Who's treated themselves to some new hardware recently..?

[mikewalsh]

Afternoon, gang.

I started the original thread on this subject over on the old Forum:-

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... cc1f63#top

I'm resurrecting it here because I think it's a 'fun' one.....and also because I have, indeed, treated myself to something else.

Okay, it's headphones again.....but this time, I've gone a bit further upmarket. (Well; kind of...)

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I reported on how well the Logitech H340 "headset" (with built-in 'boom' mike that swings up or down as & when you need it) worked with Puppy. There's none of that messing about with trying to get usable levels, etc, in Retrovol, because these have their own, built-in sound card in the somewhat chunky connector:-

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 4#p1011264

Beautiful headphones, and I've been very happy with 'em for the last coupla years. However (there's always a 'but', isn't there..? ) .....it's that damn lead again.

I went wireless for mice a LONG time ago. Ditto with keyboards, though more recently with these:-

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 7#p1010617

So; since I keep tripping over the headphone lead every time I leave the machine - there's not a lot of space in my room; the rig is under and on the study desk in my room; I sit on the bed to use it! - I figured it was time to finally go all-wireless for the user-peripherals.

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I wanted a set of the current-type, full-cup headphones.....but I wanted a 'headset' (to take care of the microphone side of things), AND they had to be wireless. This was the stinger, if you like; there's plenty out there that are wireless, but invariably they're Bluetooth.....and I simply didn't want the hassle of messing about trying to get Bluetooth working in every Pup. (My Bluetooth is part of a combo wireless/Bluetooth card, and by all accounts this thing is a complete PITA to set-up correctly under Linux, so I decided to forgo that 'pleasure'!)

I wanted something with a simple wireless dongle. Long story short, this cut down the range of choices quite drastically, but I DID strike lucky. Amazon do a range of headphones from a Chinese company called SOMiC; most of their headphones are 'gamer'-type items, but I managed to find a set that were rather less garish & 'in-your-face' than many. Okay, so they've got some fancy LED lighting strips on the side of the ear-cups, but these can be switched off.

Most importantly, these work via a standard, 2.4 GHz wireless dongle.....and, again, they have their own built-in sound card, which makes setting-up via Retrovol super-easy. Select the card with Kirk's MultipleSoundCardWizard, and just set the controls up.....all two of them; PCM volume & Mic capture level, just like the H340.

Best of all, the boom mike itself is detachable, so you only need to plug it in (via a standard, 3.5 mm jack plug) as & when you need it. Plug it in, and switch it to active via another button at the back of the left-hand ear cup. Bob's yr uncle.....it just works, straight away. (I'm not too sure about the fact that the microphone 'head' lights up with another fancy, blue LED panel when in use, but I guess I can live with it! ) Switch to 'inactive', and unplug when you're done. Easy-peasy.

Skype, Google's 'Meet' & 'Duo', Zoom.....they all just work with this microphone. Which is what you want.

There's a small range of audio level presets available, again controlled via another button on the left ear-cup. It cycles through these with each subsequent button-press. (I had to figure most of this out from the website, 'cos the manual is all in Chinese. Go figure.)

They 'power-off' automatically after a few minutes inactivity. Press & hold the left-cup power button for about 3 seconds, and the wireless connection re-enables itself. No muss, no fuss. Perfect.

SOMiC website page for the GS401

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I thought the H340's audio-quality was good, but these are divine; dare I say it, but they're even better than the set of open-back Sennheiser headphones I used to use with my AKAI hi-fi system, back in the 80s/90s.

50mm (2") drivers give lovely rich bass, and the treble is crisp & sharp. You can select from 'Live', 'Game' or 'Video' level settings via the 'Mode' button on the left ear-cup (this last one has, I fancy, some degree of built-in 'Surround sound'; it's the recommended setting for watching any kind of film, video or live stream, such as NetFlix. It really enhances the experience, too.)

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All-in-all, given the build-quality, range of options (you can even use it in 'wired' mode - they supply a cable for this, so you have the choice of wired OR wireless with these), the detachable mike, 8-10hr battery life, and the magical sound quality, well; for around GBP £45, I think these are a very good investment if you're serious about your PC audio. I'd definitely recommend them.....to anyone.

Amazon web page for SOMiC GS401 headphones

Mike.

[Grey]

from a Chinese company called SOMiC

Hello. I am familiar with SOMiC products, they are already sold with might and main not only in UK, but also in RF. SOMiC strives to maintain a balance of price and quality.
But in Russia they have a serious competitor - BlitzWolf. This Chinese company makes high-quality things, and even an ordinary (poor) Russian can buy them - I've seen BlitzWolf products from both students and retirees. Good headphones - BlitzWolf BW-GH2 (3.5mm and USB), with the transmitter I forgot which model.

They also have cheap and high-quality projectors. And look for BlitzWolf BW-AS2 - double driver wireless bluetooth speaker - just great stuff:

BlitzWolf BW-AS2.png (320.39 KiB) Viewed 2286 times

[TerryH]

But in Russia they have a serious competitor - BlitzWolf. This Chinese company makes high-quality things, and even an ordinary (poor) Russian can buy them - I've seen BlitzWolf products from both students and retirees. Good headphones - BlitzWolf BW-GH2 (3.5mm and USB), with the transmitter I forgot which model.

They also have cheap and high-quality projectors. And look for BlitzWolf BW-AS2 - double driver wireless bluetooth speaker - just great stuff:
BlitzWolf BW-AS2.png

I'm in Canada, I have BlitzWolf bluetooth dual armarture BT 5 earbuds. Really nice balanced sound. They make excellent products at great prices.

[Grey]

My neighbor says that by buying Chinese goods, I strengthen their Army and Navy But what to do - sometimes you want something cheap, but of high quality.

[mikewalsh]

My neighbour says that by buying Chinese goods, I strengthen their Army and Navy But what to do - sometimes you want something cheap, but of high quality.

.....and there's no getting away from the fact that China has become the "engine-room" of the world's industrial production base. At least, so far as consumer products are concerned.

Once upon a time, products from the Far East were of highly-dubious/questionable quality. These days, what comes out of China is every bit as good as anything that's produced in the West. Given that many Western producers of consumer goods have basically 'set-up shop' in China, attracted by low tariffs and wages, this is hardly surprising. And even original Chinese 'start-ups' have learnt quickly, & responded very fast to Western consumer expectations.....

I have no issues with buying Chinese-produced goods these days. I'm not denigrating my own country, far from it, but Britain basically priced itself out of the world consumer market years ago.....

Mike.

[Grey]

I bought an MSI B450-A PRO MAX motherboard and 128GB M.2 Silicon Power P34A60 NVMe drive today.
The processor is only next month - finances are limited And memory only after 2 months - DDR4 memory is hefty expensive.
Yes, slowly, but with firm steps

[p310don]

I wanted to upgrade my PC, but realised that ten years ago when I bought it, I could only afford an entry level CPU. Had the brainwave, I could probably get the top of the line CPU from ten years ago, and that's a big improvement.

So, a week ago I was running an AMD Phenom II x2 555. For $100 I am now running an AMD FX8320.

Faster clock speed, 8 vs 2 cores. Nice upgrade.

[mikewalsh]

@p310don :-

I wanted to upgrade my PC, but realised that ten years ago when I bought it, I could only afford an entry level CPU. Had the brainwave, I could probably get the top of the line CPU from ten years ago, and that's a big improvement.

So, a week ago I was running an AMD Phenom II x2 555. For $100 I am now running an AMD FX8320.

Faster clock speed, 8 vs 2 cores. Nice upgrade.

It's a 'fix' that doesn't occur to a lot of folks, Don. It doesn't matter how old your hardware is; so long as the CPU is upgradeable - i.e., a proper socket - by shopping around within the age-related 'envelope' for your hardware's 'vintage', you can often effect some very worthwhile improvements.

It's how I kept the old Compaq tower going for as long as I did.

Mike.

[Grey]

AMD FX8320.

I have many friends and acquaintances who use FX series processors. In my town you can still find them in some shops. Well, used ones are being sold with might and main through advertisements. The FX series seems to be somehow successful, or what.

[p310don]

More new hardware....

The 8320 runs a wee bit hotter than the old CPU. I didn't get a new heat sink, and when I did video transcoding, it crashed, repeatedly. So I ordered a new heatsink online. It's a bit bigger than I expected...

IMG_20210713_194530.jpg (80.34 KiB) Viewed 2155 times

[Grey]

The 8320 runs a wee bit hotter than the old CPU. I didn't get a new heat sink, and when I did video transcoding, it crashed, repeatedly. So I ordered a new heatsink online. It's a bit bigger than I expected...

You did the right thing by changing the cooler The FX8320 has a TDP of 125 watts. A cooler with 3-4 copper pipes is a must for video work.

[Grey]

I bought an MSI B450-A PRO MAX motherboard and 128GB M.2 Silicon Power P34A60 NVMe drive today.
The processor is only next month - finances are limited And memory only after 2 months - DDR4 memory is hefty expensive.
Yes, slowly, but with firm steps

What is better to buy in a week? Processor or memory?
I decided to take Ryzen 5. But not 2600. Perhaps 3600. Why save - we only live once
Option 1. Now processor, and memory in September.
Option 2. Now memory, and processor in September.
It will be possible to test all the components together only in September. But the processor has already started to rise in price. Will a defective one slip in the store? To take a chance or not?

[Grey]

I am thinking whether it is worth buying CPU now or saving money, wait until September and buy it along with the memory. Then I can check all the components at once. AMD processors have a lot of "legs". And the local store brings the OEM version of CPU and issues it in this form:

OEM CPU.jpg (67.32 KiB) Viewed 1515 times

[Grey]

Prices are rising. So I decided to take a chance and bought a Ryzen 5 3600. I hope to buy memory in September and it will all work. In the meantime, I installed CPU and M.2 NVMe in the motherboard:

MSI-M2-CPU.jpg (141.25 KiB) Viewed 1493 times

[Grey]

I bought 32 gigabytes of DDR4 memory. Finally got motherboard, NVMe SSD, Ryzen 5 3600 and memory together. It works.

However, Fossapup stopped launching with the previous save Purge and Clean commands don't help. Bionicpup starts up with its old save folder. Mint is fine too.

[ozsouth]

Not new, but 8 years old - I was given a 'throwaway' Macbook. Its i5-4258u cpu is faster than anything I've got. I reinstalled OSX Leopard (the max it will run) & found I can't get modern browsers or antivrus to run on it. So I put ScPup64 on the end of it & it flies. Video is very sharp. Had some stange kinks to iron out, but ok now. One thing I can't fix is needing to hit 'Option' button on bootup to select puppy.
EDIT 2/1/22: fixed bootup issue by resetting NVRAM by booting with Option-Command-P-R keys down. Then grub 2 works.

[Grey]

I bought 32 gigabytes of DDR4 memory.

Added two more 16x2 memory sticks. The total amount of RAM was brought to 64 gigabytes. Enough. Motherboard supports 128... but my wallet doesn't

[mikewalsh]

I bought 32 gigabytes of DDR4 memory.

Added two more 16x2 memory sticks. The total amount of RAM was brought to 64 gigabytes. Enough. Motherboard supports 128... but my wallet doesn't

^^^^ +1!!

Mike.

[Grey]

After the last upgrade, I had extra "guts" left. Motherboard, memory (32) and Xeon 1270v2. The graphics card has moved to a new computer. In order for the aforementioned devices not to lie idle, it was decided to buy a video card and assemble a second computer.

When I saw the prices of video cards, my eyes looked like saucers under a coffee cup I realized that the second 1050 Ti is not profitable to buy. So today I bought a GT 1030 made by Gigabyte. 2GB DDR5 - does not snatch stars from the sky, of course, but there is no choice. But she is petite and almost does not warm up

[mikewalsh]

@Grey :-

I take it you are aware the 1030 is regarded with about as much derision as my own GT710, yes? For some strange reason, both seem to be the butt of many jokes within the "gaming" community.....

Interesting you should say about 'not warming up'. I don't think I've seen my own top above 55C.....and this is the 'passive-cooler'. What d'you expect, for a total TDP of only 19W..? Doesn't even need a power-supply; it gets all it needs from the slot itself!

(Personally, I couldn't care less. I bought mine shortly after getting the new rig last year, before I went mad with the RAM upgrades.....primarily, to 'offset' the fact that the on-die UHD610, like all 'integrated' solutions, always 'borrows' system RAM as VRAM. It works fine, so I've just left it right where it is. It's not hurting anything, and does everything I want from it - I'm no gamer....and it's more than happy with its own 2GB of GDDR5.)

Mike.

[Grey]

I take it you are aware the 1030 is regarded with about as much derision as my own GT710, yes? For some strange reason, both seem to be the butt of many jokes within the "gaming" community.....

Yes. Two funny moments:
1. In the store, seller squinted, smiled and said "the best gaming video card of 2021"
2. My nephew looked at me as if I came from Mars. "What? 1030?! S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is coming out soon!"

and this is the 'passive-cooler'

At first I wanted to take an Asus with passive cooling. But they were quickly sold out. And I bought a Gigabyte with a fan.

[Grey]

Yesterday I bought several components to build a second computer. Deepcool MATREXX 30 computer case, Zalman GigaMax (GVII) 550W power supply and an additional fan for the housing (120 x 120 mm) Thermaltake Pure 12.

It turned out that some of the graphics programs I use are designed for Intel processors. The essence lies in the strong heating of AMD processors. Two computers with different processors solves this software problem

The funny thing is that before the holidays, prices for all this did not decrease, but on the contrary increased

[Marv]

Another Fujitsu S762 joins the stable, making the total of those (S761s and 762s) 7. i5 based, 13.3" LED backlit screens, 1.75kg, USB3, circa 2012 IIRC, and happy with pups ranging from X-Slacko 4.4 up through LxPupSc64 21.04 + 4 with the 5.15.7 kernel. All have 4Gb RAM and SSDs, either venerable Intel X25s or smaller Samsung EVOs. All but one in use daily, that one has a ditzy BIOS that makes rebooting a bit of a pain. Once running it's fine. Average cost somewhere around US $50 with another $20 to $30 each for the SSDs. A bit of JB Weld here and there on some but no complaints here. New is as new does

[bigpup]

I look at all those possible Puppy Linux computers, thrown in the electronics container, at our local trash dump.
But it is not allowed to dumpster dive in it
I bet most would still boot Puppy Linux.

I guess you could say Santa Clause got this for me.
I got for Christmas.

Onn. 250GB portable SSD.

I was not expecting much, but a good portable storage device to put stuff.
Hooks to any type USB port, because it comes with two cables. A standard USB to USB C cable and a USB C both ends cable.
That is all needed.
Power and data provided by the single USB cable.

Read and write speed is around 400MB/s plugged into a USB 3.0 port.

Size: 2" X 3.5" X 0.5" thick.

I really like this thing.
.
.

portable ssd.jpg (27.2 KiB) Viewed 1569 times

.
.

[amethyst]

Just for storage I would have gone for a cheapy with rather big storage capacity, wouldn't even bother with SSD. About 5 years ago I bought a cheapy Seagate 1TB drive to store some tv series and movies I downloaded from the net. I thought the thing would not last as it's as light as a feather and the casing does not seem to be the most robust. But after 5 years absolutely no problems. So, if you are using it just for the occasional write to disk for storage and otherwise just read from it, my experience is that it would last way beyond your expectations.

[mikewalsh]

@amethyst :-

Couldn't agree more. For purely data storage, and perhaps regular usage for Puppy 'backups' - as I do - you can't beat them. I've been using a slightly older 500 GB Seagate 'Expansion' 2.5" portable for external Puppy backups for quite some time now.

Yes, we see an awful lot of folks in various fora around the web with complaints about portable drives (HDDs in particular), but in real terms these people represent such a tiny proportion of users it's almost non-existent.......and when you read the posts, 9 times out of 10 it's nearly always the user's own fault.

----------------------------------------

I've re-purposed the 64GB MLC Kingspec SSD I bought for ye anciente Dell, which I've finally retired. Even on an IDE interface, you're still looking at the same read/write speeds as some of the very fastest current USB 3Gen2 flash drives out there; 35-40 MB/s write, 110-130 MB/s read. Plenty fast enough for me, especially combined with this new rig's CPU running at almost 4 GHz and 32GB of DDR4 memory.

I've built a wee "caddy" to house it, along with buying a 44-pin IDE-to-SATA3 adapter for around 3 quid. It connects via a SATA3 to USB 3.0 cable.....and is where KLV "Airedale" currently resides. Posting from it right now, in fact...!

Mike.

[amethyst]

When it comes to electronics, durability definitely has much to do with the way it's being handled by the user. My stuff seem to last for ever because I'm very careful when it comes to handling and usage. I have an old Hitachi boombox (close to 40 years old ) which is connected to a 15 year old computer. It powers some mid-range hi-fi speakers (also as old as the mountains). In daily use and it sounds pretty decent.

[mikewalsh]

Now then:-

I've wisely invested some outlay in a 1TB Crucial MX500 SSD for my main primary drive. I was having a browse round some of my regular tech blogs, and got reading about them in a bit more detail than usual. Seems the price is actually not ridiculous ATM, after all.....

I wasn't going to bother with an NVMe job, since I don't really have the slots or space to fit the required adapter for this motherboard. I figured that, since the existing 1 TB Toshiba HDD was booting the kennels at a fair lick anyway, a 'normal' SSD ought to be quite fast enough, so.....I had a snout around on Amazon, and found a 1TB Crucial MX500 for around the GBP £75 mark. Which, given the 500MB/s + read/write speeds, is not a bad price.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07 ... =UTF8&th=1

https://www.crucial.com/products/ssd/crucial-mx500-ssd

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Talking of which, I've run speed tests with the "dd"-based DriveSpeed! utility I conceived last year, and which @fredx181 and @stemsee helped to polish & hone. This is using DriveSpeed! v2.1; one of the older versions, it's true, but still my personal favourite due to the way results are displayed in separate small windows...and better for taking screenshots, too!

Perhaps not quite as advertised, but extremely respectable all the same:-

Write speed:-

.....and read speed:-

All of which I'm very happy with. Okay, so the write speed isn't really up where Crucial claim, but you don't know how they've done their benchmarking; like as not running in Windows, formatted as either NTFS or FAT32 (and probably optimized for it!), and this sure as hell will be one of those cases where your mileage will definitely vary. It's entirely possible that their controller algorithms don't "play nice" with Linux file-systems, or there's something in the 'overhead' with a journalling FS that introduces slight delays. Plenty of 'ifs' & 'buts' here.

Don't know.....don't care, either. That write speed is around 700% faster than the Toshie, and the read speed is definitely up there with Crucial's claims. THAT, I am not going to argue with..!

(From what I understand, current 'top-end' NVMe SSDs are now reading in the 5000 MB/s area.....so this Crucial SSD can be considered to be quite slow.)

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Data transfer in Puppy is super easy, of course, because we don't need to mess about with cloning software and all the rest of it. Copy/paste is all that's required.

Yesterday afternoon & early evening, I spent the time formatting/partitioning/setting the drive up (msdos partition table, since that will handle up to 2 TB, and everything else in the kennels has long used it). Crucial supply their SSDs unformatted, so you can dive-in and set the thing up to your personal requirements straight away.....which is a nice touch.

I made the drive pretty much a mirror-image of the Toshie, with the exception of leaving 10% unformatted. This is a recommendation for SSDs, since it gives your controller plenty of room to play with as it juggles blocks around during the write/erase/rewrite procedure. There was bags of room to allow for this anyway, since the Toshie was only using around 30% of the available space.

After that, 'twas just a case of copying everything over; took a while, since this time the bottleneck was the Toshiba's read speed.....considerably slower than the Crucial's ability to write.

Before I turned in, I ran Grub4DOS on the Crucial and installed afresh. I then copied my menu.lst and splash images across from the Toshie, and modified the entries to use the UUID of the new 'kennels' partition. I tested this all via a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter cable I have; the new drive happily booted from itself, and everything worked as expected. I left it for the morning, and hit the sack.

---------------------------------------

This morning, the Toshie was removed & the new SSD installed. I bought one of these 'adapter' caddies:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07 ... UTF8&psc=1

All very straight-forward. Unshipped the Tosh and removed it, then slid the adapter + SSD in, tightened the screws, hooked the cable up, closed the case, re-connected all the external cables, and.....booted her up.

Which was totally hassle-free, and even more impressive than via the USB to SATA cable last night. Pup's always been fast and versatile on here - and even better at multitasking since undergoing the various RAM upgrades I've put her through over the last 18 months - but this Crucial SSD has taken things to a whole new level. All my portables (browsers and the other apps) live on a partition of the primary drive, and the speed & responsiveness of everything is frankly mind-blowing now. Chromium-based browsers open and are ready to use in around 3-4 seconds; 'zilla-based browsers, the same. And everything responds with the same unbelievable speed.

I'd definitely recommend these things as a very worthwhile upgrade, if you can budget for it.

The only 'downside' to these MX500 drives is that they use SLC NAND - not MLC, TLC or the current QLC. This means the lifetime endurance - TBW (total bytes written) - figure is rather lower than drives using the multi-level cells; Crucial claim lifetime data writes at around 360-400 TB. Which IS a fair bit lower than some others.....but then SLC flash is by far the fastest to use, and is regarded as more reliable. Which is why it's used by enterprise.....

No biggie. It'll take ME a long while to write that kind of amount, and at the price I've paid for it, not too much of a stretch to replace, either. All my software and personal data is on the former 'external' 3TB Seagate Barracuda so....it'll do. And the "Tosh" will remain exactly as it came out, so if required, it can just be dropped straight back in again!

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One question for you guys. Does anybody know how we go about setting up TRIM (aka 'garbage collection') here in Puppy?

Mike.

[backi]

@mikewalsh wrote:

One question for you guys. Does anybody know how we go about setting up TRIM (aka 'garbage collection') here in Puppy?

Trimming SSD Manually.(https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/ssd.html)
Partitions must be mounted.

How to execute TRIM manually:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... d.html#ID7

1. Works for me .
Use it once a Week or every second Week.

1.
In Terminal:
fstrim -av

or 2. In Terminal (does not work for me......don`t know why):
fstrim -v /

Except from the Article above:

Prevent fragmentation, and DO NOT defrag
13. For an SSD, fragmentation of the file system is a smaller problem than for ordinary rotating hard disks. But it's nevertheless still a problem, so it's useful to prevent fragmentation as much as possible on an SSD, too.
You can achieve that by preserving a minimum of 20 % free space on each partition (item 4).

Regards!

[bigpup]

This topic not really for discussion of issues.
That question is time for a new topic.

So I started one.
viewtopic.php?t=4894