a hard hardware upgrade

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

Thanks for your reply.

| On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 03:09:41AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:

| > So I look for a cheap Low Profile video card with analogue out.
| > 
| > The only one I found was this:
| >   http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=017062&cid=999.243.390
| > According to the online inventory, I got the second-last one in their
| > system.  Cheap due to rebate.
| 
| So what you might really want is something like this:
| http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=014473&cid=999.243.390
| along with one of these:
| http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=015259&cid=999.956

Good idea.  Too bad that the stock is so low.

I just tried a passively cooled GeForce 6200 with the Low Profile
plate from the FeForce 8500.  Seemed to work.

| > (With this card, glxgears using the nv driver gets about 240 fps.
| > With the proprietary driver, between 1900 and 2000.)

Using the 6200 with proprietary drivers, glxgears yielded 720 FPS with
(vs 870 FPS for the on-board ATI controller with default open source
drivers.  I don't think glxgears is at all meaningful for my
application but, heh, it was there.

| > I thought that the proprietary driver might be able to throttle the
| > fan but that seems not to be the case.
| 
| Or perhaps it really has such bad ventilation is a crappy case like
| that, that it really does have to keep spinning like crazy to try and
| cool off.

I don't think so.  I ran it with the cover off too.  nVidia's control
panel seemed to show that the temperature was quite low.

|  Those business desktops were not meant to any kind of
| performance work.

If you mean "not meant to handle a large extra heat load" then that
would have been fine.  I don't want an HTPC computer generating a lot
of heat.  So that should inform my choice of video card.
Unfortunately it is hard to find out the power usage of cards.  This
card did not require an extra power connector which I take as a good
sign.

| The DX5150 also has one of the worst chipsets I have ever seen.  I
| remember lots of problems on lkml with people trying to get them to
| work, and plenty of workarounds having to be done due to hardware bugs,
| BIOS bugs, etc.  I wouldn't have paid $90 for one of those.
| HP + ati chipset + low profile.  There is nothing there to like.

I like HP.  I know that you don't.  My Compaq business desktops
have been mechanically well built.  They feel much better than the
Dells (I know that you don't like Dell either).

The box is easy to disassemble for service.  It seems well thought-out
mechanically.  Except for cooling.  It seems solidly built -- the
sheet metal is heavier-gauge than on most systems.

These HPs are noisier than I would like.  This is disappointing
because the other HPs I've had have been remarkably quiet.  I think
that the noisiest part is the CPU fan.

The chipset seems to be well supported now.  I had a system with it in
the early days and there were a few oddities.  Like the clock running
fast.  Ubuntu 8.10 poured onto the system with no apparent box-related
problems.

Low Profile would seem like an advantage because it gives you more
slots in SFF than full height.  But requiring LP cards is rather
constraining.  My other SFF boxes take full-height cards.  Maybe PCIe
doesn't take to riser cards.

I paid a bit less than $90.  They were $70 with a coupon.  I thought
that was reasonable for what these are.
Bad: DDR1, Low Profile, a bit noisy
Good: SFF, Business, AMD 64, SATA, VGA and DVI-D, serial port

Slightly older P4-based (Celeron) HPs are available now from Factory
Direct (I think).  I don't care for P4s

I wonder what "refurbished" means when the machines come with dust
bunnies.
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