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New Hardware

2021-11-17T05:56

A few months ago my devbox began crashing once or twice a day. I really hate hardware — especially disks — and avoid owning it as much as I can. But the reasons for running this machine rather than a VirtualBox continue to be valid¹.

To rent something similar would cost about AUD$80 and save perhaps AUD$4.20 from my power bill. At those prices I will recoup the outlay on hardware in a little over a year.

For my new systems, my priorities were:

Low power
Fast disk
Upgradeable
Reliable

That ruled out Intel (power), single board computers (non-upgradeable) and older generation hardware. I narrowed my choice down to a Zen 3 Ryzen in a B550 motherboard. That combination is fast, low power and supports PCIe 4.0 so the latest NVMe disks will run at full speed.

After much contemplation I ordered:

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Asrock B550M Pro4
8GB Memory
256GB Samsung 980PRO NVMe Disk

While putting it together I realised that I had a 15 year old power supply. Had I known it was so old, I probably would have replaced it first to check if the crashing stopped. I returned to the computer store to buy a 500W Antec Gold PSU.

I've been using it for a few months now, still entirely across SSH. It's super fast. The Power Supply fan did get a little noisy, so I swapped it out for a 120mm Noctua. The machine doesn't crash anymore and it only uses 30W at idle which is about half the power of the Phenom II it replaced.

1. Replacing my Linux VM with Hardware

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