Random Tech Questions you want answered.

Woops I hit the wrong button and made another post instead of what I wanted to do.

merphle wrote:

but it's $420.

Ignore that price, it's meaningless. Old stock gets marked up by random sellers. People going fishing.

If you're buying a part this old, you're looking at somewhere like eBay.

merphle wrote:

Even used CPUs on ebay are going for that price (or more).

I'm not sure where you're getting that, unless again, you're just not skimming past listings of people on fishing expeditions.

Setting the eBay search to listings that actually sold, we can see that they're going for around $200-240.

We also can inch down to an i5-7600K for about half that. They're selling for $115-130.

i5-7500s sell closer to $100-115.

merphle wrote:

Technically you could upgrade to the same i7 7700K I linked earlier, but it would only get you a few percent improvement

This is seriously glossing over how important the core count is, and how impactful it is to be core-starved. Going from a 7300 to another chip in the same generation isn't about chasing higher single-thread performance, it's about getting out of having too few cores for a modern workload.

Cores are a lot like the tires of your car. Having spares is nice, but the most important thing is having 4 functioning tires. The performance of your car goes down real fast when you go from 4 functioning tires to only 3.

*Legion* wrote:
merphle wrote:

Technically you could upgrade to the same i7 7700K I linked earlier, but it would only get you a few percent improvement

This is seriously glossing over how important the core count is, and how impactful it is to be core-starved. Going from a 7300 to another chip in the same generation isn't about chasing higher single-thread performance, it's about getting out of having too few cores for a modern workload.

That quote was in response to Jonman's inquiry of upgrade options from an i7 6700k, and I stand by my response.

You're totally correct that there are indeed completed eBay listings for $100-200. My bad, I'll own that one. I didn't filter or search to find those, mostly because I didn't really want to consider used CPUs.

Regardless, the good news is that none of the suggestions we've made so far are mutually-exclusive; lindawson can give it some careful thought and consideration, determine how much they're willing to spend at this point, and even implement them sequentially (if A isn't enough, then try B as well, then try C). All of these suggestions will generate improvement, and it's just a matter of determining how much is good enough for now. Or ignore everything we've said, and save up for a brand new monster PC. I guess that's the only mutually-exclusive option here.

Ya, the plan is to slowly update and see how it goes. I ordered another 8GB of RAM last night so we'll see how much that helps. Next for storage I'm doing a little more research to decide whether it makes sense for me to copy Windows over from the HDD to a new SSD or just reformat and start fresh. I don't quite understand the pros and cons of those two options. I don't currently have too much crap on my machine that I couldn't easily reinstall so I think I'm leaning towards just starting fresh if that's the simpler path. Then if those two things don't help enough I'll start looking into upgrading the processor, or I might just be too fed up with everything at that point and start looking at buying something new. Thanks again for everyone's help!

lindawson wrote:

Ya, the plan is to slowly update and see how it goes. I ordered another 8GB of RAM last night so we'll see how much that helps. Next for storage I'm doing a little more research to decide whether it makes sense for me to copy Windows over from the HDD to a new SSD or just reformat and start fresh. I don't quite understand the pros and cons of those two options. I don't currently have too much crap on my machine that I couldn't easily reinstall so I think I'm leaning towards just starting fresh if that's the simpler path. Then if those two things don't help enough I'll start looking into upgrading the processor, or I might just be too fed up with everything at that point and start looking at buying something new. Thanks again for everyone's help!

Always start fresh.

Rykin wrote:
lindawson wrote:

Ya, the plan is to slowly update and see how it goes. I ordered another 8GB of RAM last night so we'll see how much that helps. Next for storage I'm doing a little more research to decide whether it makes sense for me to copy Windows over from the HDD to a new SSD or just reformat and start fresh. I don't quite understand the pros and cons of those two options. I don't currently have too much crap on my machine that I couldn't easily reinstall so I think I'm leaning towards just starting fresh if that's the simpler path. Then if those two things don't help enough I'll start looking into upgrading the processor, or I might just be too fed up with everything at that point and start looking at buying something new. Thanks again for everyone's help!

Always start fresh.

*if you can afford to lose whatever was there before. Thankfully automated cloud backup solutions like MS OneDrive make this process wayyy easier and less stressful.

pandasuit wrote:

I was thinking mostly about long term reliability in a NAS.

I have a 2-bay QNAP TS-251+ and a 4-bay QNAP TS-453be. And a 4-bay Mediasonic ProRaid HFR2-SU3S.

I've had 4TB WD Reds in the 251+ for 3 years now without issues.

My MediaSonic has a mix of white label 4TB WD drives and 4TB WD Reds, 2 years no issues so far.

My TS-453be has four white label 8TB WD drives shucked from MyBook/Elements external hard drives, 2 years no issues so far.

I run them as Plex servers (including using SyncLounge to host watch parties for 3-5 people on bi-weekly Skype movie nights), I use them as storage for moving around files when I'm ripping my Blu-Ray discs/converting them via Handbrake for my Plex library, I backup my PC to them, and I use SyncThing to synchronize media/backups between the two NASes. I also use a Docker container on both as a Pi-Hole (one as a backup for when I need to reboot/update the other NAS).

Knock on wood, and considering it sounds like I make much heavier use out of them than Fredrick, none of the drives have failed so far. Although, well, like any drive, that'll likely happen eventually. Just ideally in a way where I'll be able to replace the drives in an orderly fashion.

WD Reds have a 3-year warranty, and I'm not sure about the MyBook/Elements (I'd guess shorter, like 1-2 years). In theory if you were gentle shucking, if a drive failed you could just pop it back into the enclosure and utilize the warranty.

3-5 years seems to be the expected lifespan of NAS drives, and so far I'm on track for that to be true for me as well.

Researching SSDs and I came across this line "Even if you only have 200GiB of data, the extra muscle that comes along with a 1TB SSD is well worth the additional cost" (Ars Technica). I've got about 200GB on my current drive and figured a 500GB SSD would be more than enough space. My rule of thumb was just make sure at least 10% of the drive is free and beyond that the extra capacity is useless. Am I wrong? Would a larger SSD improve performance even if I only put 200GB on it?

No. I think the only reason to buy a 1 TB or larger SSD is that you will be so amazed at the speed boost, you will start to fill it up even more.

The other thing is, you are talking in some cases only $40-50 more for double the space.

It is kind of weird since for laptops, 512GB is plenty. But for desktop, I've filled 3/4 of a 2 TB SSD...
So there is some apples to oranges.

There's probably a few grains of truth to Ars' article - larger capacity gives more headroom for when bits eventually die, and also provides a slightly larger on-disk cache to help with data throughput - but I'm with fangblackbone. 512GB for your use case is probably fine; I'd still personally go with 1TB at +$65 though just from a "set it and forget it" mentality (looking at the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 512GB vs 1TB pricing).

lindawson wrote:

Researching SSDs and I came across this line "Even if you only have 200GiB of data, the extra muscle that comes along with a 1TB SSD is well worth the additional cost" (Ars Technica). I've got about 200GB on my current drive and figured a 500GB SSD would be more than enough space. My rule of thumb was just make sure at least 10% of the drive is free and beyond that the extra capacity is useless. Am I wrong? Would a larger SSD improve performance even if I only put 200GB on it?

512 gigs should be good for you unless you plan on installing lots of games to it. I went with a 256 gig boot drive in my current build and that was a big mistake (at the time I didn't count on it ever being my daily driver though).

SSD performance is sort of linked to capacity, but not in a raw bigger equals faster relationship. The more memory modules an SSD has generally makes it faster and also generally make it higher capacity. But there are 3 main different types of modules (Single Level, Multi Level, and Triple Level) with the ones that have fewer levels being faster, but the ones with more levels holding more (Level is just a term for how many bits can be stored per cell either 1, 2, or 3 bit per cell). Lastly the controller that is being used has a big impact as well. An SSD with a mediocre controller and really good SLC modules will probably perform worse than one with a really good controller and good TLC modules.

Does a modern Chromebook work well as a replacement for an Android tablet for kids? Mostly watching Netflix and some basic Android games but also kids websites etc.

My kids current tablets are old and crappy and I’ve been meaning to replace them for a while. If Google Family Link was supported on Fire tablets I’d just buy more of those as I’m a big fan for my own use. Chromebooks support Family Link and Android apps and are quite reasonably priced.

I’m thinking possibly touchscreen games aren’t so great on a Chromebook but media apps should work really well.

I don't think a laptop form factor is a good replacement for the tablet form factor that kids can hold in their hands, lay down with, prop up, etc. With the way my 5 year old uses an iPad a laptop would not really work as a replacement.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't think a laptop form factor is a good replacement for the tablet form factor that kids can hold in their hands, lay down with, prop up, etc. With the way my 5 year old uses an iPad a laptop would not really work as a replacement.

Likely for some of their usage yeah. They were trying to prop up their current tablets on something to watch shows often enough that I ended up adding cases that make the tablets stand up anyways. I was thinking one of those 11” convertible Chromebooks with a touchscreen might work for all use cases but they are bigger and heavier so maybe not. Maybe that would be terrible for touchscreen games too.

Laptops are far more fragile than tablets. That would be my redline.

pandasuit wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't think a laptop form factor is a good replacement for the tablet form factor that kids can hold in their hands, lay down with, prop up, etc. With the way my 5 year old uses an iPad a laptop would not really work as a replacement.

Likely for some of their usage yeah. They were trying to prop up their current tablets on something to watch shows often enough that I ended up adding cases that make the tablets stand up anyways. I was thinking one of those 11” convertible Chromebooks with a touchscreen might work for all use cases but they are bigger and heavier so maybe not. Maybe that would be terrible for touchscreen games too.

As an adult, I pretty much do 90% of any computer related thing on my Chromebook convertible.

It's an... okay tablet. It's good enough that I never use my tablet anymore, but it's not the same experience.

Even I think it's heavy, when using it to read comics or something.

Something else to consider is Android app compatibility isn't perfect. Most Android apps aren't designed with the laptop form factor in mind. And some can't be installed at all via the Play Store, even if when you sideload them they work perfectly (I'm not an expert on how devs or Google decide what can install on which devices).

It's gotten a lot better! But some parts of it just aren't going to be intuitive for a child, I think. For example, at this point Chrome OS has three different file systems. You can access them all via the Files app, but Linux, Chrome OS, and Android all have their own containers/partitions.

So if you download something using an Android app, it'll be in the "Play files" section. If you download something via Chrome OS, it gets in the root "Downloads" folder. And via Linux it'll be... you guessed it, in the Linux files area.

Even as someone fairly tech literate I can find hunting down files that way annoying, because at its best the apps between all three in Chrome OS are integrated pretty well, but then I have to think "Oh wait, did I download that using the Linux or Android version of an app" and then go hunting for it.

If there's a few of your favorite apps your kids use, I can try installing them on my Chromebook as a test/example, if you want.

If they're at an age where schoolwork/desktop/laptop-ish use is the primary use-case, it might be worth it! But the Android and Linux compatibility is more of a nice "extra" than a primary use, for me. So I'd echo the other folks pointing out it's not the same experience/doesn't sound like it fits their use case.

ccoates wrote:
pandasuit wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't think a laptop form factor is a good replacement for the tablet form factor that kids can hold in their hands, lay down with, prop up, etc. With the way my 5 year old uses an iPad a laptop would not really work as a replacement.

Likely for some of their usage yeah. They were trying to prop up their current tablets on something to watch shows often enough that I ended up adding cases that make the tablets stand up anyways. I was thinking one of those 11” convertible Chromebooks with a touchscreen might work for all use cases but they are bigger and heavier so maybe not. Maybe that would be terrible for touchscreen games too.

As an adult, I pretty much do 90% of any computer related thing on my Chromebook convertible.

It's an... okay tablet. It's good enough that I never use my tablet anymore, but it's not the same experience.

Even I think it's heavy, when using it to read comics or something.

Something else to consider is Android app compatibility isn't perfect. Most Android apps aren't designed with the laptop form factor in mind. And some can't be installed at all via the Play Store, even if when you sideload them they work perfectly (I'm not an expert on how devs or Google decide what can install on which devices).

It's gotten a lot better! But some parts of it just aren't going to be intuitive for a child, I think. For example, at this point Chrome OS has three different file systems. You can access them all via the Files app, but Linux, Chrome OS, and Android all have their own containers/partitions.

So if you download something using an Android app, it'll be in the "Play files" section. If you download something via Chrome OS, it gets in the root "Downloads" folder. And via Linux it'll be... you guessed it, in the Linux files area.

Even as someone fairly tech literate I can find hunting down files that way annoying, because at its best the apps between all three in Chrome OS are integrated pretty well, but then I have to think "Oh wait, did I download that using the Linux or Android version of an app" and then go hunting for it.

If there's a few of your favorite apps your kids use, I can try installing them on my Chromebook as a test/example, if you want.

If they're at an age where schoolwork/desktop/laptop-ish use is the primary use-case, it might be worth it! But the Android and Linux compatibility is more of a nice "extra" than a primary use, for me. So I'd echo the other folks pointing out it's not the same experience/doesn't sound like it fits their use case.

Thats a really helpful perspective. Thanks!

I'm going to look around again for a reasonably priced Android tablet that supports Google Family Link or better yet Microsoft Family.

For a cheaper Android tablet that isn't Amazonified, I'd look at the Lenovo Tab 4. The 8" and 10" models are on LaptopMag's best kids tablet list (and are basically the only non-Apple, non-Amazon ones on the list except for one Samsung model that's significantly more expensive)

I'd like to add a PCIE m.2 (NVME) adapter card to my PC to move some games to. My motherboard is old enough that it doesn't have an m.2 slot on it. What I would like to know is what expansion card should I get and what is a decent brand NVME drive?

Some info...

Motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition. ( link to mobo manual )

It currently has 8 x 8GB sticks of RAM in it and the only PCIE slot being used is the second one down, the PCIE_X8_2 slot. It has my eVGA GTX1080 in it.

A snippet from the manual:
4 x PCIe3.0 x16 slots, support x16; x16/x16; x16/x8/x16 and x16/x8/x8/x8 configurations
2 x PCIe2.0 x1 slots

I do have 3 SATA drives in there, 2 SSDs and an old HDD.

I don't know if any of this matters, I'm just giving information that may help.

Thanks,
-BEP

Mobo Schematic:
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/lviYitH.png)

So many PCIe slots!

I'm no expert, but I recently bought a "SK hynix Gold P31 M.2 NVMe SSD" 1TB to use as my games drive and I'm happy with it so far.

The 500GB model is $60 and the 1TB model $114 on Amazon right now.

It seems pretty well reviewed and at that price cheaper than competing drives in the same class.

Why are you using the 8x slot for your GPU instead of the 16x slot? Giant cooler in the way? It doesn't really matter (tests have shown about a 1% difference in frame rate between a 16x and an 8x slot), but most people go for the 16x slot.

As far as the m.2 to PCIe adapters go I don't think it matters all that much what you get. They are pretty simple devices that basically just adapt the bigger PCIe slot down to the m.2 form factor. It is basically a large PCI slot down to a tiny PCI slot, there is no change being made to signaling or anything like that. If you just want to add a single SSD there are plenty of options in the $20-$30 range with good reviews. If you would like the ability to add a second NVMe drive down the line that is a bit more expensive, but there are a few out there that do it (there are even data center cards that will let you stick like 8 drives on them if you really want to drop some bank).

As far as the drive to get goes there is actually a lot of good choices out there. Sabrent and WD and Samsung are all making a lot of good drives in various sizes and price ranges. The main thing you are looking for is an NVMe M-key 2280 m.2 drive (the 2280 part is optional but that is the most common m.2 drive size). You can get PCIe Gen 3 or Gen 4, but you won't see any performance gains from a Gen 4 drive unless you plan to transport it into a new PC with Gen 4 support down the line. For your use case I would go bigger rather than faster. All of them will read pretty quickly which is what you need for gaming.

Now then the one thing you need to know is that for your use case you could probably get more bang for your buck going with a SATA SSD. They tend to be almost as fast as NVMe drives in game loading times (usually within 1 second or less) and larger capacities are generally cheaper. I am using a 2TB Samsung 870 QVO with my Series X and can't tell the difference between it and the internal NVMe drive. You might save $60-$100 going SATA vs having to buy an NVMe drive and the adapter card.

I have a 2TB SATA SSD (ADATA) and have had zero problems with it. It runs super quick all the games I was having horrible load times with. It was cheap ($250) and I just plugged it into an available SATA port: done. It is now down to $219 on amazon.

Thanks is for the info, guys, and for the lengthy explanation, Rykin. My goal _was_ a speed increase over SATA but if there is not a big difference, I’ll stick with a new SATA SSD.

Well, that was the plan when I originally read your post this morning. Then about 20 minutes ago I pulled the trigger on a new pre-made PC. I plan on making that my primary rig, now, and turning the old one into a virtual host since it has all the RAM and cores.

I’ll probably have a “new” RTX 2060 Super 8GB or my existing GTX 1080 for sale soon.

-BEP

Wow, talk about timing. The second I hit the post button, I got an email saying that the order was cancelled because of unusual activity on the credit card. During the purchase, my card company texted me asking if it was me who used the card and I replied it was so they said they approved it. The cancellation was on the vendor’s side - it was their fraud Dept that did the cancel. There were only 4 rigs left when I ordered and none left, now. I verified the money was returned on the card’s web site.

Oh, well - I guess I’m back to expanding storage with a SATA SSD and continuing my search for a way to host dedicated game servers at my house that isn’t on my main PC.

I’ll post my questions about that later when I have time. Thanks again for the m.2 / SATA info above.

-BEP

Thanks for all the feedback on updating this aging machine. I swapped in a new SSD and added another 8GB of RAM and wow does this feel snappy! Keep your distance or you might get burned from how quick this machine is moving.

Going to SSD from non SSD is a huge jump. Games like HBS Battletech were flat out not playable without an SSD. Others the second or two here and there adds up over the course of the game. If you've got 15 minutes to play a quick session, do you want to spend 45-60 seconds of it loading/saving?

Glad it worked for you Lindawson! Many of us have done the same thing and seen the results, and man, spending so little to get a few more years out of a system just gives you a warm feeling every time you boot up, doesn’t it? Enjoy!

fangblackbone wrote:

If you've got 15 minutes to play a quick session, do you want to spend 45-60 seconds of it loading/saving?

I thought Civ6 was supposed to take 2 minutes to boot up? Gives you a chance to grab your snacks because you know you're not going anywhere for a while.

fangblackbone wrote:

Going to SSD from non SSD is a huge jump. Games like HBS Battletech were flat out not playable without an SSD. Others the second or two here and there adds up over the course of the game. If you've got 15 minutes to play a quick session, do you want to spend 45-60 seconds of it loading/saving?

We are actually updating people to SSDs at work instead of buying them new PCs as a cost cutting measure. A new SSD for $50-$100 and a few lucky case more RAM and most end users can't tell a difference between a brand new PC and an upgraded 4-5 year old one. Spending $200-$300 to upgrade an old system versus $1000-$1200 for a new one isn't the worst way to spend the states money.

A 4-5 year old cpu is pretty much just as capable at doing non specific work tasks as a brand new one.
Writing emails on a 5950 threadripper is no faster than a i5 6600 (K or not K).