[TriLUG] Ideas for Replacing Home Office Workhorse Computer?

[Sean Korb via TriLUG]

I was just turned onto this one if your cheap budget is a little higher

https://medium.com/@timgasser/build-a-16-core-128gb-server-for-less-than-intels-new-10-core-cpu-c6de4d10a686

I will caution that the more modern CPUs will be much better on power
and if you score a Skylake processor you can get up to 40% higher
performance for some workloads over Haswell of the same MHz and all of
these blow away the Sandybridge described in the article.  Your use
case and workload will determine what works best for you.

It sure looks like a neat server to plink around with, and I very much
appreciate the cooling specifications for noise and comfort but I do
think I should take advantage on the window A/C unit savings specials
at Costco this season.

sean

On 12/18/18, Sean Korb <spkorb at gmail.com> wrote:
> For quiet and cool a modern server will do everything you need.  I'm a
> cheapskate so I picked up a used HP Z620 with dual 2Ghz 6 core
> sockets.  It runs a lot of VM workload without trouble but it... it's
> warm.  Qiuet and warm.  RAM is expensive still but you can get a
> package under $1200 and maybe even $500 if you get the right deal.
> They are being unloaded from leases the last 2 years or so.  I saw a
> z620 with 64GB on Creaigslist for $1500, it's a lot of power.  These
> don't come with onboard video so look for one with a card or put a
> spare in the pci slot.
>
> The z820 supports more RAM but the z420 is a different box.  The z420
> might be low power with a single 8 core socket.
>
> That old mac is a work of art, maybe you can run a cluster of 80 RPi
> Zeroes inside it?
>
> I also have a Liva 4GB Atom that runs on a heat sink and it runs very
> low power and it runs all my TV and day to day browsing.  I haven't
> tried virtualization but it's interesting to see these make their way
> onto the market and they are super cheap.  My Liva was less than $250
> in 2015 so the RAM and capabilities and price may have increased...
> just not to the level of your vintage Mac.
>
> sean
>
> On 12/17/18, Scott Chilcote via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> My home office computer is getting long in the tooth.  It's an
>> all-aluminum mac pro from 2007, has eight 2.8 GHz cores, and has been
>> upgraded over the years to 24 GB of memory and SSD drives.
>>
>> I use this box to run vmware guests with vmware fusion, and with as many
>> as four running at the same time.  It has been great for this purpose,
>> being wonderfully quiet and with scant evidence of bogging down.
>>
>> About the only thing that I'd knock is that it puts out significant
>> heat.  Since my office is on the south side of our house, I needed a
>> room AC to reduce operating the whole-house unit from May through
>> September.
>>
>> Apple Corp decided that I'd owned this computer long enough in 2015,
>> when they discontinued it from subsequent releases of MacOS.  VmWare
>> soon followed suit, as their updates and releases no longer support the
>> terminal version of the OS.
>>
>> The machine still worked fine until a couple of months ago, when it
>> decided to start having random spontaneous reboots.  There haven't been
>> that many yet, fewer than ten, but the writing's on the wall.  Guest
>> OSes are not happy with having their power slammed repeatedly, and in
>> particular those made by Microsoft.
>>
>> I've been doing a lot of thinking about what to replace this box with.
>> I'm not in love with Apple by any means.  Their most recent incarnation
>> of the Mac Pro is kind of old, and seems more appropriate for an art
>> museum than a home office (as the meme says, change my mind! ;-)
>>
>> The machine I would like to get will be powerful and quiet, and not pour
>> out a lot of heat when idling.  Some gaming-specific hardware comes
>> close, but I don't have much use for the high end graphics or blue LEDs.
>>
>> I'm wondering if I need to buy a new vmware license to switch to another
>> host operating system (for example, Linux).  I managed to get one of
>> these guests to run on virtualbox once, on my ubuntu laptop.  It was not
>> particularly reliable, and I had to reinstall it after it hung once or
>> twice.  That was years ago, however.  It would be good to know if
>> there's a virtual host for Linux that runs vmware guests reliably.
>>
>> If any LUGgers have experience with hardware and host OS setups that fit
>> these objectives, please pass the word.
>>
>> Many thanks!
>>
>> Scott C.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Scott Chilcote
>> scottchilcote at ncrrbiz.com
>> Cary, NC USA
>>
>> --
>> This message was sent to: Sean Korb <spkorb at gmail.com>
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>
>
> --
> Sean Korb spkorb at spkorb.org http://www.spkorb.org
> '65 Suprang,'68 Cougar,'78 R100/7,'60 Metro,'59 A35,'71 Pantera #1382
> "The more you drive, the less intelligent you get" --Miller
> "Computers are useless.  They can only give you answers." -P. Picasso
>


-- 
Sean Korb spkorb at spkorb.org http://www.spkorb.org
'65 Suprang,'68 Cougar,'78 R100/7,'60 Metro,'59 A35,'71 Pantera #1382
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you get" --Miller
"Computers are useless.  They can only give you answers." -P. Picasso