--Oz-- said:
I am loving the xeon e5-2689/32gb/rx580 system I just put together on win10, it has a 480gb SSD, but I think for $68 I am going to try the M.2 512gb ssd
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000116726517.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.74613c0055ekfT&mp=1
After reading tomshardware, the speed and price of this drive is hard to beat. I am 50+ now, been repairing PC's to component level since the IBM-XT came out

Win10 is basically free (~$5 keys on ebay, or just dont activate it)
I am still itching to try the 2689-v3 (passmark ~18,000, 12core/24thread) and the x99-FT motherboard combo, i can easily sell the current setup to a friend.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/400...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_2,searchweb201603_53
I like the speed test comparison of that chart of that Aliexpress listing has put up, it shows the mechanical-harddrive vs the m2-ssd with the
real-world performance showing 1.233MB/sec vs 437.3MB/sec on
non-sequential reads of the HDD mechanical drive.
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1ORFzVhTpK1RjSZFKq6y2wXXaE.jpg
That 1.233MB/sec vs 437.3MB/sec shows the SSD drive performance 354 x times faster than a standard mechanical hard drive for real-world performance scenarios.
Some people just don't understand that looking at a sequential read speed of a mechanical HD is pointless and misleading, because the only time it mattered was the very first boot of a fresh installation of MS Windows... It only takes one single OS update where the updated DLLs/OS files were larger than the previous files hence causing those files to be allocated somewhere else on the hard drive causing fragmentation, hence 1.233MB/sec read speeds since it's now down to random read performance instead of sequential, only vinal record players have perfect sequential reads.
For the last 10 years now so many tech sites/articles have claimed that moving from mechanical storage to SSD increases your average read data speeds by as much as 10,000 times and by 100s of times at a minimum.
It's hard for the human mind to conceptualize this, so imagine earing 500x times more money than you do now, or living 500 times longer than you will, that's like living for 5000 years.
Mechanical hard drives were the main perpetrator of a perfect wicked and evil business model for Microsoft/Intel/PC builders because it only took a month before most folks on their mechanical hard drive PCs would say: "boy this thing is slow, I need to buy a whole new PC again.."
There are still folks out there using mechanical hard drives for OS/Software usage instead of merely just for video/archival purposes, it's a tragic story of the first world, all the invisible suffering, just as bad as sugar/junk food. There really should be a "World SSD and no more mechanical hard drive day", let's end the suffering!
While that Aliexpress SSD drive looks fine, I don't think saving $10 etc is worth it compared to just buying locally, because you get incredibly convenient warranty buying locally. You only want to use Aliexpress on standout bargains like 8core CPUs and 32GB ram etc at a fraction of the price locally, that's a no brainer, but not really worth it for other stuff.
I have long been an MSY fan, they not so insanely cheap any more but they have an instant and very convenient all in one price PDF has been a long favourite of mine to check, its been the same format for 15years!
http://cdn.msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf
With that 12core CPU deal, I been thinking the future might be looking good for old server hardware repurposed for desktop usage, because the trend for AMD/Intel lately has been to release these super mega core CPUs that still run at rather lowish clock speeds, check out the new AMD Threadripper 3990X, it has 64 CPU cores running at base 2.9Ghz and turbo of 4.3Ghz
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15483/amd-threadripper-3990x-review
CPUs like this should help push game developers to concentrate of making games that make use of ALL the CPU cores instead of being lazy coders and trying to rely on just ~3 CPU cores with a high IPC that are running at a higher Mhz, coding for high IPC instead of utilizing many CPU cores is code mindset of 15years ago.
This is what makes programs like Cinebench so great, because it shows you how much computing performance you can get out of a 6+ core CPU if its coded to take advantage of more threads/cores.
If game developers code games like how Cinebench runs, then CPUs from 10 years ago with 6+ cores will work great in future games with combined with a modern graphics card. Even the PCIe 2.0 bus is yet to be saturated, so PCIe v3 video cards in old motherboards do perform the same https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/pci-express-3-0-vs-2-0-gaming-performance-gain/4/