New PC

[rdl]

I'm using an i5-3570K set up as the living room entertainment PC and it still does fine for the most part. However, I got my covid-19 check from Mr. Trump a few weeks ago, so I'm now considering a new system probably based on a Ryzen 5 3600.

[wraper]

4. GeForce GT 1030.
...
Now the graphics card was selected because it HAS NO FAN and provided more than the performance I need. Most graphics cards cheap out on their fans, using phosphor bronze bearings which eventually fail by buzzing, rattling or seizing. And you can often not get replacement fans.

Rather than buying such "GPU", it's better to stick with iGPU. You get ridiculously low performance for ridiculously high price. Not to say it's most likely the worst type of GT1030 which comes in 2 variants, one having much lower performance than other. Even built in GPU of Ryzen 2400G APU has better performance.
https://www.techspot.com/review/1658-geforce-gt-1030-abomination/

[VK3DRB]

I don't play games on the PC. I own a full sized pinball machine - a classic Gottleib Pioneer  - that's enough gaming for me and it provides plenty of entertainment when we get visitors. Kids love the pinny.

The PC I have needs CPU grunt and heaps of high speed RAM. It does not need a great GPU. Using Altium, a PCBA with a few hundred of components on it with realistic 3D models for each component (I avoid 3D extrusions) can rotate in 3D mode without latency issues and provides a smooth rotation. That is using a GeForce 1030 without a fan and is not hungry for power. Perfect for my requirements.

Point taken on the GPU with variable fan speed. If I ever need more power GPU power I might consider one. But I really hate noisy fans. My AMD has a quiet CPU fan and they are super reliable. The case has all of its fans disconnected. The PSU has a fan, but I hacked it and replaced it with a very fan with low turbulence and it is quiet.

The only thing more annoying than noisy fans is DDR4 memory with coloured LEDs on them (), fans with pretty LED's shining through and cases with see-through covers (poor EMC emissions mitigation). Those who have them might consider putting a pink tutu around their their case and call it Barby .

[GigaJoe]

i stop buying a new electronics ... someone always wish to get rid off relatively new stuff,   got 4K 27in monitor, for a half price,  1060gtx card, 2 XPS13 4-core 16GB, 4k touch 40% of original price, one still under dell warranty, a few more thingi .. Saved money, earned money ..

[grumpydoc]

So, the dust has settled and my PC is back up and running - we'll gloss over the fact that it's not really the same PC...

W10 didn't fancy the new hardware and had an activation sulk - I could not quite find the energy to work out the provenance of the licence key to discuss with Microsoft (I suspect it was originally a Windows 7 family pack then upgraded to W7 Pro with an "Anytime Upgrade" and finally to W10 on the free upgrade offer). I still have a batch of W7 Pro licences that were bought for a project and not used so I threw one of those at it and it was happy (top tip: W10 is quite happy to activate on W7 keys as long as they are "equivalent").

Office (in fact it's the 2010 version so I could almost claim to have had value for money out if it by now) also had an activation sulk but woke up again on being prompted to reactivate over the 'net.

The CPU happily overclocks to 5Ghz all cores at 1.37V V_core - the heatsink is a Noctua NH-D15s with the NH-AF14 Industrial PPC  (up to 186 ft³/min, but loud with it) and frankly could cool a small star. Temps in Prime95 are low 70's - but if you really want to stretch a CPU then transcoding with ffmpeg is a good way to do it - that pushes temps up to the high 80's, maybe even 90 or 91°C briefly on the hottest core. That's actually not too bad for an 8 core processor, probably pushing 200W with this workload. I was never able to get the i7-8700k past 4.7Ghz all core without temps rising to the high 90's and eventually throttling and this is 2 more cores and 8% faster clocks - transcoding performance is up about 40% in ffmpeg.

But, then in many ways the unlocked 10^th gen processors are getting on for the pinnacle of the Skylake architecture although we're probably stuck with another tweak to this for 11^th gen chips.

Would I recommend the motherboard - well for a fresh build it is probably OK but I really could not recommend it for an upgrade if you want to move a "legacy" disk - i.e DOS partition table or MBR boot - out of the box if it is not GPT+UEFI it won't play. There is an update on the website which offers CSM but it has some weird behaviour. To their credit MSI offered me a newer BIOS to try but it was not an improvement. In the end I "upgraded" the partition table to GPT, reinstalled Linux (which was a "dataless install anyway so the small amount of customisation that Ineed to put back is no biggie) and managed to migrate the Windows installation to a UEFI boot without losing everything.

All in all an interesting weekend - but the irony is that the USB C to HDMI dongle that started all of this does not seem to be recognised, even in Windows - it would be somewhat ironic if it turned out to be faulty.

The RTL8125 is too new for the mainstream kernel driver but the vendor supplied driver compiles and installs with no problems