Re: [tlug] fanless pcs

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2018-07-04 15:24 +0900 (Wed), Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:

> On 4 July 2018 at 10:11, Curt Sampson wrote:
> 
> Sure, but the monitor alone won't do me any good. I will also have to buy a
> PC at which point I'd be looking at a price tag around 60K or more.

Ah, ok. Yes, you're looking at about ¥30k for a Livia Z N4200 with
8 GB of RAM.

> To my knowledge there is no graphics card that fits that machine and
> support the full resolution of a 4K monitor. And even if there was one, it
> would likely cost as much or more than the Liva Z with the N4200 CPU that
> you recommended.

The GT710 is a short, low-profile card that will run 4K resolution
(though only at 30 Hz) and it costs about ¥3000. You'd need to make
sure that your monitor supports dual-link DVI or HDMI, however, as
it doesn't have DisplayPort. <https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01B2P8A3K/> 

> > But to necessitate going beyond 16 GB the working size of something
> > like Chrome + VSCode would have to more than triple, from 4 GB to
> > 14 GB or so. I don't see what's going to drive that,
> 
> I know exactly what would drive going beyond 16GB of RAM: Operating system
> requirements.

> The ThinkCentre M55 I have came with 1GB of RAM when I got it in 2007 and
> that was more than adequate to run CentOS on it. Fast forward 10 years and
> 1GB no longer cuts it.

You have likely decided to start using a larger desktop system or are
running more applications. I just closed my web browser on my Debian 9
system and, with fvwm, a button bar with the standard stuff
(Anthy/MozC, networking, bluetooth, etc.) and about 30 terminals (270
processes total) I'm using less than 700 MB of RAM. A full Xfce
desktop instead of my more minimal one might bring it over 1 GB. If
you insist on running Gnome or KDE, well, that's you, not the OS.

> I cannot remember to ever have run into a memory limit with any application
> software I was using. Instead it has always been operating system
> requirements that obsoleted my hardware. I expect that trend to continue.

That's Just Wrong. We've already seen here that VSCode adds 400 MB, a
more than 50% increase in memory requirements over the base OS and
lots of terminals, before you even open any files, and Chrome just ate
over 2.5 GB when I restarted it (admittedly with about 20 tabs open),
almost four times what the OS and terminals are using.

cjs
-- 
Curt J. Sampson      <cjs@example.com>      +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch