Rich Freeman wrote: > On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 3:58 AM Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Given the FX-6300 has a higher clocks speed, 3.8GHz versus 3.2GHz for >> the Phenom, I'd think the FX would be a upgrade, quite a good one at >> that. More L2 cache too. Both are 6 cores according to what I found. >> Anyone know something I don't that would make switching to the FX-6300 a >> bad idea? > The most obvious issue is that you're putting money into a very obsolete > system. > > Obviously hardware of this generation is fairly cheap, but it isn't > actually the best bang for the buck, ESPECIALLY when you factor in > power use. Like most AMD chips of that generation (well, most chips > in general when you get that old), that CPU uses quite a bit of power > at idle, and so that chip which might cost you $35 even at retail > might cost you double that amount per year just in electricity. > > If your goal is to go cheap you also need to consider alternatives. > You can get used hardware from various places, and most of it is 3-5 > years old. Even commodity hardware of that age is far more powerful > than a 15 year old CPU socket and often it starts at $100 or so - and > that is for a complete system. Often you can get stuff that is > ex-corporate that has a fair bit of RAM as well, since a lot of > companies need to deal with compatibility with office productivity > software that might be a little RAM hungry. RAM isn't cheap these > days, and they practically give it away when they dispose of old > hardware. > > The biggest issue you're going to have with NAS is finding something > with the desired number of drive bays, as a lot of used desktop > hardware is SFF (but also super-low-power, which is something > companies consider in their purchasing decisions when picking > something they're going to be buying thousands of). > > Right now most of my storage is on Ceph on SFF PCs. I do want to try > to get future expansion onto NVMe but even used systems that support > much of that are kinda expensive still (mostly servers since desktop > CPUs have so few PCIe lanes, and switches aren't that common). One of > my constraints using Ceph though is I need a lot of RAM, which is part > of why I'm going the SFF route - for $100 you can get one with 32GB of > RAM and 2-3 SATA ports, plus USB3 and an unused 4-16x PCIe slot. That > is a lot of RAM/IO compared to most options at that price point (ARM > in particular tends to lack both - not that it doesn't support it, but > rather nobody makes cheap ARM hardware with PCIe+DIMM slots). >
Right now, I have a three drive setup in a removable cage for the NAS box. The drives sit in my safe except when I'm updating the backups. I update about once a week or so. It doesn't change as fast as it used too. If this main rig were to die, I'd use it as a temporary rig, then focus on building a new rig. The encryption is slow and makes the CPU work hard. You are right, it is throwing money at old hardware. It's just that I have this hardware laying around anyway. I have a old Dell that I've thought about using as a torrent box. I'm not sure it has enough memory for that tho. I think the Dell has the max of 4GBs of memory. Current NAS/backup box has 16GBs. Main rig has 32GBs and I give it a good workout when doing updates. I'm not familiar with Ceph but I've seen it mentioned before. I'll go google it. See what it is. I need a couple new drives to swap out anyway. LVM makes that pretty easy. ;-) Dale :-) :-)
