You running Power architecture still?

gdjacobs wrote:

You running Power architecture still?

Mac OS X 10.8.5. Has the last Firefox available for the OS installed (48), and Vivaldi 1.0 is the most up-to-date browser I have. SSL and various system tools were upgraded using Homebrew.

I dread upgrading the machine to later Mac OS versions because it has a power management-related issue and I have some software that won't work on newer Mac OSes. 😢

That said, it's six years old now, so I'm getting closer to the time to replace it, meaning it kinda does not matter...

Did some upgrading and reconfiguring on mine and my son's PCs this weekend. I came into a couple of free sticks of DDR3, so we both got memory upgrades, I swapped our CPUs (details below), and I added a couple of case fans and upgraded my son's CPU HSF.
Before specs:
mine: HP EliteDesk with i5-4590, 8GB (4x2GB), GTX 750 Ti
son's: self-built i5-4570s, 8GB (2x4GB), GTX 1060 6GB

First things first. My 4590 is ~5% faster than his 4570s and my system is already GPU bottlenecked, while his system is slightly CPU bottlenecked. Plus, my HP has a lower wattage PSU, so it made sense to put the slightly slower, more power efficient i5 into my system. Now I'm slightly less GPU bottlenecked while he's slightly less CPU bottlenecked (each by a couple percent 🤣).

Next...how to distribute the free RAM sticks I got (1x8GB, 1x4GB). Either way, I'm likely to break dual-channel in one or both systems, but I knew the performance penalty would be negligible. First, I tested by putting 14GB into my system and loaded it up as much as I ever realistically do...with a dozen or so browser tabs open, a few PDFs, and some spreadsheets, and playing the most memory hungry game I have (Doom 2016), the system was using about 9GB. Whereas, my son has more browser tabs open, plus Discord, Steam chat, and Razer Chroma bloatware in addition to playing much more demanding games. I decided on giving myself 12GB (2x4, 2x2) and my son 16GB (1x8, 1x4, 2x2). Plus, I have an SSD while he has a spinning boot drive, so he could use all the RAM he could get to minimize disk accesses.

Bonus upgrades: I'd forgotten about the CoolerMaster TX3 cooler I had in my old XP rig, and that it was adjustable from socket 775 to 1155. My HP already had a better-than-stock cooler while my son was using a stock Intel HSF. Once I put that in his system, his CPU gaming temps dropped from max observed 65c to 50c. Plus, I added a couple of large, low RPM exhaust fans to his case.

after specs:
mine: i5-4570s, 12GB, GTX 750 Ti
son's: i5-4590, 16GB, GTX 1060 6GB

Son's PC does run games noticeably smoother (probably more due to reduced swapping due to 16GB than anything else) and he's happy as a clam. I've got a nice RAM buffer too so I don't have to shut down the browser when running memory intensive games. Plus, my games don't run any slower due to the GPU bottleneck, and I have a slighly more power efficient system.

Mission accomplished.

SOON. Be scared.

Got the new board and RAM/HDD/Wireless card cover for my ASUS X54C laptop, installed the motherboard with the Celeron CPU and it works once again. Waiting for the Core i5-2450M processor, keyboard, screws, and heatsink/fan combo to come in the mail so I can have a faster boot time over the Celeron processor.

Got the keyboard, heatsink fan, Core i5-2450M, and the HDD/RAM/Wireless card cover installed on my ASUS X54C and it's working once again. 4-core power!

You mean 2 core power with HT.

I finally migrated my home server's storage to ZFS. Before I was using Linux's md RAID6 with luks/device mapper and LVM and ext4. What a pain to have all of those layers. Now that ZFS on Linux has encryption, and has had compression for a while, it was time to switch.

There was only one hiccup with the recordsize on the VM dataset, but that was fixed and it performs better than the GPL alternative. The slog and cache are on an Optane module. The virtual machine storage and MySQL database performance improvements are night and day. The long delays with databases that sync their data to the RAID6 are over and slow other operations down are over.

I couldn't wait for BTRFS anymore. ZFS is the answer. I highly recommend it.

Swapped a Phenom iix6 and 4gb of DDR3 1866 out for a FX 8120 and 8gb of DDR3 1333 in a friend's pc. Also a 2gb HD6970 for a 4gb RX 560 Gigabyte OC edition. Pretty decent performance so far. Really nice and snappy! Now all he needs is to add a SSD to his 500gb WD Green. This system is officially Esports ready 😉

FuzzyLogic wrote:

I finally migrated my home server's storage to ZFS. Before I was using Linux's md RAID6 with luks/device mapper and LVM and ext4. What a pain to have all of those layers. Now that ZFS on Linux has encryption, and has had compression for a while, it was time to switch.

There was only one hiccup with the recordsize on the VM dataset, but that was fixed and it performs better than the GPL alternative. The slog and cache are on an Optane module. The virtual machine storage and MySQL database performance improvements are night and day. The long delays with databases that sync their data to the RAID6 are over and slow other operations down are over.

I couldn't wait for BTRFS anymore. ZFS is the answer. I highly recommend it.

is there a specific reason why You use it on linux on not solaris/BSD where its allegedly far more mature?
how much resources does ZFS eat away? i believe especially ram is gulped up by zfs like cookies (i used it on 1 gig when it was very fresh and it was a timelapse); in what form do You share that storage space?

Received a new battery and a good used Nexus 7 2012 board from eBay and installed them into my tablet. When I booted it up for the first time in a week or so, I checked to see if the board had a 16GB storage after setting up the tablet. Upon looking at the storage settings, it showed that the storage was 32GB, which is more than what I expected, however, I'm happy to have 4x more storage than the old 8GB board. Altogether, it was $43.04 for both the battery (new with the tools to open the tablet, removing the board, and other stuff: $12.06) and for the board: $30.98 ($25.99 + $4.99 S&H). Not a bad price and I'm going to install a custom ROM on there.

mrau wrote:

is there a specific reason why You use it on linux on not solaris/BSD where its allegedly far more mature?
how much resources does ZFS eat away? i believe especially ram is gulped up by zfs like cookies (i used it on 1 gig when it was very fresh and it was a timelapse); in what form do You share that storage space?

Sorry I missed your question last month. Yes, the reason I use Linux is for QEMU and support and documentation. It's easier getting things to work on it. As for ZFS on Linux, it is now robust, mature, and featureful. So much so that the FreeBSD team is switching to the ZoL codebase. FreeBSD ZFS and Illumos are comparatively stagnant. Like it or not, ZFS on Linux is the future of ZFS.

I have 32 gigs of RAM on the server and RAM usage isn't a problem unless you use deduplication, which I am not using. I divide my disk storage into three datasets. One for virtual machines, one for home dirs and general storage, and another for incompressible media.

54 days uptime and not a hiccup yet. I'm pleased.

ODwilly wrote:

Swapped a Phenom iix6 and 4gb of DDR3 1866 out for a FX 8120 and 8gb of DDR3 1333 in a friend's pc. Also a 2gb HD6970 for a 4gb RX 560 Gigabyte OC edition. Pretty decent performance so far. Really nice and snappy! Now all he needs is to add a SSD to his 500gb WD Green. This system is officially Esports ready 😉

That's a config I'd like to build for a possible future highest end config. How well can it render modern office/web but also 3D tasks?

By the way today I switched my D2500 dual core Atom desktop to my usual quad-armv8 raspberry on a 26 inch LCD TV and connected also to a Genesis game console. 😀

The new display came in for my IdeaPad Y460, so I quickly installed it:

Works great!

Naturally I took the opportunity to pull everything and clean the hell out of it. Here's the underside, with the HDD, RAM, wireless card & access panels already removed:

This thing is surprisingly easy to work on. I could yank the whole bottom cover easily enough but didn't feel the need to. On the topside I took off the LED panel & keyboard and cleaned everything.

Naturally the HSF assembly had to come off - this was like five screws. There was a bunch of dust caked on the fan outlet of course, so I blew that out and scraped all the old thermal paste away.

Speaking of that old thermal paste, it was some NASTY hardened crap and was caked all over the CPU & GPU, so I isopropyled the hell out of them and made them all shiny:

^^ swoosh. (Click on that in case the forum's animated GIF handler has made a mess of it.)

Yeah, I just did the dies. OCD be damned, I had places to be. It's fine. This laptop has a socketed CPU. Gears spinning...

Anyway, I applied some fresh Arctic Silver, reinstalled the cooler, found 6GB of mismatched DDR3 in my stash (4GB 1333, 2GB 1600 MHz - irrelevant as the CPU in there only supports 1333 anyway), and a crappy old 60GB SATA HDD from another cast-off.

Put it all back together, installed an OS, and I think it turned out really nice! With the isopropyl+q-tip makeover I gave it, it almost looks new. Everything works, CPU temps dropped like 30 degrees thanks to my little tune-up, the new 1600x900 panel is awesome (I can't imagine using this thing with the stock 1366x768 display; super glad I found out about that upgrade), and even the battery still works - I get at least a good three hours on the integrated graphics, or two on the GPU.

All that on a laptop I literally found in a dumpster!

I actually did this all in a rush a week ago, and then took it on a trip, so it's had a proper shakedown. The 60GB hard drive is only temporary; I got lucky and scored a 128GB mSATA SSD for $25+6 s&h on Ebay. Let's tally what I'm into this thing:

Laptop, with charger - free
Upgraded display - $33 USD shipped
RAM - free (scavenged from somewhere)
HDD - free (ditto)
SSD - $31 CAD shipped

There are still a couple upgrades I could do here - that socketed CPU didn't go un-noticed, and I want to max it out with 8GB RAM eventually. This model could officially be had with an i5 560m (2.66GHz, 3MB cache, HT), and coincidentally a local shonky computer shop is advertising one of those for $20, but there's also a few i7 Qms that fit the socket & might work in this. Have to do more research.

But yeah, I'm super pleased with it if you guys can't tell. Best dumpster find in a while!

Hey, not a bad price and for a free laptop, that's pretty darn good.

Thanks! I've been using it all week. It's pretty decent!

My low-budget SSD arrived (pretty quickly, even for "domestic" shipping to where I am), so I stuck it in.

This thing allows an SSD, HDD, and optical drive to all be installed at the same time. Separate bays for each. How many new laptops can you do that in?

Working great:

Still booting off the HDD, but I just wanted to get it in there to make sure it works. I'll re-configure this later (and probably upgrade the HDD to a 320GB one at the same time.)

Incidentally I decided to try Manjaro out on this thing, for no real reason other than I felt like using KDE again & Linux Mint dropped their KDE edition with version 19. I'm really impressed with it! It's well configured, everything works, it's fast, lightweight, etc. It's actually a really good fit for this thing. Even bluetooth file transfer just worked out of the box, which I had a hell of a time setting up on the last machine I tried. This is my first time in the Arch/AUR package ecosystem but I haven't hit any major stumbles yet. I guess that means my beard has grown a couple cm down my neck, but fine. 😜

bonus, ditch the optical drive and put a 2.5" SATA adapter in there

Today I solved some kind of problem my printer has been having. It wouldn't print anything properly. My dad has actually been getting me to fix it since I'm smart at that kind of stuff, but not with printers. Sometimes he's up my ass about getting me to do his "dirty work" 😜

I have repaired an HP PSC 750's scanner head as the scanner stopped working back in 2006. Still works to this day.