Re: [gentoo-user] planning a new machine : comments welcome

[Frank Steinmetzger]

Am Sun, Mar 06, 2022 at 09:53:20PM -0500 schrieb Philip Webb:

> Thanks for all the replies so far : they have been carefully saved.
> Clearly, I need to look up component specs on the I/net
> & try to get upto-date with 2020s tech after  6,5 yr  absence.
>
> I don't do gaming : SGT puzzles are enough for me.

Then—from a graphics viewpoint—the 5700G will do just fine and then some.
Unfortunately, AMD does not currently cater well to the lower- or medium-tier
market, because at Intel you would still get a decent CPU for half the price
(at least here in Europe) *including* acceptable graphics.

There is the 5600G, which is the same as the 5700G, only with a little bit
slower clock and six cores instead of eight (including 2 threads per core,
of course), in case you want to save some more. I don’t suppose you have
high computational demands either, save for compiling packages?

> I use the HDD strictly for back-up + storage of infrequently used data
> + a Mint partition which allows me to use my scanner (another story).

Then there is no acute need for a “hot-head” fast disk.

> I don't want to have to rely entirely on an SSD which might fail suddenly :

I never lost that fear entirely myself. However, I’ve been using SSDs since
I built the PC that I was talking about. By now I own four -- I started out
in 2014 with a small and cheap Sandisk as system SSD for the PC. Another
even cheaper (thus slower) Sandisk works as system SSD in my Gentoo-based
NAS. In 2016 I bought a Crucial BX100 500 GB for the then-new laptop as main
drive. After a few years it became too small and was upgraded to a Crucial
MX100 2 TB. The 500 GB then went into the PC to replace the puny Sandisk,
and will probably soon go into a Mini-PC-as-a-server, once I get that 2 TB
M.2.

I haven’t had any total failures yet. (Sooner or later, everything fails, of
course.) I recently looked at the SMART values and in those 6 years (half
Gentoo, half Arch linux), the 500 GB SSD saw 6 TB of write volume. The
guaranteed volume is 72 TB. Tests by the press proved that drives usually
survive a multiple of that. Oh, I did buy an M.2 2242 for an external
enclosure once, and that one was—not dead—but quite sick on arrival. It
puked SMART errors soon after I purchased it and then I never got around to
send it back. I guess I bought too cheap for my own good.

But regarding those failures: I do regular (once a week, which I sometimes
forget) backups of my whole PC and laptop to an external HDD with Borg
backup. Then I rsync that backup to another USB disk. And I also sync much
of my data between the two multiple times a day with Unison. So I should be
fine if one of the SSDs fails suddenly. *fingers crossed*

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Qapla’
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Why did the orange go blind?  Because it was low on Vitamin C.