Lebkoungcity wrote:Yeah, I'd say something similar if there weren't these infrequent errors and those 'hick-ups' - some kind of a delayed response. I experienced these kinds of annoyances in the past when my former mainboards suffered from defective capacitors. Up until now I didn't find such a defective capacitor on my current motherboard but I don't want to wait until the system begins to go down frequently.
And for me the time has come when the point of investing more money (e.g. for a new mainboard) in the old system isn't rewarding enough anymore.
So far I believe my problems are only related to running out of memory when compiling large programs. Quite some time ago I changed gcc to only use -j1 and not using a tmpfs to compile. I haven't had a problem with it in quite a while. Recently I had to do the same for clang. Since I'm not experiencing any other issues, I'm able to convince myself that it's probably not failing components. While the performance improvements would be nice, it is an expense I'd rather not incur. And perhaps more importantly, I haven't "enjoyed" the process of hardware upgrades since the 90s. Unfortunately, the expense of pre-built systems is sufficiently higher that I'm not willing to incur that cost. So I try to stay moderately informed about new hardware so that when I eventually have to make a purchase, I'm not starting from zero knowledge to decipher what components can be mixed.
Lebkoungcity wrote:I tend to take a AMD Ryzen 7 5700X which is not exactly cheap but seems to be priceworthy and the TWP of 65W is appealing.
My main technical issue with newer processors is the significantly increased wattage baseline where ~125W or more is fairly common. I also don't like the absurd size of heat sinks that have resulted. That starts to feel like a stock Honda Civic with a giant wing bolted to the non-structural parts of the rear deck lid. At least the cooler is functional, but still.
Lebkoungcity wrote:The mainboard should be one from Gigabyte with a chipset B550.
I've had 1 or 2 Gigabyte boards I've liked, but it seems like all manufacturers have problems at some point. It seems like a roll of the dice. That said, I bought 2 MSI boards with my last upgrade. One of them had faulty memory channels in the "upper" channel range, so triggering the fault wasn't easy.
Lebkoungcity wrote:But I think it was relativly easy to pick a CPU in comparison to choose a mainboard. I don't need WiFi on a desktop! What are your categories you'd choose a mainboard?
I agree that not having WiFi would be preferred. For Zen boards, there's a nomenclature of chipset that seems to be (or at least was) a notable differentiator. Looking at notes, I apparently leaned toward the choices of others who happened to agree on the x570 chipset, though I didn't make notes of why that one in particular (I believe it was mentioned in those threads).
My personal wants would be for at least 32GB ECC RAM. Based on historical behavior, I believe I've only upgraded once (excluding laptops). If the cost savings was significant, I might drop to 16GB if I expected a reasonably priced future upgrade to >=64GB. For CPU -- I've only bought AMD for custom built PCs -- it would be whatever was in the sweet spot for price / performance; whatever I buy will be a drastic performance improvement. If the cost to upgrade was still pretty low, I might go up a model or two. With that in mind, I'd prefer a fanless system, but as those aren't priced reasonably -- I don't put water near electricity -- I'd want it to be as quiet as possible. My last build is louder than I'd like. And while the normal db level of my house isn't has high as a data center, the proportional change in fan noise when compiling can seem like it :) I do choose to not compile (much) when that room is occupied.
I have historically placed "console only" value on my choice of graphics as my use is exclusively via ssh, excluding some reboots. My last build has an old nvidia card (make.conf references "nouveau"). If I don't go with onboard graphics, then I'll choose whatever low-end AMD card I can find. I know AMD video isn't perfect, but at least it isn't nvidia, and I don't want to deal with those hassles or give them my money. I'm not a gamer though, so I don't have a need for much of a GPU -- not to mention having missed Gold Rush II: Crypto Boogaloo, and lacking the skills for ML.
The only other items I can think of have to do with making disk replacement easier. External bays and some means of identifying which drive has failed. The options I've found haven't been serious contenders for squeezing into an upgrade budget.
That's all I can think of at the moment. My "cheat sheet" is to reference NeddySeagoon's bucket list build and see what's changed since -- be sure to let "us" know what you buy! :). After that, salt & pepper to taste. My notes from the old threads also indicate ASUS motherboards. I've had good luck with at least one of those. Although at the time, some supplies were hard to come by, so I believe some were making choices based on availability.
After all that, what I typically end up doing is figuring out what the approximate minimum upgrade will cost. I then throw out most of the wish list, and get as close to that price as possible. It's one thing to have dreams, it's another to pay for them. Hmm... people create go-fund-me's for lots of ridiculous reasons :twisted:
