I appreciated the info. If/when I build another desktop, I would likely read back through this thread, and it would be in the running. Cool and quiet is a fantastic combination and feature. A long time ago, my first “this is mine and no one else’s” computer was a 486-DX66. At that time, in theory, according to the specs, it did not require a fan or even a heatsink. They were wrong. The little slab of ceramic was not enough to dissipate the amount of heat that little bugger could generate. Quiet wasn’t really a consideration in those days, but after the problem I had, quiet went right out the window for me. At one point much later, I had a 100V fan that I had pulled out of an old photocopier we kept around for parts. Wired that baby in to 120V off the power switch. The sound was about on par with a vacuum cleaner. In the decades since, I have come to appreciate quiet, efficient cooling solutions.
Mine was a 386-DX40.
Nice. I think the “family” 386 was a 25MHz, but don’t remember if it was a DX. Odds are good that my dad still has it stashed away somewhere. He started to clean out his stash of horribly outdated computer stuff (soo many floppies), but I don’t think he has taken any computers to be recycled yet.
Is there a way to tell if a drive was made with Shingled Magnetic Recording? From what I understand, those have poor write speeds because of the extra work the drive has to do with figuring out how to write data on adjacent tracks at the same time.
I’m trying to copy files off the Linux system so I can put the drive into the new Win 10 computer. Every time I start a new group to copy, the write speed’s pretty decent at 60 MB/s. It doesn’t take long for it to keep dropping to 6 MB/s or lower. I just saw 4.5 a moment ago and I think I saw 1.2 a few minutes ago. Copy time for the last 60GB of files is at 2 hours right now.
The drive’s in a new USB 3.0 docking station. It has an eSATA connector but the computer doesn’t have one. I’ll test it once I get it over to the new computer to see if it’s computer specific, and I also have another Seagate 2TB drive from 3 years ago I can test that’s physically taller, so it’s using more platters.
Update: It’s been running all night and it still hasn’t finished. It’s hovering at 1-2 MB/s and I saw it at 400 KB/s. I don’t know if it’s the interface or the drive. I’m plugging it directly into the motherboard this evening and trying it that way, provided it can finish copying the last 20GB of files in the next 12-16 hours.
The new computer’s buttoned up and the build is done. All files copied over to it that I need, I’ll install the programs I typically use as I go, and I have enough hard drive space for whatever video and audio editing I want.
I went ahead and got the 27" monitor I was planning on for later. I think bookending it with my two existing 22" monitors is going to be about all I will have room for on the extensions I added to the computer desk shelf. If I still don’t have enough screen real estate, I’ll bring back the 19" monitor. Anything more than that, I might start having neck problems from turning my head side to side so often.
Tomorrow should be fun getting everything organized and both computers set up with KVM switches for the monitors.
Not as streamlined as I wanted, but it’s working. That HDMI KVM switch I mentioned back in September isn’t passing the connection for the mouse back through the USB cable to either computer so I have two mice on my desk plugged directly into the computers. I have to figure out how to route audio through the HDMI cable on the Linux computer, so that’s got separate speakers plugged into it for the moment. On the Windows side, the motherboard won’t use its on-board video because of the video card, so I need to go out tomorrow to get a Display Port to HDMI adapter. And to top it all off, monitor #3 has two cables running to it: a DVI cable from the Windows computer and a VGA cable from the Linux computer, using the monitor to select the input.
Oh, and I may have to take the shelf off the desk and cut about two inches off the bottom to bring the new monitor down to a more comfortable height.
Update from the following morning since there's a limit of three consecutive replies:
Tip of the day: check the specs. I just realized I paid at least $10 more than I needed to for the monitor and what I got was built-in speakers and permanent magnification of the screen image. You don’t get higher resolution simply because the screen’s bigger. I could have bought a 24" monitor with the same resolution and used one of the speaker sets I have lying around. I’ve had the monitor too long to return it and I don’t want to do that to the store (a local business) simply because I didn’t think.
Anyone know how to disable the monitor auto-detection in both Windows 10 and Linux? Every time I switch between them, they start moving things around because they see a monitor is no longer active.
Depends on how the monitor’s connected. If it’s via HDMI or Displayport and you’re using something like a KVM or HDMI switcher, I think (at least as far as Windows goes) you’re out of luck. Your KVM/switcher would need to support EDID persistence (which allows the non-active PC to still see the monitor as “connected”, and those get pricy quick.
Thanks for the info. These are low cost switchers so they don’t have that.
The idea of an AMD based Hackintosh is out the window with the discovery that virtualisation software such as VMWare, Parallels and VirtualBox do not run on AMD based Hackintoshes.
Parts for the Hackintosh have been ordered. Just waiting for some to be delivered from the supplier(s) to the retailer.
This will be the first PC I’ve built in about 15 years.
Still waiting for the parts to arrive from the supplier. ETA at the moment is next Monday.
It’s a good thing I’m not in a hurry.
Hoping you’re not going through the USPS for anything, a s they’ve just kind of given up. I think my most extreme is a package that only had to go a few states and about 800 miles away… But has been in shipping since December 15th. The temporary replacement just made it to a local-ish facility yesterday.
On the Hackintosh front, I admit I’ve idly considered rebuilding mine to just have an M1 Mac Mini hidden in the case.
And the ETA has been pushed out to Jan 29th.
Nope, not USPS - not here in Oz, anyway!! 
It’s not helped by AusPost cutting 25% of their courier and delivery people, just as the online shopping frenzy due to CV19 started ramping up…
I have a functioning computer now. The shop contacted me on schedule and said “Yo, come get your stuff.” Yay!
I am questioning my sanity in my desire to get a 4k monitor, though. Everything is microscopic, and my eyes are not what they used to be…
Windows is up and running really well. Now to do the hackintosh side of things…
And it’s up and running both macOS and Windows 10. Yay! It’s almost silent when running and the only noise it makes are the fans ramping up at initial power-on then dropping to ‘silent’ mode. So much better than the old PCs I had “back in the day”.
I would have liked to get a beefier video card, but there are no AMD cards available down here at all. Plenty of Nvidia things, but they aren’t supported under macOS.
Keep away from the Verbatim ‘Platinum’ USB 3.0 sticks. The one I bought specifically to make a bootdisk with failed miserably - failing to boot, installer crashes, and slower than a very slow thing. I’ll be taking it back to the retailer when I get a chance. (OK, it’s only $10, but given I have zero trust in it, why keep it?)
Next steps are to re-install the applications and copy my data from the 2012 iMac it’s replacing.
If any one is tempted here’s the spec list:
Mobo: Gigabyte Z490 Vision D (BIOS F6)
CPU: i5-10600
Cooler: BeQuiet ShadowRock Slim
Case: BeQuiet PureBase 500 (no LEDs or window)
P/S: BeQuiet Straight Power 11 (650W)
RAM: G.Skill RipJaws V (2*16G)
Video: 4GB Sapphire Pulse RX5500XT
Disk 0: Adata SX8200 Pro NVMe - 256G - Windows
Disk 1: Adata SX8200 Pro NVMe - 1TB - macOS
Screen: LG UL850 (27", 4k)
My Hackintosh may have died tonight. Waiting for time to mess with it but it lost USB and seemed reluctant to boot afterwards. If it’s a corrupt boot loader or similar I’ll have to rebuild with the new methods.
Ouch, that doesn’t sound good.
I know nothing about the old ‘Clover’ boot loader, but the OpenCore on my hackintosh works very well and appears to be easy to configure through the ‘Opencore Configurator’ program.
Hopefully you can get it booting again.
Amazingly it worked fine this morning. That said, i’d love to get one of these, which I think uses a Mini somehow. Especially if I could just shove an M1 Mini into it.
I really want to clean mine up a bit, but don’t have access to the laser cutting gear to cut down acrylic.
My video card blew up and there are no video cards anywhere out there that aren’t 3x normal price.