly or use a better storage facility for long term storage.

[Mr Skrunts]

Cheers, I seem to be doing the right thing with the drives then.

As for AMD v Intel, that battle will go on for years with point scoring againt each other.  Different benchmarks win points for differnt arguements.

[Broomies Mate]

Cheers, I seem to be doing the right thing with the drives then.

As for AMD v Intel, that battle will go on for years with point scoring againt each other.  Different benchmarks win points for differnt arguements.

Seriously, it'll take Intel at least 3 if not 5 years to come back at AMD.

Still using 14nm compared to 7nm 

I still use Intel, as *most* of what I do (Gaming) is single core intensive...... so the advantages of AMD don't really help.  I occasionally delve back into a bit of graphic design and photo-editing, which my i9 10900k is 'ok' at.

Power consumption for the Intel processors is through the roof (desktop processors) as well, which means higher operating temps and of course, a thirst for a larger power supply.

I do ok with a Corsair HX850w Platinum PSU, but I do use an AIO cooler for the CPU (240mm Radiator) and have 6no 120mm Fans.

Just referring back to LC0112G - Overclocking and Motherboard choices are incredibly important.  Running your RAM with an XMP profile (supported on all OC'ing Mobo's) is a surefire way of getting the maximum performance from the RAM.  OC'ing the CPU it'self.... well, it's free performance (provided you have the cooling capacity for it), so why not?

I don't really see the point in OC'ing GPU's.  Most are OC'd from the factory from the reference models, so I don't tend to spend much time with that..... a quick 125% on Core Clock, 500MHz on Memory Clock and that'll ding-dang-do.

[Mr Skrunts]

Ooooo..3 items in the order

2 x RAM & 1 x M.2. been dispatched . .so looking good so far . . .mmmm, just noticed. YODEL is delivering it.

USB pen awaiting dispatch . . . lets see who they send that which.




Interesting the Cash back (Pricematch) from the RAM becomes a credit towards the next order (Allways been like this(with 3 months to use it)) So added a 1TB 2.5inch HD to the basket, same higher delivery price as yesterday.  Wonder if they change that?

[Mr Skrunts]

Ok, so got interested in all the replies, and came to the conclustion that the current system is OK (Mobo & CPU wise)

So currently about to get double the ram 16GB to 32GB

250GB M2 EVO upgrade to 1TB Gen 4 M.2

Allways have a treat for my birthday (no one else gets me anything)

Next treat is a GPU upgrade and a bigger Monitor me thinks.

[LC0112G]

Just referring back to LC0112G - Overclocking and Motherboard choices are incredibly important.  Running your RAM with an XMP profile (supported on all OC'ing Mobo's) is a surefire way of getting the maximum performance from the RAM.  OC'ing the CPU it'self.... well, it's free performance (provided you have the cooling capacity for it), so why not?

I wanted on-board LPT, Serial, Gigabit Ethernet, VGA DSub15 and VGA HDMI. I also like slimline microATX cases, which need SFX PSU's and they top out at 500W. Few of the gaming and overclocking MOBO's have all that, and they tend to be 'kin expensive too.

I rarely buy top of the line anything unless it's as cheap as the alternatives or there is a significant performance benefit (significant to me is 50%+).

The most CPU intensive stuff I do is compiling Xilinx FPGA code under Vivado. A 'simple' design might take 2-5 minutes. Overclocking by a few percent might shave a few seconds off, but the extra cost of a K processor, and power supply, and fan, just isn't worth it IMV. Some bits of Vivado are multithread capable, but lots of it runs single threaded. If I run the same design on the 10600K and the 10700, there is virtually no difference between the run times (perhaps a second or two), so extra cores or hyper-threading have virtually no effect.

Compiling code on Visual Studio 6 is blisteringly fast. Visual Studio 2019 less fast - so much for improvement!  Texas Code Composer 3, Microchip MPLAB, Atmel Studio and a few Ethernet/USB utilities and I'm happy. Still miss FDISK though :-)

[Mr Skrunts]

I spend a lot of my time on spread sheets and allthough I have a 28" 4K monitor I allways run it 1440 as it feels more comfortable on my eyes (increased to font % res a tad as well)

So today being nosy I see that Asus are making a 360 Hz Monitor (sadly only 24.5") so typical me off I went looking for an upgrade (32" min) and abetter refresh rat than mine (144Hz) seems to be the favourite choice of buyers))

Found this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07VV59NVK/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza

Which was £899 this after noon  . . . now trying to imagine how it will look on my desk . . . but think its toooo big.

[Mr Skrunts]

So just uped mine from

1440@60hz
to
1600@60Hz

Gained a few rows on a spread sheet, no extra eye strain.

Me thinhs bigger 4K monitor is on the shopping list.

[LC0112G]

I bought a 32" 4k monitor a few years back, and found it unusable. If you sit close enough to use the resolution you get neck ache looking up and down the screen. If you sit far enough away to see all the screen at once then you need to increase the font size to read anything.

I much prefer using two 24" 1920 monitors side by side. Not running games so refresh rate largely irrelevant as long as it's >= 60Hz. Two screens also means I can run my DOS PCB design software on one (using DOSBox), and have device data sheets open on the other. You can get wrap around/letterbox type monitors, but they're expensive and what's the point if you can just use two cheap 1920 monitors.

[Mr Skrunts]

I am sat 50" from my 28" screen at the moment. (Glasses to screen)

If I upgrade then the distance will be greater as I will be changeing what the monitor stands on.

[Mr Skrunts]

Part 1 of 2 has arrived.


Parcel status
Your driver is currently making stop Number 19 of 102.
*This parcel requires a signature
Estimated time due
08:45 - 10:45
Stops before you

No signiture and very limitied English repeated my name 3 times to the point I thought he was deaf and I need to shout back at him.

Nice thick piece of cardboard to recycle - such a waste.

[TheBoy]

As for AMD v Intel, that battle will go on for years with point scoring againt each other.  Different benchmarks win points for differnt arguements.

Up to a couple of years ago, there has been no battle since the early 90s, when AMDs were exactly clones of the Intel part.  Nothing they have done has come close to Intel's equivalent in real world.

However, Intel are now around 18 months behind, having stumbled with fabrication issues, and the extra performance hits due to all the side channel stuff.

Now they have somebody useful in charge, I'm sure they will come back strong. But they have a bit of catching up to do....    ...which is good, because it means they are offering deep discounts on some* to distributors


*not that many, as they are still having supply shortages of many desktop and laptop parts.

[TheBoy]

That said, my main desktop is an Ivy Bridge i5, and is plenty "good enough".  The other "desktop" I have in this room is a 7th gen i7, 32Gb Intel NUC. But I don't use that much, just because of which desk its on.

Heaviest thing I run on the desktops is Davinci Resolve...   ...and I tend to use the crappy Mac for that (i7, 16Gb, but has an extra discrete GPU), and the extra graphics power makes it encode quicker.

If I want to play games, thats why the dear lord invented seXbox and gaystations.

[Marks DTM Calib]

Do NOT use SSD for any media or files you want to keep 

Why though? value your view as well others on all things technical.

Personally I dont trust any hard drives, for various reasons.

I dump them on a HD, copy them to SSD to work/sort with and then copy back to a backup drive.

Flash, by the very nature of its design, is forgetful...........and bits will begin to flip from the second data is written.

To get around this, the suppliers fit controllers to interface to the flash (there is never direct access to the flash chips) which adds extra functionality to reduce this impact. This includes error correction and wear levelling (as flash also get worse every time you write to it), it also splits the part in blocks, you never write to bytes, so you might only update a 32bit line, but a whole block gets read and written......and every time you write you write to two blocks......one being the data and the other the FAT.

But, what happens is that over time more and more bits flip, and there reaches a point where the error correction falls over and a block is lost.......game over for that file.......and the whole partition if its the FAT table.

So the way I drive the use of flash in products is based on a few rules:

1) Work on the basis you never write to it, if you do, limit it to once a minute (the typical life is 800k writes per block....very easy to hit this if not careful)
2) If you need to write to it regularly then use a separate replaceable part
3) Ensure you have AT LEAST 25% spare capacity at all times to allow for better wear levelling
4) If you can, find a part that supports static wear levelling (Silicon Systems had the Pats on this, they got gobbled by Western Digital)

[Mr Skrunts]

I was AMD all the way up to this PC.

Last one was AM3+ 8950 which I still have (as well as the rest of them) and had my 1060 in it. I am not a massive (intence gamer) but the PC did well a coped with most things.

Then I aquired a 2nd hand I7 4790K ASUS RANGER Z97 and added 16GB 1833Mhz and again another 1060, being rather impressed with the Z97 I went on to build the current i7 8900k and took the 1060 out of the 8950.

The PC has expanded since I built it 3 years ago ( a to my self birthday pressie (couldnt find a low mileage Elite for that years pressie)) it had the 250GB M2,& 4TB drive added, then a 6TB was added and the 4TB Got changed to a 6TB as you do and the old parts got fitted in other PCs as a backup.  I hate people coming to the house so never sell any of it.

But now its just boredom, I reckon I have £2K+ invested in this PC and if I build an ultimate PC it would cost more than my 1st house did.

So instead of a new CPU/Mobo I ended up with a bigger faster M2 and doubled the RAM

Next year.  GPU & Monitor upgrade.

It should make my 3D Tetris rock

[Mr Skrunts]

Do NOT use SSD for any media or files you want to keep 

Why though? value your view as well others on all things technical.

Personally I dont trust any hard drives, for various reasons.

I dump them on a HD, copy them to SSD to work/sort with and then copy back to a backup drive.

Flash, by the very nature of its design, is forgetful...........and bits will begin to flip from the second data is written.

To get around this, the suppliers fit controllers to interface to the flash (there is never direct access to the flash chips) which adds extra functionality to reduce this impact. This includes error correction and wear levelling (as flash also get worse every time you write to it), it also splits the part in blocks, you never write to bytes, so you might only update a 32bit line, but a whole block gets read and written......and every time you write you write to two blocks......one being the data and the other the FAT.

But, what happens is that over time more and more bits flip, and there reaches a point where the error correction falls over and a block is lost.......game over for that file.......and the whole partition if its the FAT table.

So the way I drive the use of flash in products is based on a few rules:

1) Work on the basis you never write to it, if you do, limit it to once a minute (the typical life is 800k writes per block....very easy to hit this if not careful)
2) If you need to write to it regularly then use a separate replaceable part
3) Ensure you have AT LEAST 25% spare capacity at all times to allow for better wear levelling
4) If you can, find a part that supports static wear levelling (Silicon Systems had the Pats on this, they got gobbled by Western Digital)

Thats interesting and I knew nothing of it.  As they are are relativly new components I hadnt put 100% trust in them yet, but then again I am the same with the larger HDD's

The other thing I noted was the capacity options. 250, 500, 1TB, 2,4, then 8TB when I saw this I wondered if they were using data compression and I havent trusted that since I compressed files under Win95 and lost the lot.

Like they say, we learn something new every day, today I learnt loads.  Thankyou

[Marks DTM Calib]

I have been working with it since the early 00s, I even got a free trip to Bombay to explain to the head of Reliance Telecom why their network was killing it in months...........and how we were changing the management of it to address this.

More recently, Tesla are having to replace stacks of modules due to flash wear out, it hit Cisco to on their routers......and many others!

Dashcams are a great example, the flash does not last more than a few years.

It is good at only one thing, fast access times and possibly read also, its inferior in every other way

[Mr Skrunts]

Makes sence regards SDCards/dash cams.  Odd 1 or 2 of mine in the past have been a bit random.

[TheBoy]

and there reaches a point where the error correction falls over and a block is lost.......game over for that file.......and the whole partition if its the FAT table.

To clarify for others, a "block" in this case may not (very likely wont) match a "block" that the OS sees the storage as. So am unreadable NAND block might cover several files.  Or more critical data.

In addition, SSDs and similar do background tasks to clean up behind them, and these can add wear.  Crucial drives of yesteryear were particularly bad at self destruction themselves during this, or suffering backlogs in this process that would crash the OS.


OOF ran for a while with both its webserver and it database on SSDs - Sandisk Ultra II 960Gb, couldn't afford enterprise grade ones - very successfully, but the wear rate was high as the webserver logs requests to its disks, and the database obviously hammers its disks.

[TheBoy]

Tesla are having to replace stacks of modules due to flash wear out, it hit Cisco to on their routers......and many others!

Tesla seem to have this issue in their overgrown ipads intotainment systems, and tried to hide it with firmwares too late in the day to reduce writes.

I'm surprised you get Cisco kit to last long enough without self destructing, to suffer flash issues .  Which reminds me, I need to get down to Londonium again to replace more bits in one...   ...or I could open the window, and chuck it in the river

[TheBoy]

I was AMD all the way up to this PC.

Last one was AM3+ 8950 which I still have (as well as the rest of them) and had my 1060 in it. I am not a massive (intence gamer) but the PC did well a coped with most things.

Then I aquired a 2nd hand I7 4790K ASUS RANGER Z97 and added 16GB 1833Mhz and again another 1060, being rather impressed with the Z97 I went on to build the current i7 8900k and took the 1060 out of the 8950.

The PC has expanded since I built it 3 years ago ( a to my self birthday pressie (couldnt find a low mileage Elite for that years pressie)) it had the 250GB M2,& 4TB drive added, then a 6TB was added and the 4TB Got changed to a 6TB as you do and the old parts got fitted in other PCs as a backup.  I hate people coming to the house so never sell any of it.

But now its just boredom, I reckon I have £2K+ invested in this PC and if I build an ultimate PC it would cost more than my 1st house did.

So instead of a new CPU/Mobo I ended up with a bigger faster M2 and doubled the RAM

Next year.  GPU & Monitor upgrade.

It should make my 3D Tetris rock

I used to stay cutting edge on PCs, though was lucky enough to always be able to offload my cast-off parts for more than what I paid for them.  My PCs were always being upgraded, to the point that I was having to replace the cases due to the (crap) screw holes stripping.

One day, probably around the Core Duo era, it just dawned on me, I just didn't need to, and what I had would last fine.

Nowadays, a bad case of CBA plus a sensitivity to fan noise, means I just skip dive for cast-off branded ones .  Even then, normally I still suffer CBA, and stick with what I have

[TheBoy]

LOL, just looked up the dell service tag of the PC on this desk....

Vostro 460
Shipped 3rd June 2011

Looks like it must have been one from one of Bro's shops, looking at shipping details


Also, I was wrong about the CPU, its not Ivy Bridge, its an i5-2400, which makes it a generation earlier, Sandy Bridge.

[Mr Skrunts]

All interesting stuff.

So out of interest what does the OOF server system consist of, have allways wondered what has kept us all online over the years.  I know it has kept you busy at times doing updates etc.

i have visions in my head of what it looks like.

[LC0112G]

My recent upgrade to 10600K/10700 was the first since about 2015. Until lockdown 1 I was running Intel core 2 duo with a Q9650 which is a quad core.  The Q9650 was an upgrade from a T9500 built in 2010 ish. However Win2K only supports 2 cores :-(

I eventually admitted defeat and went for the recent builds. They're probably 3-4 times faster for the programs I run. As far as I can tell about half of that is due to CPU speed improvements, and half to CPU core streamlining/instruction parrallism. However, I have basically skipped 10 generations of i3/5/7/9 processors.

I just don't see the point in changing everything every year just to get a 5-10% speed increase. Intel haven't even released the 11th gen stuff yet, but they appear to be saying the 12th gen stuff is due before Christmas. Barking.

[TheBoy]

All interesting stuff.

So out of interest what does the OOF server system consist of, have allways wondered what has kept us all online over the years.  I know it has kept you busy at times doing updates etc.

i have visions in my head of what it looks like.

No, the hardware is proper server hardware, currently Proliants, linked via 10Gb switches. Although in line with everything else in the last 15 years, the actual servers that make up OOF are all virtualised...   ...apart from the first 3 weeks when it ran on Server Unlimited's shite shared hosting platform, OOF has always been virtual.

[TheBoy]

However Win2K only supports 2 cores :-(

Despite its exceptional stability, W2K Pro stopped getting updates in 2010.  So running it is brave


That said, I came across a W2K Server probably last year, maybe the year before, still processing logons merrily, and had been forgotten about.  It only got found when I was asked to look at why they were having trouble installing an application because the forest was incompatible, and we finally discovered this old beast acting as a DC

[LC0112G]

However Win2K only supports 2 cores :-(

Despite its exceptional stability, W2K Pro stopped getting updates in 2010.  So running it is brave

I know, but persuading our customer that replacing Win2K (and NT4) stuff because there may be security issues takes some doing. The customer?  MOD 

That said, many of the security issues appear to revolve around web browsers, java, scripts etc. Win2K doesn't support anything past IE6 so isn't prone to those exploits because it never supported any of it in the first place.

[TheBoy]

However Win2K only supports 2 cores :-(

Despite its exceptional stability, W2K Pro stopped getting updates in 2010.  So running it is brave

I know, but persuading our customer that replacing Win2K (and NT4) stuff because there may be security issues takes some doing. The customer?  MOD 

That said, many of the security issues appear to revolve around web browsers, java, scripts etc. Win2K doesn't support anything past IE6 so isn't prone to those exploits because it never supported any of it in the first place.

As soon as you mentioned NT4, I knew you were going to say one of the armed services .

The kernel has flaws, older versions of SMB are flawed, and there are loads of others.  So you rely entirely on perimeter defences....


...in Cov-ID terms, think of it as if you can keep it out of the country, you're fine. But once its here, it'll infect everything.