desktop thoughts on Black Friday
I love shopping for computers: studying what features are interesting or useful or inexpensive. I like looking for deals (recreational). I've been looking for non-notebooks (usually called desktops, even though few are on desks, and they vary in size). My current fleet is either Haswell or older, or Atom-based. My my main desktop's CPU is Haswell: Intel Core i7-4770, bought seven years ago. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)> I have not seen any really compelling reason to update these, even though I want to. Here are some features that my old computers don't have. They haven't yet compelled me to buy a new computer, even on this Black Friday. Up until now, I've replaced my main desktop every two or three years. Something shiny and new would come along. The old one would be relegated to other purposes. Here's a list of the things that make me consider getting a new desktop. Have I missed any that matter to you? ==== UltraHD ==== My old computers don't support HDMI 2.9. This makes is a barrier to using wonderful and cheap UltraHD TV sets. I use work-arounds: Haswell-era DisplayPort supports UltraHD. But not HDR (10 bits per colour per pixel) at that resolution. Dongles that convert DP to HDMI 2.0 are pretty hit-or-miss. New video cards are an obvious answer, if the computer will accept them. They are often noisy, burn power, generate heat, and are expensive. It is surprising how many new computers fail to support HDMI 2.x. Even figuring out if a particular computer supports it is often quite hard to discover from the specifications. - I was looking at a great deal on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q Tiny gen 2, with a very current AMD APU. But it doesn't support HDMI 2.x. <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/lenovo-canada-epp-perkopolis-796-thinkcentre-m75q-amd-renoir-4650ge-16gb-ddr4-3200-512gb-nvme-2423274/> - my XPS 15 notebook, with an UltraHD display, doesn't even support HDMI 2.x! - there has been a very good deal on a medium range notebook with the latest AMD chip. Its HDMI port doesn't support HDMI 2.x (but this isn't documented in the specs) <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/dell-dell-15-4500u-usb-c-dp-4k60-65w-pd-649-99-584-99-newacct-526-49-newacct-rk-very-hot-2387232/> ==== faster CPUs and more cores ==== Little of what I do is processor-bound. New processors are perhaps twice as fast (my unresearched belief). Not very compelling. My main desktop has 4 cores (8 if you count SMT). I doubt that more cores would help much of what I do. ==== NVMe SSD support ==== SATA SSD seems fast enough for my purposes. NVMe would be better, but would I notice? ==== fancy new features added to USB after USB 3.0 ==== This seems important, especially in notebooks, but I don't know what I'm missing. ==== hardware acceleration of crypto ==== AES and more is useful. I most want it on the little PCs I use as gateways for my networks (gateways are routers, firewalls, and more). ==== hardware acceleration of audio and video CODECs ==== This is most useful on streaming endpoints. But all desktops now seem to do some of that. DRM is mixed into this, often sidelining Linux desktops. We end up doing most of our TV-like streaming with a Google TV box so this takes the requirement off our desktops. ==== support for video-calling and video-conferencing ==== We just use notebooks for this. ==== power usage ==== Newer desktops could use less power but probably don't.
On 2020-11-28 12:31 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
… ==== NVMe SSD support ====
Sometimes need weird proprietary drivers to debug/get best performance out of. When my Intel NVMe thingy failed I needed a blob to see the diagnostics. I hope that's no longer the case.
==== fancy new features added to USB after USB 3.0 ====
Charging, expensive cables.
DRM is mixed into this, often sidelining Linux desktops.
Netflix seems to work with the Firefox Widevine plugin. It even had a "Do you want to install this - you might not want to" popup.
==== support for video-calling and video-conferencing ====
We just use notebooks for this.
The advantage of recent notebooks and tablets for this is hardware acceleration of audio and video CODECs. All the video platforms are processor intensive, and older laptops struggle and get rather warm. Happy shopping. I'm semi-underwhelmed with the Rock Pi X I bought: unless you really need an x86 SBC in Raspberry Pi form-factor, the current Raspberry Pis are faster and much cheaper than this board's rather insipid Cherry Trail Atom. cheers, Stewart
| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | On 2020-11-28 12:31 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: | > … ==== NVMe SSD support ==== | | Sometimes need weird proprietary drivers to debug/get best performance out of. | When my Intel NVMe thingy failed I needed a blob to see the diagnostics. I | hope that's no longer the case. Ewww. I did not know that. We do have a couple of laptops with sockets that support NVMe SSDs. I think that one actually has an NVMe SSD (one has a SATA drive in that socket). I've not noticed anything about this disk, a great state of affairs. | > ==== fancy new features added to USB after USB 3.0 ==== | | Charging, expensive cables. Somehow charging now involves negotiation (of voltage? of current?) and this seems to require cables to have active circuitry. That makes them expensive. Mind you, sometimes USB C cables are neither expensive nor smart. Or perhaps you are referring to cables that connect DisplayPort or other odd things to USB C / 3.x. These are necessary because new laptops have fewer and fewer kinds of ports. And fewer ports of any kind. | > DRM is mixed into this, often sidelining Linux desktops. | | Netflix seems to work with the Firefox Widevine plugin. It even had a "Do you | want to install this - you might not want to" popup. Interesting. One complaint about cheap TV boxes from Shenzen companies is that they are not authorized to display things like Netflix and YouTube at better than Standard Definition (detailed rules are not in my head). I wonder whether FireFox on them would solve that problem. We use a Xaiomi Mi Box, which is running licensed Android TV. There are a bunch of inexpensive AMLOGIC s905x3 boxes which could then be interesting. (s905x3-b is the same but with a Dolby Audio license; rare and expensive.) Consider, for example, this colourful model <https://www.banggood.com/HK1-Box-Amlogic-S905X3-4GB-RAM-32GB-ROM-5G-WIFI-bluetooth-4_0-1000M-LAN-Android-9_0-4K-8K-H_265-TV-Box-Support-Google-Assistant-p-1608874.html> Comparing with Raspberry Pi 4: - cheaper especially when including power supply and case and SD card. - CPU is a bit weaker, but the hardware crypto is way faster. - Armbian (derived from Raspbian, derived from debian) should be trivial to put on it. - only some have gigabit ethernet - eMMC should be faster than SD - no ability to hook up random signals Some Shenzen boxes are considerably more expensive for reasons I don't understand. Those with s922x or Rockchip rk3399 SoCs, for example. | > ==== support for video-calling and video-conferencing ==== | > | > We just use notebooks for this. | | The advantage of recent notebooks and tablets for this is hardware | acceleration of audio and video CODECs. All the video platforms are processor | intensive, and older laptops struggle and get rather warm. Yeah. I'm not clear which chips have which codecs. But usually newer is better and more expensive is better. | Happy shopping. I'm semi-underwhelmed with the Rock Pi X I bought: unless you | really need an x86 SBC in Raspberry Pi form-factor, the current Raspberry Pis | are faster and much cheaper than this board's rather insipid Cherry Trail | Atom. Thanks for the report. Linux support for x86 is superb, especially mainstream distros. Cherry Trail is very old. Intel has 90% thrown in the towel on mainstream adoption of Atoms. But they are still milking the old designs. Where Apple has pushed ARM is pretty interesting. Luckily for AMD and Intel, they aren't a chip vendor.
On 11/28/20 3:57 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| On 2020-11-28 12:31 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: | > … ==== NVMe SSD support ==== | | Sometimes need weird proprietary drivers to debug/get best performance out of. | When my Intel NVMe thingy failed I needed a blob to see the diagnostics. I | hope that's no longer the case.
Ewww. I did not know that.
We do have a couple of laptops with sockets that support NVMe SSDs. I think that one actually has an NVMe SSD (one has a SATA drive in that socket). I've not noticed anything about this disk, a great state of affairs.
| > ==== fancy new features added to USB after USB 3.0 ==== | | Charging, expensive cables.
Somehow charging now involves negotiation (of voltage? of current?) and this seems to require cables to have active circuitry. That makes them expensive. Mind you, sometimes USB C cables are neither expensive nor smart.
Or perhaps you are referring to cables that connect DisplayPort or other odd things to USB C / 3.x. These are necessary because new laptops have fewer and fewer kinds of ports. And fewer ports of any kind.
| > DRM is mixed into this, often sidelining Linux desktops. | | Netflix seems to work with the Firefox Widevine plugin. It even had a "Do you | want to install this - you might not want to" popup.
Interesting.
One complaint about cheap TV boxes from Shenzen companies is that they are not authorized to display things like Netflix and YouTube at better than Standard Definition (detailed rules are not in my head). I wonder whether FireFox on them would solve that problem.
We use a Xaiomi Mi Box, which is running licensed Android TV.
There are a bunch of inexpensive AMLOGIC s905x3 boxes which could then be interesting. (s905x3-b is the same but with a Dolby Audio license; rare and expensive.)
Consider, for example, this colourful model <https://www.banggood.com/HK1-Box-Amlogic-S905X3-4GB-RAM-32GB-ROM-5G-WIFI-bluetooth-4_0-1000M-LAN-Android-9_0-4K-8K-H_265-TV-Box-Support-Google-Assistant-p-1608874.html>
Comparing with Raspberry Pi 4:
- cheaper especially when including power supply and case and SD card.
- CPU is a bit weaker, but the hardware crypto is way faster.
- Armbian (derived from Raspbian, derived from debian) should be trivial to put on it.
- only some have gigabit ethernet
- eMMC should be faster than SD
- no ability to hook up random signals
Some Shenzen boxes are considerably more expensive for reasons I don't understand. Those with s922x or Rockchip rk3399 SoCs, for example.
| > ==== support for video-calling and video-conferencing ==== | > | > We just use notebooks for this. | | The advantage of recent notebooks and tablets for this is hardware | acceleration of audio and video CODECs. All the video platforms are processor | intensive, and older laptops struggle and get rather warm.
Yeah. I'm not clear which chips have which codecs. But usually newer is better and more expensive is better.
| Happy shopping. I'm semi-underwhelmed with the Rock Pi X I bought: unless you | really need an x86 SBC in Raspberry Pi form-factor, the current Raspberry Pis | are faster and much cheaper than this board's rather insipid Cherry Trail | Atom.
Thanks for the report.
Linux support for x86 is superb, especially mainstream distros.
Cherry Trail is very old. Intel has 90% thrown in the towel on mainstream adoption of Atoms. But they are still milking the old designs.
Where Apple has pushed ARM is pretty interesting. Luckily for AMD and Intel, they aren't a chip vendor.
So I've not upgraded my computer in a few years. Honestly I would suspect you would get more out of just updating bottlenecks if there are any or want something new by adding new hardware. Even most people who play video games these days just use a 4 year old computer and update the GPU as that's the only recent hardware upgrade that matters. Reusing components has become rather common and it may be a better way to go. As for codecs I'm not sure of what is using x265 but that may be the only missing from Haswell chips that is mainstream now. That's just my thoughts through, Nick
--- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- Fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism. - Thomas Nagel
Yeah, my buys this season were upgrades at the human interface level, a second 4K monitor and a new keyboard (and a few weeks ago, an ergonomic vertical mouse). Through the year, upgrading RAM and replacing all boot drives from spinning disks to SSDs have provided noticeable performance boost and are relatively cheap. Replacing the PCs I have means a significant investment for an incremental boost in performance. If not involved in really intensive stuff like gaming or video editing, it just seems that most PCs of the last decade seem to have enough power. I briefly considered one of those neat Chuwi LarkBox Pros <https://store.chuwi.com/products/chuwi-larkbox-pro> for connection to the new TV. But I decided that I can wait for the Raspberry Pi 5 that, I hope, will have an even greater power boost and, like the tint Chuwi, support M.2 storage. If the RPi5 doesn't come out in 2021 or disappoints, the Chuwi remains a fallback. Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56 On Sat, 28 Nov 2020 at 17:03, Nicholas Krause via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| On 2020-11-28 12:31 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: | > … ==== NVMe SSD support ==== | | Sometimes need weird proprietary drivers to debug/get best performance out of. | When my Intel NVMe thingy failed I needed a blob to see the diagnostics. I | hope that's no longer the case.
Ewww. I did not know that.
We do have a couple of laptops with sockets that support NVMe SSDs. I think that one actually has an NVMe SSD (one has a SATA drive in that socket). I've not noticed anything about this disk, a great state of affairs.
| > ==== fancy new features added to USB after USB 3.0 ==== | | Charging, expensive cables.
Somehow charging now involves negotiation (of voltage? of current?) and this seems to require cables to have active circuitry. That makes them expensive. Mind you, sometimes USB C cables are neither expensive nor smart.
Or perhaps you are referring to cables that connect DisplayPort or other odd things to USB C / 3.x. These are necessary because new laptops have fewer and fewer kinds of ports. And fewer ports of any kind.
| > DRM is mixed into this, often sidelining Linux desktops. | | Netflix seems to work with the Firefox Widevine plugin. It even had a "Do you | want to install this - you might not want to" popup.
Interesting.
One complaint about cheap TV boxes from Shenzen companies is that they are not authorized to display things like Netflix and YouTube at better than Standard Definition (detailed rules are not in my head). I wonder whether FireFox on them would solve that problem.
We use a Xaiomi Mi Box, which is running licensed Android TV.
There are a bunch of inexpensive AMLOGIC s905x3 boxes which could then be interesting. (s905x3-b is the same but with a Dolby Audio license; rare and expensive.)
Consider, for example, this colourful model < https://www.banggood.com/HK1-Box-Amlogic-S905X3-4GB-RAM-32GB-ROM-5G-WIFI-blu...
Comparing with Raspberry Pi 4:
- cheaper especially when including power supply and case and SD card.
- CPU is a bit weaker, but the hardware crypto is way faster.
- Armbian (derived from Raspbian, derived from debian) should be trivial to put on it.
- only some have gigabit ethernet
- eMMC should be faster than SD
- no ability to hook up random signals
Some Shenzen boxes are considerably more expensive for reasons I don't understand. Those with s922x or Rockchip rk3399 SoCs, for example.
| > ==== support for video-calling and video-conferencing ==== | > | > We just use notebooks for this. | | The advantage of recent notebooks and tablets for this is hardware | acceleration of audio and video CODECs. All the video platforms are
| intensive, and older laptops struggle and get rather warm.
Yeah. I'm not clear which chips have which codecs. But usually newer is better and more expensive is better.
| Happy shopping. I'm semi-underwhelmed with the Rock Pi X I bought: unless you | really need an x86 SBC in Raspberry Pi form-factor, the current Raspberry Pis | are faster and much cheaper than this board's rather insipid Cherry Trail | Atom.
Thanks for the report.
Linux support for x86 is superb, especially mainstream distros.
Cherry Trail is very old. Intel has 90% thrown in the towel on
On 11/28/20 3:57 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: processor mainstream
adoption of Atoms. But they are still milking the old designs.
Where Apple has pushed ARM is pretty interesting. Luckily for AMD and Intel, they aren't a chip vendor.
So I've not upgraded my computer in a few years. Honestly I would suspect you would get more out of just updating bottlenecks if there are any or want something new by adding new hardware. Even most people who play video games these days just use a 4 year old computer and update the GPU as that's the only recent hardware upgrade that matters.
Reusing components has become rather common and it may be a better way to go. As for codecs I'm not sure of what is using x265 but that may be the only missing from Haswell chips that is mainstream now.
That's just my thoughts through, Nick
--- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list
https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- Fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism. - Thomas Nagel --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Yeah, my buys this season were upgrades at the human interface level, a | second 4K monitor and a new keyboard (and a few weeks ago, an ergonomic | vertical mouse). | | Through the year, upgrading RAM and replacing all boot drives from spinning | disks to SSDs have provided noticeable performance boost and are relatively | cheap. Yeah. Well today (still Sunday for me), I kind of went nuts. My son's 3 or 4 year old system was failing in a way that I couldn't diagnose over the phone. So: chuck out the motherboard and 6th gen i5 and replace it, probably with an AMD 3700X. Boy AMD is popular; the current gen is scarce and not discounted. Then late at night I came upon two deals that I could not and did not resist: <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/lenovo-canada-thinkcentre-m75n-iot-nano-desktop-amd-dual-core-256-ssd-238-2424677/> <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/dell-dell-precision-workstation-3440-i3-10100-8gb-253-taxes-2424758/> The first one beats the Chuwi, I think, for driving TV. The second would take more power than I would like for that application. Intel video disappoints me. I do think that the Xe of the Intel Core i 11th generation might well be a winner.
On 2020-11-30 4:16 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Then late at night I came upon two deals that I could not and did not resist: <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/lenovo-canada-thinkcentre-m75n-iot-nano-desktop-amd-dual-core-256-ssd-238-2424677/> <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/dell-dell-precision-workstation-3440-i3-10100-8gb-253-taxes-2424758/>
Both of the clickthroughs on those RFD links gave me "oh hell no" adblock redirects to possible scam sites. The M75n-IoT is pretty bold to have dual RS-232 serial ports on the front of a 2020 machine. Decent price, too, for something industrial-rated. cheers, Stewart
| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Both of the clickthroughs on those RFD links gave me "oh hell no" adblock | redirects to possible scam sites. Yeah. Their affiliate stuff gums some things up. I don't know about scam sites though. | The M75n-IoT is pretty bold to have dual RS-232 serial ports on the front of a | 2020 machine. Decent price, too, for something industrial-rated. There's another amazing Lenovo deal at the moment, off and on. https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/desktops-and-all-in-ones/thinkcentre/m-nano-series/thinkcentre-m90n-iot/p/11AHS0B100?clickid=VmSS0J2fmxyLRiPwUx0Mo3b1UkEwPq3XPyCX3g0&irgwc=1&PID=341376&acid=ww%3Aaffiliate%3Abv0as6 I really don't know how much of that URL is junk or virus DNA. Until 3AM tomorrow, for $179 + tax, a ThinkCentre M90n IoT; - Celeron 4205u. This is NOT an Atom. It is a Whiskey Lake processor (8th gen Core i architecture). AES in hardware! https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/189309/intel-celeron-pr... - 4G RAM, soldered - 128G PCIe SSD - Windows a0 Home 64 So: a steal. Lenovoe claims that the Web Price is $919, discounted to $179.00. Both numbers are equally astonishing to me: one too high, the other too low.
| From: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Until 3AM tomorrow, for $179 + tax, a ThinkCentre M90n IoT; Another link gets you this for $169. https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/workperksca/desktops-and-all-in-ones/thinkcentre/m-nano-series/ThinkCentre-M90n-IoT/p/thinkcentre-m90n-iot?clickid=VmSS0J2fmxyLRiPwUx0Mo3b1UkEwPa0ePyCX3g0&irgwc=1&PID=341376&acid=ww%3Aaffiliate%3Abv0as6
On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 09:31:49PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Another link gets you this for $169. https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/workperksca/desktops-and-all-in-ones/thinkcentre/m-nano-series/ThinkCentre-M90n-IoT/p/thinkcentre-m90n-iot?clickid=VmSS0J2fmxyLRiPwUx0Mo3b1UkEwPa0ePyCX3g0&irgwc=1&PID=341376&acid=ww%3Aaffiliate%3Abv0as6
They did have a few nice deals. Ended up ordering a Thinkpad P17 for my wife to replace the T430 (with an i5). Was deciding between an i5 with 8G ram and 256G SSD and T1000 graphics vs an i7 with 16G ram and 256G SSD and T2000 graphics. One for $1308 and the other for $1889. In the end we decided the higher spec'ed machine made more sense long term. Pretty sure this will be a noticable upgrade. On the other hand my W530 is still perfectly usable. I guess having nvidia graphics instead of only intel, and having the i7 rather than i5 makes a difference. I guess we will finally have a machine with better specs than the 8 year old mythtv server in the basement unless you count disk space. No laptop is going to win at that. -- Len Sorensen
On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 03:57:03PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Ewww. I did not know that.
We do have a couple of laptops with sockets that support NVMe SSDs. I think that one actually has an NVMe SSD (one has a SATA drive in that socket). I've not noticed anything about this disk, a great state of affairs.
I think any SSD is likely to require custom code to do diagnostics. S.M.A.R.T. never really was.
Somehow charging now involves negotiation (of voltage? of current?) and this seems to require cables to have active circuitry. That makes them expensive. Mind you, sometimes USB C cables are neither expensive nor smart.
Well for the cable, if you consider a resister to be active, then yes. The smarts are in the power supply and the device. They connect at 5V, standard USB, then negotiate using the USB-PD spec and agree to what voltage and current the device would like, after which the power supply changes the supply voltage and the device can power up fully and start charging or whatever it wants to do with the requested power. It works great, and means you can actually have a standard shared across devices like laptops and tablets and such for charging. The connector is also much better than any previous USB connector. Maybe not as durable as the USB-A but at least you don't always have to plug it in 3 times to get it right.
Or perhaps you are referring to cables that connect DisplayPort or other odd things to USB C / 3.x. These are necessary because new laptops have fewer and fewer kinds of ports. And fewer ports of any kind.
True they do like using the alternate mode on the USB-C ports to save space (although it also allows for single cable docking stations which is pretty handy). -- Len Sorensen
participants (5)
-
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Evan Leibovitch -
lsorense＠csclub.uwaterloo.ca -
Nicholas Krause -
Stewart C. Russell