Author Topic: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC  (Read 15901 times)

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Offline ChrisLX200

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #25 on: September 23, 2017, 09:04:38 pm »
Having a RAID disk array in no way substitutes for having a complete backup of everything, all it does is allow you to quickly get back up and running should one drive fail. It is a bit of insurance against hardware (drive) failure and you can also keep running while the repair is ongoing (no down time). However, the extra stress of rebuilding an array after substituting a faulty drive in iteself can trigger failure in another drive that otherwise was (apparently) performing just fine! Ask me how I know.

Remember - while a failed drive may be difficult to recover data from, it takes a striped RAID to _really_  screw up your data. BTDT as well... Just use disk mirroring for extra security and ease of recovery. It takes more drivespace so it depends how much you value your data..

ChrisH

 

Offline cdev

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #26 on: September 23, 2017, 11:02:59 pm »
Dave,

I'm sure you are quite good at such things but I just wanted to bring up the story of the Trojan Horse.

That said, it almost certainly isn't.

That is a gorgeous looking machine indeed.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Don Hills

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #27 on: September 24, 2017, 03:20:21 am »
It's quite common for Asian students in NZ (and I assume in Aus), when completing their courses, to drop off the contents of their flat at recycling centres before they fly home.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #28 on: September 24, 2017, 03:32:21 am »
Dave,

I'm sure you are quite good at such things but I just wanted to bring up the story of the Trojan Horse.
Loading a rootkit onto a still decent PC, then discarding it with the hope that the target will salvage it and use it without a reinstall is a bit far fetched way to break into a network.

Earlier in the year, I actually set up a bunch of Xeon PCs with GTX 570s at work. The 570s were used for image processing in automated testing, even though they're quite overkill. My guess at how they have so many 570s to begin with is that they once were part of a rendering cluster.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline Halcyon

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #29 on: September 24, 2017, 03:42:45 am »
Having a RAID disk array in no way substitutes for having a complete backup of everything, all it does is allow you to quickly get back up and running should one drive fail. It is a bit of insurance against hardware (drive) failure and you can also keep running while the repair is ongoing (no down time). However, the extra stress of rebuilding an array after substituting a faulty drive in iteself can trigger failure in another drive that otherwise was (apparently) performing just fine! Ask me how I know.

Remember - while a failed drive may be difficult to recover data from, it takes a striped RAID to _really_  screw up your data. BTDT as well... Just use disk mirroring for extra security and ease of recovery. It takes more drivespace so it depends how much you value your data..

ChrisH

Not to mention that RAID doesn't protect you against corrupted data.
 

Offline tchicago

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #30 on: September 24, 2017, 04:50:41 pm »
Me three. I still run my desktop PC on i7 920 processor bought in 2008, on a decent mobo from Asus. Runs 24/7 and still find no reason to upgrade.
Numerous software upgrades and reinstalls, RAM maxed out to 24G, hard drive/SSD upgrades, three power supplies replaced due to dried caps and rattling fans, refreshed the thermal compound between the CPU and the heatsink once in a couple of years, replaced case fans... but the core stays the same. Even the stock Intel heatsink with the fan is still the same.

Intel got stuck for a decade. Hopefully, AMD gains the momentum and starts to actually innovate in CPUs.
 

Online tszaboo

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #31 on: September 24, 2017, 10:25:03 pm »
Intel got stuck for a decade. Hopefully, AMD gains the momentum and starts to actually innovate in CPUs.
Intel just waited for AMD to catch up. Fair play award.
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #32 on: September 25, 2017, 12:01:46 am »
Intel just waited for AMD to catch up. Fair play award.

"We were so good, but we are now so ordinary."

Great business model.
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #33 on: September 25, 2017, 01:15:36 am »
Me three. I still run my desktop PC on i7 920 processor bought in 2008, on a decent mobo from Asus. Runs 24/7 and still find no reason to upgrade.

i7? Luxury! I'm still on an i5.

An i7 isn't really faster than an i5 in single threaded performance, so...  :-// These days it's more important to get plenty of RAM and an SSD.

"We were so good, but we are now so ordinary."

Great business model.

Intel and AMD have been stuck under 4GHz for a decade or so. There must be some real hurdles to go beyond that.

There also doesn't seem to be much demand for it. Most of today's really demanding compute jobs are done by GPUs or are parallelizeable to more cores. Given that, you can probably get more benefit by reducing the power consumption and putting more cores on the same die. It wouldn't surprise me to see 24 cores in the next couple of years.

Question: Is there any common task that would benefit from higher clock speeds more than having more cores? There may be some niche task (I can't think of one offhand) but it probably wouldn't sell enough chips for Intel to be interested. More cores is a much easier sell.


 

Offline bitwelder

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #34 on: September 25, 2017, 04:36:15 am »
Intel just waited for AMD to catch up. Fair play award.
The minimum recommended safety distance between "Intel" and "Fair play" is 200 words.
Less than that, there is risk of overheating and fire.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: EEVblog #1026 - Mystery Dumpster Diving PC
« Reply #35 on: September 28, 2017, 03:38:00 pm »
If I turned it into a FreeNAS RAID server then I'm guessing that my primary requirement would be the least power consumption?
i.e ditch the graphics card and switch to as low power a processor as I can get?
I don't know what power costs down under, but this isn't a frugal system. Power consumption priorities were a bit different back then, so running it 24/7 isn't recommended.
 


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