Hi Neville,
Certainly there is no need to replace something that works for you. I used to build a new computer from parts (Case, Power Supply, Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, etc.) every year and sell the one year old PC on eBay. Now I am happy with my Celeron J3355 based PC. It is completely silent (no fans or any mechanical parts), consumes only around 10 Watt of electrical power and does everything I need. Your core i7 must be less than 10 years old, because at that time core i7 only supported up to 32 GB of RAM and yours has 64 GB. I think Skylake (the 6th generation) core i7 were first to support 64 GB RAM. The technology advances very fast. I compared the first core i7-860 from 2009 to a modern 2021 Pentium N6005: Intel Core i7-860 @ 2.80GHz vs Intel Pentium Silver N6005 @ 2.00GHz [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software
It is incredible that N6005 way outperforms i7-860 at lower clock-speed (2.0 GHz vs 2.8 GHz) consuming almost 10 times less power (10 W vs 95 W)!
Best regards,
Deby.
Hi Deby
Here are the specs of my main desktop machine
System: Kernel: 5.10.0-9-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-9-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.20.5 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 7 dm: SDDM Distro: MX-21_KDE_x64 Wildflower October 20 2021 base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) Machine: Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: P9X79 DELUXE v: Rev 1.xx serial: UEFI: American Megatrends v: 1203 date: 05/24/2012 CPU: Info: 6-Core model: Intel Core i7-3930K bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Sandy Bridge family: 6 model-id: 2D (45) stepping: 7 microcode: 71A cache: L2: 12 MiB flags: avx lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 76843 Speed: 2532 MHz min/max: 1200/5700 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2532 2: 2745 3: 3093 4: 2034 5: 1547 6: 3324 7: 2371 8: 2899 9: 3265 10: 2269 11: 3500 12: 2761
I cant remember when it was built exactly, but somewhere after 2012.
As I said, I had it built specially for some numerical work involving solving lots of equations.
I think the i7-3930 is older than the i7-860, but it is a bit faster. My main issue is the ram which is DDR3 and a good bit slower than DDR4. I have no idea what the power usage is. I dont need anything faster - it can solve 10 million simultaneous equations in about half an hour. The speed of todays computers is amazing.
You can see that I am in MX21-KDE - I am still doing the KDE trial. It is a lot better put together than when I last saw it, but it is indeed a comprehensive DTE rather than a minimal one.
One of the issues I have just become aware of is size of downloads for updates. If you install more packages ( like full KDE does) and if you use a managed rolling release distro like Solus or Void, then size of downloads is greater.
That is one advantage for minimal distros and DTYE’s - update downloads are faster and fewer Mbytes.
Regards
Neville
Hi Neville,
I checked the specs for the i7-3930K. It is Sandy Bridge (2011) - 6 cores/12 threads with 130 W TDP and 64.23 GB max RAM support. The i7-860 is older (2009) and much less powerful. The i7-3930K is still good if you don’t mind the 130 W TDP. Don’t worry about DDR3 RAM, - it is not a bottleneck of your system. The mechanical hard drive would be a bottleneck, but with 64 GB RAM all apps should be able to run from RAM. Replacing a hard drive with SSD gives much better performance improvement than replacing DDR3 with DDR4. It is also much less expensive, since with DDR4 the motherboard and CPU must also be replaced.
Yes, the more packages are installed, the more need to be updated. On my system (Star with LXDE), I have about 900 packages installed and most updates are only a few KB or MB, except for a linux-image with a new kernel. Debian stable does not update as often as Ubuntu (based on Debian unstable or testing).
Regards,
Deby.
Yes I would consider an SSD. I am really stuck with the DDR3 for the life of the machine.
Have you thought about arm processors for Linux? They are getting quite powerful and there are distros for arm.
Regards
Neville
Hi Neville,
You can keep the hard drive for storage and install an SSD for the OS and applications. For the older computer with no NVMe or M.2 support, 2.5 inch SATA SSD is probably the simplest option. Some of the good SSD brands/models are Samsung 870 EVO, Crucial MX500, Western Digital WD Blue 3D NAND. Depending on the budget for an upgrade, SSDs from 128 GB to 2 TB can be used. On a very limited budget brands like KingSpec 128 GB for AU $25.97 and XrayDisk 128 GB for AU $22.30 can be used. They are not as fast as the more expensive SSDs, but much faster than mechanical HDD. I use 120 GB KingSpec SSD, purchased on Aliexpress, for 2 years without any problems.
Yes, I considered the Arm based hardware such as Raspberry Pi and TV Boxes, but prefer x86_64 architecture. Linux runs well on a low budget Intel Celeron based PC, but I am not sure about low budget Arm hardware. The latest Arm processors and graphics are quite powerful, but much more expensive.
Regards
Deby
Hi Deby,
Yes, Void linux on an SSD would be good fast option.
I will see what the local computer specialist can suggest. I am not sure what types are compatable with my desktop system, given its age.
They did suggest it when the computer was built, but SSD’s were very new then and I decided against. Different story now.
Regards
Neville
Hi Neville,
It should be a very simple and inexpensive upgrade ($25). I looked at your motherboard specs. The Asus P9X79 DELUXE has multiple SATA 3GB and 6GB ports, so the 2.5 inch SATA SSD is the preferred option. You will probably need a 3.5" to 2.5" adapter for the SSD like this one:
and SATA cable:
Plug the power supply connector and SATA cable into the SSD, the other end of the SATA cable into the motherboard, partition the SSD, install the OS and it is all done.
Regards
Deby