Re: modern desktop update recommendations?

[mlh%goathill.org@localhost (MLH)]

Bartel wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Mar 2023 at 17:17, MLH <mlh%goathill.org@localhost> wrote:
> >
> > My ~10 yr old i3-based box needs to be updated. I can't compile
> > anything nontrivial without the box rebooting anymore. I am far
> > out of the loop on what NetBSD can run on these days. I have a
> > Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450 that works very well and can use it and
> > I would like to go with ssd as my old hds are starting to fail.
> > My current motherboard is supposed to support (an early version
> > of) efi but I never could get it to work. I suspect it only booted
> > off of efi dvds and not hds.
> >
> > Huge numbers of choices these days but does anyone have recommendations
> > on moderately-priced options that work well with NetBSD?
> 
> Well I'm not running NetBSD on desktop but I did install 9.3 just now
> on my PC to test it:
> Ryzen 9 3900X - 12 cores, 24 threads
> 32GB RAM DDR4
> NVME 1TB drive (WD Blue), NetBSD installed on USB3.0 connected SSD drive.
> Asus TUF B450 PRO GAMING mainboard
> 
> And it works. I'm writing this from that system. I was able to compile
> devel/git from pkgsrc and play a YouTube video at the same time (audio
> works from Firefox). Due to low WiFi bandwidth on NetBSD (limited to
> 54Mbps) I couldn't play 4k content. UEFI booted. Dmesg attached. I
> only have problems with my GPU: Radon RX 6600, it's probably too new.
> 
> In general I'd suggest looking into not-latest Ryzen systems. A Ryzen
> 7 or even 5 will give you a decent number of cores and threads.
> Anything SSD or NVME based will be fast. The latest ones have a new
> socket and pricey motherboards (and new, expensive DDR5 RAM). Great
> that you already have a supported GPU.

Thank you very much for your suggestions. I upgraded to :

Ryzen 5 5600X - 6 core, 12 thread
32GB DDR4
Asus Prime B550M-K motherboard
Samsung 980 2TB M.2 SSD
Radeon HD5450 2GB
Upgraded power supply to handle the chip power plug

The AMD 5600X doesn't work with the onboard gfx chips (even with
the latest bios update) so I went ahead and upgraded to the HD5450,
which works very well, driving two displays.

I don't game so this was a pretty cheap investment into a serious
upgrade to my ~10 year old box. :^)

Plus the new Asus motherboard boots UEFI very nicely (turns out
the old Gigabyte did not, even though it claimed to do so).

Now all of the drives I built to boot UEFI a couple of years ago
now can boot, though my UEFI raid drives get pushed to the front
somehow and I haven't determined how to specify the SSD. I have to
boot -a and select the correct dk. None of the "NAME=" stuff seems
to work and even specifying the boot dev listed (and specified to
be the boot drive) works. I can only specify which one (other than
RAID0) using the boot -a method.

Anyway, thanks very much for your help and I really liike the new
hardware.