a hard hardware upgrade

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 12:25:39AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> 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.

The plates are fairly universal for a lot of video cards.

> 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.

Well I have a 6200 card in this machine, and I get 1300FPS using the
173.14.09 driver.

> 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.

Good sign yes, but I think you can still draw up to around 75W from the
slot alone.  Also some fan designs are just awful and make a lot of
noise.

> 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).

Compaq business desktops are very solid.  Compaq and HP consumer
products are terrible.  In general stuff built for business is pretty
solid.  Dell has had some power supply issues over the last few years on
laptops, but that affected both consumer and business models.

My wife has her asus tabletpc, which is very much business oriented.  I
am impressed at the abuse that poor thing is putting up with (A few days
ago it fell on the floor from the counter in the bathroom and didn't
seem to mind one bit other than a few more scratches on the case).  I
keep expecting her to kill it, but no problems yet.

> 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.

Business oriented machines need quick service since they often include
service contracts.  Consumer goods they don't have to care.

To clean the dust out of the heatsink on the asus takes removal of two
screws and a cover, then 3 screws on the fan, and you have full acess to
the heatsink/heatpipe.  On the compaq consumer laptop, it took removal
of 27 screws, which involved removal of the keyboard, screen, speakers,
optical drive, and internal frame.

> 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.

Not sure, but requiring special cards just isn't convinient in general.

> 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

Yeah that would be a bad chouce.

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

Ehm, they checked that it powers on and appears to work?  They don't
think they will get a return on it if they sell it as is?

-- 
Len Sorensen
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