I'm David, heard about ML from Scott after stumbling onto the SMB IT Journal recently. I'm a long-time web developer looking to up my server game and preparing to deploy an R620 for personal projects. Excited to participate here.

Planning on using Samsung Magician to adjust the over-provisioning levels on 6x 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSDs to be used in a single Raid 10 on a 1U Dell R620. The server has 10 total slots and I'm hoping to add an additional 4 drives to the array at some point in the future. The controller is a Perc H710P Mini w/ 1GB, and I'll be running Server 2012 R2. Full specs at the bottom of the post.

From what I understand:

1. Hardware raid controllers don't support TRIM.
2. The higher the proportion of the total capacity you dedicate to overprovisioning the faster the performance will be because of how SSDs shuffle data around to level wear, and the longer the life of each individual drive will be.

I don't need the maximum capacity of the drives so can get pretty aggressive on the amount dedicated to OP, at this point the only thing running on the server will be a new product I'm launching that has zero users at this point, but which I'm projecting ( hoping ) will grow to a few hundred thousand in the next 6 months.

Full specs: 2x Xeon E5-2680 octacore procs, 256 GB RAM, 6x 1TB 850 Pros in a Raid 10, probably 4x 300G Seagate SAS 10k drives from the original purchase in a 2nd Raid 10.

If it influences the decision much, I'm going to be running a full web app load on it, IIS, MySQL, and a Java-based app server.

Thanks!

The only source of any audible noise is from the two fans of my H75, which had to be mounted outside the chassis because of the god-awful case I chose ( which I may try to return ). My question is, CPU temps seem to hover at around 24-31 C at any load I throw at it ( I keep my apartment very cold and have fans blowing at me, semi-toward the case )... Is it totally insane to just turn the water cooler fans off and watch the temps to see if they get much higher? To make it dead silent?

So I tried out this new monitor stand which puts 2 of them in landscape atop each other. And I'm in love. And have decided to upgrade to 5 monitors in butterfly formation.

I currently have a non-SLI motherboard w/ a single GTX 970. All monitors are 2560x1440. I may be able to return the motherboard and grab the upgraded version of it which does support SLI. But, these are 1155, older boards, so maybe I'm better off grabbing the new SkyLake and a fresh mobo and RAM kit. So my question is, does SLI let you use the multi-monitor capabilities of both cards? My GTX maxes out at 4 x 1440p, and I need a 5th, so it'd be amazing to be able to pop in another GTX 970 and use all 5 monitors without having to resort to smoke and mirrors like DisplayLink.

If not, is there a card that can handle 1440p x 5?

Thanks!

Just consolidated a 3x 27" setup into a single 5k ( running at 3840x2160 on Windows for the moment ) rig. Other than it being a lot slower than the T110.2 I used to work on, I'm loving the simplicity of a single monitor.

@scottalanmiller Thanks, liking the site so far

@xByteSean and co., would be interested to get your feedback on this too if you have any. Thanks!

Heard a lecture at the 99u Conference in NYC last month that said that the latest research showed that stress was actually... wait for it... a good thing. It was pretty convincing and from what I remember she showed some pretty shocking correlations between longevity, happiness, achievement in general, and physical health... and stress.

http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend

The video of the lecture I saw should be available within the month ( they're slowpokes to get that stuff edited and available ) and I'll try to post it here when I see it. She also has a book on it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583335617/

The big takeaway seemed to be that by simply changing your attitude around / perspective on stress you can use it as a driving force and motivation to excel rather than a crippling, paralyzing enemy. Easier said than done for sure, but the research she cited made a pretty impressive case for checking yourself before wrecking yourself.

http://blog.ted.com/could-stress-be-good-for-you-recent-research-that-suggests-it-has-benefits/

New to enterprise RAID controllers, and looking for some quick guidance.

Working w/ an R620 10-slot w/ a Perc H710P Mini ( 1GB ), and getting ready to deploy a bunch of SSDs to it.

Based on my recent experience w/ an R610 w/ a SAS 6/iR Integrated controller, where we found out late in the game that the controller can't/won't run the SATA SSDs at anything about 1.5 Mbps ( calls it its "negotiated speed" while listing the "3.0 Gbps capable speed" in OpenManage ) while intermingled w/ our other SAS drives, even though they're SATA III drives.

My question is, is there a way I can tell beforehand whether the R610 will use the 6 850 Pros I bought at a lower speed or their max of 6 Gbps?

@StuartJordan Chrome's been my favorite for years and still is. It's just that now there's something that feels noticeably faster so I'm on that train. When the last major release of Firefox came out that claimed it was Faster than Chrome I tried that too, unfortunately they hadn't tested it on high-end hardware and the scrolling was very artificial feeling for me so I trashed it.

@marcinozga I would expect based on Brave's marketing that their browser uses a lot less memory than Chrome for indirect reasons as they're scanning and removing a large number of the heaviest pieces of web pages based on "preventing ads that track you"

I recently started using Chrome mostly for development ( coding ) and then I use Brave for a lot of personal browsing as it's so much palpably faster that everything feels like it's working better. Worth checking out, even Google Docs run WAY more smoothly all the way down to scrolling large docs.

@PhlipElder If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, the culprit would just be the relatively slower processor on the slower machine being constrasted.

Trying to learn NodeJS on Udemy.

@black3dynamite said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@creayt said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@PhlipElder What's Teams?

Microsoft Teams

Ah, I think I've maybe heard of that. I don't use it though and have confirmed it's not installed. I do use Slack though, but it's running identically on all my devices so I don't think it'd be the cause for performance differences.

@PhlipElder What's Teams?

@Pete-S said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

The whole i5/i7 is just a bunch of marketing that creates confusion. There is no real difference between i5 and i7 on mobile CPUs. Usually the i7 can run on a slightly higher clock frequency so it's about 10-15% faster when pushed. Which is not enough for the user to actually notice.

So it's better to take the i5, save a bunch of $$$ and buy memory for that instead. Seeing Dell selling new laptops in 2019 with spinning rust and 4GB RAM - that should be criminal.

BTW, if you truly need speed you should go with one of the workstation or gaming laptops. They have a different, faster category of CPU. Higher TDP compared to the everyday laptops (45W versus 15W). But still slow compared to the desktop CPUs, which should be the choice for speed.

Respectfully disagree. But I will agree that for many people the difference between i7 and i5s ( generally speaking ) will never be perceived/valued, so in many cases it makes sense to go w/ an i5 for the $ savings.

For many other users and specific workloads, the difference is huge. Walking from my bedroom where I have a 2019 hexacore i5 Mac Mini running Windows 10 Pro hooked up to a 43" 4k monitor to my office across the hall where there's an octacore i9 it's like night and day. Each keystroke, click, and task-switch I do on the i9 feels VERY OBVIOUSLY faster than the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini feels ok, great for its size, until I hop onto the i9. When I get into serious workloads the difference becomes even more obvious, thread-dependent or not ( and honestly I don't have many workloads that use the surplus of cores, but I do multitask hard ).

The first time I went from an i5 to an i7-7700HQ it was a similar experience.

Two pretty insane deals:

17.3" i7-8750H ( hexacore ) , 16GB DDR4, GTX 1050 TI, 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD, mini display port, hdmi, rj-45 out
$636.75 after $ back promotion

15.6" thin-bezels, i7-8750H ( hexacore ), 8GB DDR4, GTX 1050 TI, 512GB SSD, USB-C, mini display port, hdmi, rj-45
$562.74 after $ back promotion

It's a very user-specific thing. I've found I can't even stand to work on 4c/8t i7's anymore, the lag is very palpable when just using a computer normally for me. If you think you're the type of person who gets annoyed, or worse, tripped up while working when you're waiting on your computer, the best investment you can make is a 6 or 8 core CPU and a very high-end NVME SSD. If you'll be using a 4k or higher resolution monitor or multiple monitors that are 2560x1440 or higher resolution, you'll also want to invest in a decent GPU. The money is very worth it. If you can afford it, also opt for a CPU w/ the highest base clock you can afford as that'll actually affect how fast it feels in many use cases including web browsing.

• Written from my 5.2 Ghz octacore i9-9900KF 2080TI workstation