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https://www.pcmag.com/news/avoid-the-trash-heap-15-great-uses-for-an-old-pc
In 2019, after seven years of slumps, PC sales went up by the tiniest increment—0.3 percent. Demand then surged in recent weeks as people shifted to work-from-home setups due to COVID-19 quarantines. Which means some of you may be getting a new computer. But what do you do with the old PC?
You may be tempted to go the easy route and just junk it. But don't. If that laptop or desktop was created any time in the last decade, you'd be surprised by how much life you (or others) can get out of it. I'm not talking about limping along, but of ways to bring an old PC back to useful life.
[This editor can vouch for plenty of life in old boxes. For the past 4 years, a now-nearly-decade-year-old Core 2 Duo Laptop with 6 GB RAM has been my primary computer.--martyb]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Dr Spin on Thursday April 30 2020, @07:00AM (9 children)
A previous employer of mine was quite proud of the fact that most of the computers on the shop floor were "old enough to start secondary school!"
("640x480 should be enough for anyone" is probably true if you are still using a stock control system originally written for vt52s - or buy computers from PC World).
Our family laptop is also of that age (11), but obviously not running Windows. I don't think anyone in my family would know how to install Windows.
The "artzy" ones use Apple, and the "techy" ones use Linux. Those not in ether category get what they are given. I have not used Windows myself
since XP, and would not work for an employer who used it on security grounds.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Thursday April 30 2020, @07:08AM (8 children)
I'm using a 2007 Q6600 PC as my main computer. If you're not a gamer, there hasn't been any innovation in desktop PCs in ten to fifteen years that make it necessary to get a new one. Even with laptops, my 2013 one not running Windows 10 performs better than my 2019 work one running Windows 10. PCs are like cars, there's been no need to buy a new one every year or two for many years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:08PM (4 children)
Core2 Quad Q6600
Debuted at $851, $530 3 months later
4 cores, 4 threads
105 W TDP
Ryzen 5 1600AF
Refresh debuted at $85, 1600 non-AF was $219
6 cores, 12 threads
65 W TDP
Passmark: [cpubenchmark.net] x2.17 single, x7.02 multi of the Q6600 [cpubenchmark.net]
Obviously, this is an imperfect comparison. Someone could pick up a Q6600 refurb for peanuts years after it was released, and new CPU prices including 1600AF are zigzagging right now due to COVID. Nevertheless, you get 50% more cores, triple the threads, 2-7 times the performance, using less energy, for 1/6th the price.
Laptop comparison could just come down to you having a slow and horrible Windows 10 experience, which is common. Good thing Windows 10 is not the only option. In laptops, the differences are even more stark. Lots more performance using much less power [anandtech.com]. Even if you aren't gaming, the newer GPUs can hardware decode H.265 and VP9 video.
If the software and browsing you are doing is simple, then sure, keep on using the old CPU. Or use a single-board computer. Otherwise, core counts are exploding. 16-core is "mainstream" (3950X: 22x faster multi-threaded than Q6600 at same TDP). GPUs can be used for machine learning. Within about 5-10 years, we should see monolithic 3D chips and then we can talk about 1000x faster than Q6600, too big to ignore.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:21PM (1 child)
Sure, but do you need it? I do software development on the Q6600 system and apart from a few very short, brief bursts it never goes above about 5% load. In terms of power use, the whole system sits at about 120W power draw from the mains. So it's faster than I need, draws very little power, didn't cost that much - I got it when the 6600 was already last year/months/whatever's model - and best of all it's completely silent. That's why I'm still using it now, it was built as part of a silent PC, first time I turned it on I got a failed fan alarm because the fans virtually never run and the system assumed the fans were dead rather than not needed. There's just no need to replace it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:36PM
It depends on your use case. If we nix gaming, we'll have to get creative. Fancy launching your own DeepFakes studio?
The hardware has to come before the software. Achieve a 1000x speedup, and something interesting will follow.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:25PM (1 child)
On the other hand, the Q6600 is from 2008, and the Ryzen manages less than an older of magnitude in terms of performance improvement. And single core performance is only double. That's not really impressive for CPU's that came out a decade apart from each other.
My main computer is a bit newer, a Core i7 3770. The only real reasons to upgrade would be more cores, NVMe storage, and possibly some improvements with DDR4 memory. But really, for so many things it's the single core performance that matters and that hasn't changed as much, a SSD on SATA is still fast enough, and ditto for DDR4. The most I demand out of it is play games on it, and PCI Express hasn't changed one bit and it'll accept any of the latest graphics cards and that's really what matters the most. I would guess that a Core 2 Quad with the latest graphics cards could play most games.
I'm actually typing this on my laptop, a Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz from 2007 that I got for free from work when they were going to recycle it about 7 years ago. It has a Windows XP license sticker on the bottom. I've upgraded it with 4GB of ram, a 64 GB SSD (back when you could buy them that small), and Linux Mint. Performance wise it's anything I could want out of it. Only reasons to upgrade would be because the battery is no good and the rather lousy (even for the time) 1280x800 screen.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 01 2020, @01:14AM
The great stagnation of the mid-2010s is now over. Quad-core went from the premium $500 segment to the $100 landfill tier [anandtech.com]. Now 6-8 cores is emerging as a new minimum, 16 cores is "mainstream", and Zen 4 could deliver 24 cores as "mainstream" by 2022.
The long stretch of Intel quad-cores and AMD Bulldozer garbage probably helped software and games to stagnate. With quad-cores, single-threaded performance is still king, and dual-cores needed to be accommodated. The shift to 8 cores and up makes multi-threading much more difficult to ignore.
For gaming specifically, PC gaming is held back by the consoles as well as older systems. Now the next-gen consoles released this year will be packing 8 cores, 16 threads by default (and Zen 2, which is no slouch), as well as NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs (from HDDs, skipping SATA SSDs and NVMe PCIe 3.0 entirely). Quad-cores will begin to hold back gaming performance, and there's an argument to be made for 12-16 cores for at least game + background tasks. There have also been claims that the consoles could effectively have the performance of more than 8 cores due to dedicated hardware functions and the design:
Microsoft: Xbox Series X Performance Is 25+ TFLOPs when Ray Tracing; I/O Rate Equal to 13 Zen 2 Cores [wccftech.com]
The claim for PS5 is more like 19 Zen 2 cores, due to even faster storage, dedicated audio chip, etc.:
Inside PlayStation 5: the specs and the tech that deliver Sony's next-gen vision [eurogamer.net]
Apparently, Sony is trying to use the SSD as if it is a giant pool of DDR2 RAM.
Understanding the PS5's SSD: A deep dive into next-gen storage tech [tweaktown.com]
That leads into another point. The next-gen console chips are giant APUs/SoCs with the graphics performance of a high-end discrete GPU. Computing is probably going to move more towards chips like these in the near future.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 30 2020, @05:07PM (2 children)
Eh, the new massive thread count chips would be nice for folks who do a lot of compiling but I'm not getting one until I have a fair degree of certainty I can disable the hardware rootkit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 01 2020, @01:16AM (1 child)
Performance should be prioritized above security. If you want security, disconnect the system from the internet and transfer files from another computer using a USB stick or pigeon.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 01 2020, @03:53AM
No, I mean folks who do a lot of compiling. You know, Gentoo users.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.