That's just a side effect of the NSA's mail scanner running at Gmail. On 5/17/19 8:09 AM, Scott Allen via talk wrote:

On Fri, 17 May 2019 at 05:06, Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

...

I'm looking to upgrade my PC Let's hope the new PC allows you to post messages that aren't in blue text.

-- Alvin Starr || land: (647)478-6285 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin@netvel.net ||

On Fri, 17 May 2019 at 11:39, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

Are you particularly attached to the tiny size for any reason? Remember smaller always costs more for the same thing.

Surprisingly to me, not the experience this time around. The NUC and Zotac models have easily been less expensive than any other assembled-components or full system based on similar specs based on my shopping. - Evan

On Fri, 17 May 2019 at 11:38, Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 05:05:52AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:

...

Hi all,

I'm looking to upgrade my PC that's served me well for about 8 years, but it's starting to be unreliable and I can't upgrade the RAM beyond 4GB. So I'm looking at a new desktop system that will be used mainly for many-tabs-open browsing and multimedia editing using openshot, audacity, etc. Of course must run Linux well.

I am currently looking at two NUC-form-factor barebones systems that use the 8th gen Intel i7, an Intel model available through CC < https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=570_7_1203_1157&item_id=130569

and a Zotac model available from Amazon <https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B079H24SWZ/>. Both are about the same price. I would be installing 16GB RAM, an SSD and two screens.

Can anyone offer any advice whether to go with one, the other, or neither? Are there better places to buy?

Are you particularly attached to the tiny size for any reason? Remember smaller always costs more for the same thing.

My 6 year old laptop has higher specs than that NUC, never mind what my 6 year old desktop has in it. I guess they were a bit overkill at the time and the reason I haven't had to upgrade anything in years (and still don't).

Lennart: One problem with claiming "my 6 year old X has higher specs" is that it doesn't account for the generational differences in the Intel chips. Our desktops got "upgraded" at work, but I was thoroughly unimpressed because we went from an i5 to an i5, and from 8G to 8G ... but we also went from 3rd to 8th generation. A clunky Python script I run weekly to process web statistics went from 20 minutes to 2 minutes. (Part of this could be throughput on the motherboard, or from the change from spinning disk to SSD, but I think it's mostly processor.) An order of magnitude is nothing to scoff at. Evan: From a security point of view (Rowhammer, Fallout, RIDL, ZombieLoad ...) I would encourage you to consider an AMD processor. (Or better yet, ARM - but that's not really viable on the desktop yet.) AMD isn't totally immune to the plethora of recent attacks, but it's a lot better off. (I say this, but I'm writing you from an 8th gen i7 bought in the middle of that series of appalling revelations.) -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com

Perhap AMD flaws haven't been discovered yet. But the current score shows AMD ahead.

This. The cynic in me though goes, that's a bad thing. Because no one thinks at this point in time that AMD is worth exploiting, and who knows what is lurking there. Dhaval

Evan: From a security point of view (Rowhammer, Fallout, RIDL, ZombieLoad ...) I would encourage you to consider an AMD processor. (Or better yet, ARM - but that's not really viable on the desktop yet.) AMD isn't totally immune to the plethora of recent attacks, but it's a lot better off. (I say this, but I'm writing you from an 8th gen i7 bought in the middle of that series of appalling revelations.)

Honestly, the latest round of flaws are nothing special. For most desktop use case, I wouldn't worry. It is very difficult to exploit it. If you are really worried, go for something like an i3, which is essentially an i5 with HT disabled. I would be worried about several easier to exploit issues before worrying about MDS or L1TF. (Meltdown was different, but newer CPUs already have it fixed in hardware). Something like Spectre affects every single modern CPU which does speculative execution and we will be fighting it for a long long time. (Of course, if you are in a cloud environment, the situation is different). Dhaval

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 5:46 PM Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 01:05:34AM +0200, Dhaval Giani via talk wrote:

...

Honestly, the latest round of flaws are nothing special. For most desktop use case, I wouldn't worry. It is very difficult to exploit it. If you are really worried, go for something like an i3, which is essentially an i5 with HT disabled. I would be worried about several easier to exploit issues before worrying about MDS or L1TF. (Meltdown was different, but newer CPUs already have it fixed in hardware). Something like Spectre affects every single modern CPU which does speculative execution and we will be fighting it for a long long time.

(Of course, if you are in a cloud environment, the situation is different).

Actually the i5 has no HT, the i3 always does. The i5 is essentially an i7 with HT off.

This led me on chase, because Intel friends suggested what I said. I haven't looked too closely yet to see the difference between i3/i5/i7, but both i3/i5 do NOT have HT as per ark.intel. If i were to make a guess about the difference between i3/i5, I would go towards the turbo boost capability. But it is late where I am, and I am speaking early tomorrow morning :-), so I will look into it tomorrow, and probably ask a couple of Intel folks here. Dhaval

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 11:20 PM Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 10:13:22PM +0200, Dhaval Giani wrote:

...

This led me on chase, because Intel friends suggested what I said. I haven't looked too closely yet to see the difference between i3/i5/i7, but both i3/i5 do NOT have HT as per ark.intel. If i were to make a guess about the difference between i3/i5, I would go towards the turbo boost capability. But it is late where I am, and I am speaking early tomorrow morning :-), so I will look into it tomorrow, and probably ask a couple of Intel folks here.

There are only a few i3 models that have 4 actual cores. Almost all are 2 core with hyperthreading. The i5 on the other hand was almost always 4 cores (now 6 cores on the latest generation) without hyperthreading. There were a few low end models that were exceptions and were configured like the i3 with 2 cores and hyperthreading. So for the i3 hyperthreading was the norm and for the i5 hyperthreading was the exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i3_microprocessors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i5_microprocessors

At the high end the i7 always had hyperthreading until the latest generation where some no longer do (the i9 does though). Apparently 8th gen i7 with 6 cores and hyperthreading is replaced by 9th gen i7 with 8 cores and no hyperthreading.

I am looking at https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/192990/intel-core-i9-99... -> Has SMT https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/191047/intel-core-i7-98... -> Has SMT https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/191051/intel-core-i5-96... -> Doesn't have SMT https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/191126/intel-core-i3-93... -> Doesn't have SMT (I just picked the first one in each list, so obviously I haven't looked deeper into it). Dhaval

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 06:23:33PM -0400, Giles Orr via talk wrote:

Lennart: One problem with claiming "my 6 year old X has higher specs" is that it doesn't account for the generational differences in the Intel chips. Our desktops got "upgraded" at work, but I was thoroughly unimpressed because we went from an i5 to an i5, and from 8G to 8G ... but we also went from 3rd to 8th generation. A clunky Python script I run weekly to process web statistics went from 20 minutes to 2 minutes. (Part of this could be throughput on the motherboard, or from the change from spinning disk to SSD, but I think it's mostly processor.) An order of magnitude is nothing to scoff at.

Most of that is almost certainly the SSD. It makes a huge difference to anything that does IO. I did add an SSD to my 6 year old laptop and wow did that make a difference. Did the clock rate change a lot between those two i5 machines? Also a few i5 models in the past were only dual core rather than quad core. Most (if not all) 8th gen are 6 core. A quick check of some cpu speed benchmarks between 3rd and 8th gen shows that at the same clock speed they have gained about 30% performance. Not bad, but also not that impressive for 5 years work. Intel's i series have not had any huge jumps in performance in quite a few years, except for code taking advantage of new aes and sse 4.2 instructions, although my 3rd gen i7 in the laptop has aes too, so it is just missing sse 4.2, and runs the same base clock speed as the one in the NUC. The laptop also has much faster graphics than the NUC's intel graphics.

Evan: From a security point of view (Rowhammer, Fallout, RIDL, ZombieLoad ...) I would encourage you to consider an AMD processor. (Or better yet, ARM - but that's not really viable on the desktop yet.) AMD isn't totally immune to the plethora of recent attacks, but it's a lot better off. (I say this, but I'm writing you from an 8th gen i7 bought in the middle of that series of appalling revelations.)

AMD is certainly looking very interesting these days (after years of not being that interesting). -- Len Sorensen

On Fri, 17 May 2019 at 11:59, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

| I'm looking to upgrade my PC that's served me well for about 8 years, but | it's starting to be unreliable and I can't upgrade the RAM beyond 4GB.

Unreliable: probably not worth the effort to diagnose.

Can't upgrade beyond 4G: Really? My 8-year-old desktop computers can do a lot better than that. What model is it?

It's an old AMD-based ASUS mobo that's supposed to take more. I bought upgrade RAM according to the docs, it was seen in the BIOS diagnostic but the OS refuses to see it. I'm tired of throwing good hours after old ones after reading and following every possible remedy. Enough.

I like these little computers. There's not a lot of reason to add PCIe cards or optical drives to a computer these days. The one remaining need is for graphics cards.

There is an HDMI port to the Intel one as well as a Thunderbolt port to handle Displayport video. I'll need to read up and figure what equipment I'll need to split out 5.1 audio (with is currently done using an optical cable). Wasn't Thunderbird an Apple thing? - often only room for one "disk", 2.5" SATA, but sometimes also m.2

(SATA or NVMe). I like having both: a fast SSD and a larger capacity spinning disk.

I already have a 2.5 SSD ready to be used. The new Intel NUCs have a capacity for something called "Optane", which looks like fast NVRAM (16 or 32 GB) used as extended cache. I have a choice of installing one of those, or using the M.2 slot for a conventional SSD to hold the OS. There are or were other brands of NUC-like computers. Gigabyte's BRIX, MSI

Cubi, and who knows what else.

I've looked at/for many of these brands as well as the category-creator, Shuttle. The Intel and Zotac still look best. Thanks for your help! - Evan

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 1:00 PM Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

On Fri, 17 May 2019 at 11:59, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

...

| I'm looking to upgrade my PC that's served me well for about 8 years, but | it's starting to be unreliable and I can't upgrade the RAM beyond 4GB.

Unreliable: probably not worth the effort to diagnose.

Can't upgrade beyond 4G: Really? My 8-year-old desktop computers can do a lot better than that. What model is it?

It's an old AMD-based ASUS mobo that's supposed to take more. I bought upgrade RAM according to the docs, it was seen in the BIOS diagnostic but the OS refuses to see it. I'm tired of throwing good hours after old ones after reading and following every possible remedy. Enough.

...

I like these little computers. There's not a lot of reason to add PCIe cards or optical drives to a computer these days. The one remaining need is for graphics cards.

There is an HDMI port to the Intel one as well as a Thunderbolt port to handle Displayport video. I'll need to read up and figure what equipment I'll need to split out 5.1 audio (with is currently done using an optical cable).

Check your device logos. Both devices need to be specifically enabled for Displayport over USB-C. (SS) with the usb trident for Displayport.

Wasn't Thunderbird an Apple thing?

- often only room for one "disk", 2.5" SATA, but sometimes also m.2

...

(SATA or NVMe). I like having both: a fast SSD and a larger capacity spinning disk.

I already have a 2.5 SSD ready to be used.

The new Intel NUCs have a capacity for something called "Optane", which looks like fast NVRAM (16 or 32 GB) used as extended cache. I have a choice of installing one of those, or using the M.2 slot for a conventional SSD to hold the OS.

Optane was intended to be a cache memory to increase the performance of conventional spinning HD's under Windows OS. However, I've been booting Fedora from both a 500gb SSD and 32gb Optane Nvme as I tinker with my own desktop. Most certainly booting to a login prompt is fractionally quicker on the Nvme than on the conventional SSD. However recently I up-sized my Nvme and have populated my M.2 slots with a 250gb WD black Nvme for boot and now added an additional 1TB to the second M.2 slot with F29 still on the SSD. Copying a 100gb image to the 1TB drive really hit performance tho and that was probably due to the lack of a decent heat sink. I just ordered a hteatsink fro the internal 1TB and an external USB-C enclosure for the 32gb drive. Perhaps with the NUC form factor heat might be a problem on a larger sized Nvme but with USB-C you have wiggle room for adaptation.

There are or were other brands of NUC-like computers. Gigabyte's BRIX,

...

MSI Cubi, and who knows what else.

I've looked at/for many of these brands as well as the category-creator, Shuttle. The Intel and Zotac still look best. Thanks for your help!

- Evan

--- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

-- Russell

On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 11:42 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk < talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

| From: Russell Reiter via talk <talk@gtalug.org>

| Optane was intended to be a cache memory to increase the performance of | conventional spinning HD's under Windows OS. However, I've been booting | Fedora from both a 500gb SSD and 32gb Optane Nvme as I tinker with my own | desktop.

I think Optane is just a brand name and that brand name gets attached to several different things, some of which are not yet being sold.

True enough, sometimes it's hard to sort specifications from hyperbole.

The original promise was: non-volatile memory that would get speed close to RAM and price close to flash. (They also need better durability than flash.) There's a big gap between those, and anything in between ought to have a market. They just haven't been able to accomplish much.

- they wanted to produce things that fit in RAM sockets. That meant either

(1) no change from RAM interface (unlikely, but suggested-by-omission in early marketing) or

(2) memory interfaces that were augmented to support the new protocols (delivered with some new Xeons, I think)

- the NVMe stuff has had much worse durability than originally promised.

- the NVMe stuff has had quite small capacity compared with most SSDs

- NVMe SSD has mostly been fast enough that the Optane stuff isn't compellingly better

| Most certainly booting to a login prompt is fractionally quicker | on the Nvme than on the conventional SSD.

That's what I'd expect. But I'll admit to no experience with Optane and I haven't been following it closely.

| However recently I up-sized my | Nvme and have populated my M.2 slots with a 250gb WD black Nvme for boot | and now added an additional 1TB to the second M.2 slot with F29 still on | the SSD. Copying a 100gb image to the 1TB drive really hit performance tho

SSDs come with different performance trade-offs. Most inexpensive SSDs have (on-board) controllers with only small amounts of RAM. This makes them slow down a lot after a modest burst of intensive writing. That's a fine trade-off for many of us but not for all workloads.

You can pay more and get SSDs with enough RAM to not have this performance problem. I don't know enough to give specific advice.

I have recently learned that some cheap NVMe drives can ask the OS to allocate system RAM for the exclusive use of the controller. This isn't a conventional data cache, but something much stranger. It's called "Host Memory Buffer" (HMB). I think that vendors don't explain it because they think consumers won't understand it.

HMB might be a great trade-off, or a horrible hack. I don't know. What happens when the power fails? Or when the system crashes / reboots?

Recent Linux and Windows support HMB. I assume that UEFI firmware does not. So use of HMB must be an optional speed-up.

| and that was probably due to the lack of a decent heat sink. | I just ordered a hteatsink fro the internal 1TB

Why do you think that this was heat-related? It might be, but that would not be my first guess. (I am not an expert on this.)

Apparently, at least on Crucial products, there is built in thermal monitoring which will throttle speeds. Here's a link to the 1TB Nvme. On sale for the next few days for $147.00, about $40.00 less than I paid. https://m.newegg.ca/crucial-p1-1tb/p/N82E16820156199?item=N82E16820156199&m_ver=1 Here's a link to a review of Crucial's Thermal Throttling capacities https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/P1_NVMe_M.2_SSD_1_TB/7.html

| Perhaps with the NUC form factor heat might | be a problem on a larger sized Nvme but with USB-C you have wiggle room for | adaptation.

The NUC form factor certainly reduces the heat disposal and thus limits components. But the main such component is the CPU. I've not heard of it being a problem for consumer 3.5" SSDs (what Evan intends to use) or NVMe drives. --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

-- Russell

On Mon, May 20, 2019, 6:40 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

| From: Russell Reiter via talk <talk@gtalug.org>

| On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 11:42 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk < | talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

| > Why do you think that this was heat-related? It might be, but that | > would not be my first guess. (I am not an expert on this.) | | Apparently, at least on Crucial products, there is built in thermal | monitoring which will throttle speeds. | | Here's a link to the 1TB Nvme. On sale for the next few days for $147.00, | about $40.00 less than I paid. | | https://m.newegg.ca/crucial-p1-1tb/p/N82E16820156199?item=N82E16820156199&m_ver=1 | | Here's a link to a review of Crucial's Thermal Throttling capacities

Wow, prices sure have dropped. (I wish I had more sockets that would take NVMe.)

It's the price drop which made me change my build plan. I was going to have just one SSD for boot and install xTB Sata disk drives. I tried out M.2 just because I could. 90$ (tax inc.) for 32gb seemed ok for fun. Then I put 250gb in slot 2 so I could run multiple versions of Fedora while I came to terms with learning about systemd and dealing with recent fencing in side channel attack mitigations. For the last year the z370 issued so many firmware updates, I stopped doing them til last month. However$180.00 w tax for 1TB was too good to pass up.

| https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/P1_NVMe_M.2_SSD_1_TB/7.html

Thanks. Quite interesting. I hope your heat sink helps.

I think it will help some. Transfer speeds aren't all that critical for me at this point but keeping things cooler can't hurt as far as EOL of the component goes.

Looks like a good choice for a drive.

Something I didn't know:

=> Thermal throttling is an issue for nearly all M.2 NVMe SSDs, and the Crucial P1 is no exception. Not cooled and fully loaded, it will heat up quickly and start throttling after a bit more than a minute at full load. Now, don't get scared. In that time, the drive processes almost 100 GB of data. Again, => highly unlikely in a consumer scenario. Still, I would have wished for a higher temperature limit and a more graceful drop in performance during thermal throttle. Samsung, for example, has implemented that very well.

The problem I was thinking of is shown in "write intensive usage":

<https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/P1_NVMe_M.2_SSD_1_TB/6.html>

But they suggest it hits after 140GB of writes, not 100G you reported:

I didn't benchmark the transfer, I only observed the transfer countdown thingy in the file manager. After reading reviews of the drive some M$ users said transfer speed dropped off at around 50gb. My 100gb was me clearing up the WD drive in preparation for Fedora 30, which it is running now.

| > | the SSD. Copying a 100gb image to the 1TB drive really hit performance | > tho

You can see a very large performance cliff at 140GB.

So either what you are observing is not this cliff, or you are doing something else (reading the image from the drive?) to move the cliff earlier.

The heat cliff should be much much sooner, I think.

Their diagram showed the thermal cliff happened (without any fan) after about 60 seconds of 160MB/s writing. That would be about 96GB. Funny that you'd notice that with a 100GB image since only the last 4GB should be slow. That should only take another 7 or 8 seconds (instead of 2.5 seconds). That isn't something I'd notice.

The last few seconds were at 98mb. I didn't actually observe the first few, but in the middle I saw transfer speed start to drop.

Copying a 200 GB image should be a LOT slower than a 100 GB image (if there is no fan). The second 100GB should take almost 200 seconds.

After 140GB, the caching cliff should hit. Surprisingly, this doesn't show up in the article's Thermal Throttling graphs.

There's something fishy here.

| > SSDs come with different performance trade-offs. Most inexpensive | > SSDs have (on-board) controllers with only small amounts of RAM. This | > makes them slow down a lot after a modest burst of intensive writing. | > That's a fine trade-off for many of us but not for all workloads.

The Crucial drive has a 1 GiB RAM chip onboard, not like the cheap ones I was thinking of.

I think that the cliff for cheap ones comes much earlier, due to running out of mapping RAM.

Thanks for the link. I had a quick glance and I'll read in depth later. ---

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