Repurpose old PC

[Andy Farman]

Sorry, I thought this was an advertisement for vacancies for retired Plod.....

 

[Drazyl]

are SSDs just drop in replacements for HDDs?

Yes, if you get a SATA SSD (the ones generally packaged to look like a laptop drive) rather than an M.2 SSD (looks like a memory stick).

 

[s_n_l_r]

Yes apart from the fact that they're 2.5 inch so if you're installing one in a PC that has a HDD you'll probably need a fitting kit for it.

www.amazon.co.uk/DEEPFOX-Internal-mounting-Mounting-included/dp/B07R65F913/ref=pd_lpo_1?pd_rd_i=B07R65F913&psc=1

I always buy SSD drives direct from Crucial because of the high quality, they come with the fitting kit, and at about £80 for a 1000GB drive I consider them a bargain.

Had one delivered yesterday.

 

[Electromagnetic]

I always buy SSD drives direct from Crucial because of the high quality, they come with the fitting kit, and at about £80 for a 1000GB drive I consider them a bargain.

Had one delivered yesterday.

View attachment 619207

Agreed. They are very good but OP only needs a relatively small SSD for the OS and software, so he may find a much cheaper option. 32GB might be all he needs. There must be quite a few kicking about left over from upgrades and cheap as most punters want bigger drives.

@AsterixTG Just a thought. The GPU you have is listed as one which the folding@home project supports for shared computing. If you were not concerned about the electricity, you could consider running folding@home in the background where it can do a little work on health science. https://apps.foldingathome.org/GPUs.txt
Together We Are Powerful - Folding@home
The 4GB RAM doesn't matter because fah would be using the GPU. My graphics are integrated so it took over a year to clock up 1M points when I was running fah.

 

[Roadster280]

I’m really not a Windows guy, so I don’t know if this is possible.. but macOS can use an SSD as a cache for a much larger/cheaper HD. Essentially, every write goes to the SSD, and frequently used files (ie the OS at the very least) are cached and read from the SSD. As the SSD fills, less-used files are offloaded to the HD in the background. You get 95% of the performance of a pure-SSD system, with the economy of HD storage capacity.

I have this on one of my machines. A 1TB SSD partitioned into 800/200. The 200GB partition is the cache for a 4TB spinny disk. It appears as one drive, and is not much slower than the 800GB pure SSD.

As I say, not sure if Windows has the feature. Some “SSHDs” were made, with a bit of SSD physically mounted in the same hardware as the HD, but the cache is relatively small.

 

[Electromagnetic]

I’m really not a Windows guy, so I don’t know if this is possible.. but macOS can use an SSD as a cache for a much larger/cheaper HD. Essentially, every write goes to the SSD, and frequently used files (ie the OS at the very least) are cached and read from the SSD. As the SSD fills, less-used files are offloaded to the HD in the background. You get 95% of the performance of a pure-SSD system, with the economy of HD storage capacity.

I have this on one of my machines. A 1TB SSD partitioned into 800/200. The 200GB partition is the cache for a 4TB spinny disk. It appears as one drive, and is not much slower than the 800GB pure SSD.

As I say, not sure if Windows has the feature. Some “SSHDs” were made, with a bit of SSD physically mounted in the same hardware as the HD, but the cache is relatively small.

Sounds like an unnecessary way to wear out his SSD. OP said that speed wasn't a big concern. If he wanted speed, finding a way to utilise the GPU for processing would be the way to do it in that system but for audio it probably isn't required.

 

[Roadster280]

Sounds like an unnecessary way to wear out his SSD. OP said that speed wasn't a big concern. If he wanted speed, finding a way to utilise the GPU for processing would be the way to do it in that system but for audio it probably isn't required.

Well the machine in question is 6 years old, and it’s working just fine. I had the same doubts about SSDs, but none have failed so far, and I live on my machines. Earliest one I had I think is a 2013, and the lad’s still using it, so it’s working OK. Though that machine is now geriatric in terms of its other specs.

 

[GrumpyWasTooCheerful]

View attachment 618633

Dear me, that takes me back.

I preferred Johnny Castaway myself.

 

[AsterixTG]

Had a root around inside the utter mess that HP seems to think passes for a well put together PC...

It's so cluttered and badly routed (I'd be ashamed if I built anything so shit)

There's 3 SATA cables and ports as far as I can tell taken up by the 2 HDDs & the DVD drive - but there is plenty of extra power connectors for drives - so I've ordered that cheapo 120GB SSD to use as a boot drive and I'll just run with the other HDD for the time being, see how stable it is and if I need anything faster I'll get an external SSD later on. Want to make sure everything is working before spending another £100+ on it.

If it doesn't work out, then £100 including the OS to find that out isn't so bad, I'd just buy another PC (low spec but current).

 

[endure]

According to the user manual there are 6 SATA connectors on the motherboard

https://www.truenas.com/community/attachments/motherboard-specifications-ipibl-lb-benicia-hp%C2%AE-support-pdf.3733/

 

[AsterixTG]

According to the user manual there are 6 SATA connectors on the motherboard

https://www.truenas.com/community/attachments/motherboard-specifications-ipibl-lb-benicia-hp%C2%AE-support-pdf.3733/

Thanks - yeah, can't see them thanks to the fixed chassis - think I might take this opportunity to strip it all back and prune what's not needed - the machine has a bunch of Media slots and connectors in the front that are now obsolete for my uses - I'll cut them out I think.

Should be fun - watch me **** this right up!

(Hooray! Didn't think I had any, but I've just found a spare SATA cable in my man-bag of PC Cables (obviously there's a different man-bag for bigger cables and extension leads))

 

[AsterixTG]

Thanks - yeah, can't see them thanks to the fixed chassis - think I might take this opportunity to strip it all back and prune what's not needed - the machine has a bunch of Media slots and connectors in the front that are now obsolete for my uses - I'll cut them out I think.

Should be fun - watch me **** this right up!

(Hooray! Didn't think I had any, but I've just found a spare SATA cable in my man-bag of PC Cables (obviously there's a different man-bag for bigger cables and extension leads))

Well that didn't last long - the whole chassis and any housing is riveted.

Anyway, managed to get access to one of the other SATA Ports and put the cable in ready for the new SSD.

 

[AsterixTG]

New drive in, Win 10 all installed but it's updating to the 20h2 version and it's taking forever.

Seems like I may have an audio glitch, but the 4GB RAM is nearly maxed out while it was updating so it's hard to tell. Updated all the drivers for everything so that's good - 8GB new RAM on order and hopefully once the machine has calmed down after all the updates, it should run smoother.

Here's hoping!

 

[scoldog]

New drive in, Win 10 all installed but it's updating to the 20h2 version and it's taking forever.

Seems like I may have an audio glitch, but the 4GB RAM is nearly maxed out while it was updating so it's hard to tell. Updated all the drivers for everything so that's good - 8GB new RAM on order and hopefully once the machine has calmed down after all the updates, it should run smoother.

Here's hoping!

The cumulative updates introduced with Windows 10 take a month of Sundays to install. Currently running up a brand new out of the box modern laptop here at work (11th Gen i5, 8GB RAM, M2 SSD). KB50007186 has taken about 45 mins so far to install and is only at about 90%. And that's after it had to update the drivers and had to be rebooted once already (Microsoft Update now force 'authorised' updated drivers install and firmware now. Easier for the end user, problem is it can't install drivers and install large software updates at the same time, so multiple reboots are required.)

Honestly would have been better off with Linux. Look up how to create a Live Linux USB or DVD, then boot your computer off that to have a look around it without having to install it. If you don't like it, shut the computer down, remove USB/DVD and boot straight back to Windows.

 

[Sarastro]

The problem with old machines is that the RAM for them is often no longer made and becomes rarer and more expensive.

Yes. I've usually found it's a waste of time ordering some unbranded RAM sticks (the only ones still offered at that slot/speed/whatever) that invariably give a bad memory error.

@AsterixTG What DAW are you using, and are you using any soundcards, hardware instruments, samplers? If you can get RAM that works maxing it out is a good idea, but also you can probably achieve a lot by getting a good soundcard with an onboard processor, that will reduce the overall load on the DAW software and improve performance.

 

[SauceDoctor]

We got a load of "Zeppelin" branded DDR2 desktop RAM for a rush job on a LAN and Server. Every single one of the sticks was stone dead or faulty.

 

[AsterixTG]

Four sticks of this for me and every one working great.

ROYEMAI PC2-6400 DDR2 800 4GB (2x2GB) 2RX8 240 Pin 1.8V CL6 Udimm DDR2 RAM Desktop Memory Ram Module for Intel AMD​

Amazon product