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- <h1 class="p-name">Reviving an ol’ machina</h1>
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- <section data-field="subtitle" class="p-summary">
- The computing resources get older as years progress as new technologies evolve. The number of transistors increase
- per unit size and the…
- </section>
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- <section name="9b13" class="section section--body section--first section--last">
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- <h3 name="4fb4" id="4fb4" class="graf graf--h3 graf--leading graf--title">Reviving an ol’ machina</h3>
- <p name="c74c" id="c74c" class="graf graf--p graf-after--h3">The computing resources get older as years
- progress, as newer technologies evolve. The number of transistors increase per unit size and the
- components get smaller and efficient (they call it the Moore’s law). So, this desktop was assembled in the
- year 2010 when I was in college. Needed a decent desktop for college projects (and gaming of course!)
- then.</p>
- <p name="4537" id="4537" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">The specs when assembled were — AMD Phenom II x
- 4 945 processor up to 3GHz, Kingston 4GB DDR3 RAM, Seagate Barracuda 500 GB SATA HDD, Gigabyte
- GA-MA785GMT-US2H motherboard and ATI Radeon 4500 HD 512MB graphics. Now, this was decent configuration
- back in 2010 to run applications such as Netbeans IDE, Eclipse, J2ME emulator, play games like Mafia II,
- Fifa 10 etc. I would like to specially thank my college friend <a href="http://nandakishorek.github.io/">Nandakishore</a>
- for suggesting these specs to me back in 2010.</p>
- <p name="1eb4" id="1eb4" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">After couple of years this desktop was abandoned
- for a shinier Sony Vaio E series laptop. The assembled desktop started catching dust (for years to come).
- </p>
- <p name="631c" id="631c" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">In 2019, I realize that it’s still got venom in
- it provided a few upgrades are made to its disk and memory. So these were the upgrades I made — Firstly, I
- installed 8GB DDR3 additional RAM to the existing 4GB to make it 12GB in total. This made running more
- applications possible and reduced the use of virtual memory access. Note that the arrangement of these RAM
- chips in the slots also matter. Had to check the motherboard <a
- href="https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-MA785GMT-US2H-rev-33/support#support-manual"
- data-href="https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-MA785GMT-US2H-rev-33/support#support-manual"
- class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="noopener" target="_blank">manual</a> and arrange them in
- the sequence described there. Secondly, installed a new Western Digital Green SSD 240GB alongside the
- existing magnetic HDD. Usage of an SSD makes disk access faster and reliable. Although, the maximum speed
- supported by the SSD was 6Gbps, I had to satiate for half of its power as the motherboard supported SATA
- 2nd generation connections (3Gbps). Still, a 3x gain over older HDD. The operating system both GNU/Linux
- (Trisquel) and Windows were installed on the SSD with a dual boot option. One needs to be meticulous here
- in allocating disk space and also in assigning the sequence in which OS(s) are installed. Preferably,
- install Windows first and then GNU/Linux.</p>
- <p name="952a" id="952a" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">There are other peripheral issues which needs to
- be taken care of in a desktop and if ignored can hamper performance. These are issues such as cooling and
- ventilation. Firstly, I had to unscrew the chassis and pluck out the CPU which was running at about 70º
- Celsius. The heat sink had dust accumulated for almost a decade which had to cleaned. A thermal compound
- paste was freshly applied on the CPU to reduce the temperatures. The metal heat sink was then carefully
- placed on the thermal paste. The trick here to avoid any air gaps between the CPU and heat sink is to
- apply the thermal paste at a single point in the middle. When the metal heat sink is placed on top of this
- paste, it distributes the thermal compound without any air gaps. Guess what? After doing this and booting
- my system, I was able to detect a 20º Celsius drop in the CPU temperature (as shown in the BIOS). This was
- a huge gain! (Check, this DIY <a href="https://www.wikihow.com/Apply-Thermal-Paste"
- data-href="https://www.wikihow.com/Apply-Thermal-Paste" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor"
- rel="noopener" target="_blank">tutorial</a>). Secondly, to keep it well ventilated I moved the cabinet
- from an earlier claustrophobic, beneath the desk to top of the desk near a window to get some fresh air.
- The SMPS fan also needed some dusting before I could do this.</p>
- <p name="75d8" id="75d8" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">So, my desktop was ready to do some serious
- computing now. I also had two Dell Ultrasharp 24" monitors — one newly bought and one a few years old
- which were connected to a PCI VGA slot and D-Sub respectively. The BIOS settings were to be set in such
- way that the on-chip VGA got initialized first. The two monitors provide an extended display. Comes in
- handy during programming. One can run a browser and the other could be rendering an IDE (like IntelliJ or
- VSCode). Reduces the time taken for programming considerably as everything we need is visible (no need to
- keep toggling between those windows!).</p>
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- data-is-featured="true" src="assets/img/reviveDesktop.jpeg">
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- <figcaption class="imageCaption">With love and care things can be revived</figcaption>
- </figure>
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