PC Tech Thread

the GPU he's picked is objectively much worse than the one that's built into the CPU though
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GeForce-GT-710-vs-Intel-UHD-Graphics-770/m77649vsm1701638

(unless he doesn't know there's integrated graphics and just thought he had to buy something, so bought the cheapest, shittiest thing he could find?)

As others have said, this person needs to decide what they want the machine to do first, the spec cannot be reviewed without this context, other than demonstrating the person doesn't understand enough to spec.

e.g. they have specced a fairly expensive overclocking-enabled CPU (which is of minimal/dubious benefit these days, and is extremely inefficient in terms of power cost), but the motherboard doesn't support CPU overclocking.

"it's quite cheap so i just popped it in not to have a black screen" :D

But thanks, pointed that perf difference out.

Also, why the full-size ATX motherboard and tombstone of a case? Do they need loads of expansion slots? If not, and given what you've said so far, I'd go for a small form factor mITX/NUC bare-bones kit, with an AMD Ryzen G-series CPU with decent integrated graphics and 2x 4TB NVMe SSDs. Nice, compact, quiet, cool, no unnecessary cruft.

What's he actually wanting to run? I assumed something specific due to the 64gb ram or does he just need a decently quick modern pc?

Expansion, air, run and look cooler. Sticking with Intel because reasons.

I don't know other than a chunk of VMs, hence the RAM and 16 cores.

backups

Backups belong in a separate box/room/building/country

Expansion, air, run and look cooler

ahh, so he was a gamer 25 years ago and hasn't noticed things have moved on?

Full size case then, metre tall with space for a full set of spinning discs in a RAID-blah
Red neon lights

seriously though. small case, 14600K processor, 64GB RAM, only solid state storage

One back-up should be on-site.
One back-up should be a couple of hours away.
One back-up should be in a different country.

For me the three are satisfied by raid/mirroring (on-site), rsync'd to a NAS at my brothers (a couple of hours away), and the last (for some but not all of it) various kinds of cloud services.

Not always.

Depends on what you're doing. I have very local backups and I have very secure remote backups and some inbetween.

He mentioned RAID and I said "ain't this just a fuckaround thing?"

I have external drive backups and/or CD/DVD backups, sync between multiple machines and a couple of cloud options.

I'm tempted to get a portable blu-ray writer so I can access all my old optical backups AND do quick disc burns of stuff when I want to cart them somewhere and play DVDs on my machines that no longer have optical drives.

I also still want to upgrade my drive(s) to those enterprise U.2 ones we spoke about in this thread ages ago for more reliability as well as look at a UPS option. But realistically, I'll probably swap the aging desktop for a beefier laptop (can any laptops run U.2 drives out of the box?).

optical backups

Check out the typical lifespans of these, they're typically 5-10 years as the ink degrades. (It may just be a case of reburning them every few years if you want to stick with optical.)

You can get laptops that can fit 2 x 4TB PCIe4 M.2 SSDs in them: https://system76.com/laptops/darp10/configure

(My next work laptop will probably be a Darter Pro, 96GB RAM but I only need a single 1TB or 2TB NVMe in it.)

Well, I'm ok with them because I saved some pictures I'd lost by restoring from backup CDs that were maybe 10-15 years old. There's also M-DISC or whatever the archival-specific backup discs are.

The benefit of the optical was: it was cheap and yeah I had multiple burns over the years so I managed to get back various bits of lost pictures from over time that must have been missed during a HDD migration or failure or something.

Depends on what you're doing

Yeah, not everybody needs all the levels. My point was really that a drive inside your computer is barely a backup at all.

Spinning drives are much more reliable as long-term cold storage than even SLC SSDs, and relying on self-burned optical discs is a disaster waiting to happen.

Just get a load of powered external USB 3.5" SATA caddies and fill them with 14TB spinning drives of various makes (helps to avoid a 'bad batch' from a single manufacturer) and dash them in various locations. Not that expensive these days.

If you really care about long-term archival cold storage, then magnetic tape is still king.

Yeah, I mean, everyone questioned that choice. I just presumed it was for SSD-paranoia backup or something. He said he's deleted it from the spec. anyway.

relying on self-burned optical discs is a disaster waiting to happen.

Relying on them might be, but they still saved my ass as they were done before I had any cloud storage. They're also mega convenient for 'non-critical' backups or bunging stuff on a disc for a mate when you don't want to give them a whole drive or sending stuff overseas for the same reason.

I thought magnetic drives were more reliable (I'll still not use them myself) but then I did a quick google:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/five-years-of-data-show-that-ssds-are-more-reliable-than-hdds-over-the-long-haul/

What do you make of this?

Note my "as long-term cold storage" qualifier; as in, leaving the drive powered off for years lying in a cupboard, as you would do with a cold backup, which your burned optical discs are.

SSD flash cells degrade over time unless they're regularly powered up, whereas hard drive platters can lie in stasis for decades without decaying, and it's usually the mechanical gubbins that fail long before the magnetic storage medium degrades.

Operational reliability as per the Backblaze data is a completely different metric.

Budget 16GB USB sticks are a literally a couple of quid new these days, or less than £1 on aliexpress, and so much more convenient and reliable than fannying around with burning and trying to read BD-R discs...

Yeah, that makes sense.

I crushed my HDDs earlier this year and then had to restore from discs.

I'm a hoarder for this fucking reason! Never trust anything to survive!

Probably true. Doesn't change the fact I got my pics back because I had CD backups of them. USB drives back in the early 2000s weren't cheap and I had a portable CD burner that copied my CompactFlash cards while I traveled.

Also, I don't use aliexpress and don't like the idea of buying malware on a stick and sending it to my folks. :)

I crushed my HDDs earlier this year

You make this too easy.

Budget 16GB USB sticks are a literally a couple of quid new these days, or less than £1 on aliexpress,

Many of them report 16GB free but stop being able to write after a few GB as they're just old 2GB drives with a firmware hack to make them look bigger.