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Most of those computers at the recycle computer stores ar from businesses. They are about 3 or 4 years old and most of them has a max memory is about 16 Mbps.

On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 19:13, Michael via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
well, I'm going to get another recycled computer. A thinkcentre. From what I've heard they are, at the most, 3 years old and not up to spec for windows 11 (why they are in recycle). Got to love windows for that alone! Or does someone have a better idea? Any one know of the top of there head how much RAM maxes it out?

On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 10:59 PM wheelie207 via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:


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I have a system with over 32 gigs of DDR5 ram and the swap isn’t even used. I also have a thread ripper cpu and it runs at 5.8 gigahertz in speed on a am5 slot. But these new boards run the data through the cpu when reading and writing data to the ssd5.

On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 09:02, Bob Elzer via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
SSD ram cache does not prevent wear and tear on your SSD, it is used stop the bottleneck slowdown when writing lots of data to the SSD. The best way to prevent wear and tear is system ram, if you have enough ram the system may not even have to swap anything out, The three things that I always move off of an SSD are swap, log files, and tmp.
If you have a ddr4 motherboard with four slots. You can have 128 GB of RAM. Right now you can get 64 GB of ddr4 RAM for around $135.

What determines how much RAM you need is the programs you are running and how much RAM they need. Video and image editing require a lot more RAM then email and Web browsing.

If you are going to use an SSD for your system drive. I would also recommend that the minimum size be 2 TB. As long as you don't fill it up, it has lots of room to use unused sectors to lessen the wear and tear.



On Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 8:24 AM Stephen Partington via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
On my current system I am running without swap, but I do have 32gb ram.

If you pick an ssd with a ram cache on it you don't have to worry about swap as much there. And you can extend ssd life with underprovisioning if it still is a concern. But in reality a good quality ssd Wil last for years even with swap in place as long as you don't run near max storage.

On Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 6:49 AM James Mcphee via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
To avoid swap wearing out your ssd, if you don't have an hd handy, you can set vm.swappiness to 0. This is not great since paging is quite efficient these days, but sometimes you'll want swap for suspend operations and don't want to actually page unless you're under memory pressure.

On Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 3:09 PM David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
Check out the latest batch of Intel-based N100 Mini PCs. They’re smaller than MacMinis.

I’d say a minimal configuration would be 32GB of RAM and 1TB (or 2TB) of SSD. I’d say an N100 is minimal CPU.

Some with AMD CPUs are cheaper as well.

Here’s a search on Amazon:


They don’t sort very well; here’s the cheapest Linux box I found. There are cheaper ones with Windows that you can delete.


I’ve got a 2014 MacMini, a 2014 MBP, and a 2018 MacMini and they’re still going strong. You can find late-model used Intel MacMinis for a few hundred bucks that work great.

Way back in the day, the all-in-one boxes used to have problems with a serial port or the video going out and the whole thing would be dead. But that doesn’t seem to happen much any more. I use my MacMinis daily and the newer one runs the fan a lot when I’m watching videos, but other than that, they’re still humming right along. I had one of the first gen iMacs and the video card in it died shortly after the AppleCare expired. I ended up selling it for $375 anyway. Today you can buy USB-3 and USB-C expansion ports with one or more HDMI interfaces on them if the on-board video dies.

Unless you need a super-high-power over-clocked water-cooled screaming machine for gaming or bitcoin mining, I cannot see the value in building a machine from scratch unless you’re trying to do it on the cheap using recycled components. What’s the point?

-David Schwartz




On Feb 23, 2024, at 6:46 PM, Michael via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

I want a guy I know to put a computer together for me. I'm thinking a single core (I don't think I need more processing power than that) with 8 gig of ram. I'm wanting to spend $3-$400. I'm an older guy now and won't use it for much more than web and email. What should I tell him to put in it?

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