Should I change my Desktop PC and if so, for what?
Thread poster: German Gonzalez
German Gonzalez
German Gonzalez
Argentina
Local time: 09:13
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Dec 12, 2019

Hello, I have the following Desktop PC which has several years:

AMD Phenom II X6 1075T 3.00 GHz.
16GB RAM.
Dedicated video card: ATI Radeon HD 5700.
3TB HDD (old SATA 3, not SSD or hybrid).
2x 22" Dell monitors. (one of which I might have to change soon).

I use SDL Trados 2019 R2 and sometimes Wordfast Pro or MemoQ. Also, I use 3 virtual PCs (VirtualBox) for OCR, Legacy Dictionaries that may not work well on 64bits, and Desktop Publishing softwar
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Hello, I have the following Desktop PC which has several years:

AMD Phenom II X6 1075T 3.00 GHz.
16GB RAM.
Dedicated video card: ATI Radeon HD 5700.
3TB HDD (old SATA 3, not SSD or hybrid).
2x 22" Dell monitors. (one of which I might have to change soon).

I use SDL Trados 2019 R2 and sometimes Wordfast Pro or MemoQ. Also, I use 3 virtual PCs (VirtualBox) for OCR, Legacy Dictionaries that may not work well on 64bits, and Desktop Publishing software, they usually consume from 2GB to 4GB RAM each. I use virtual PCs because It allows me to avoid installing all the software, faster startup times and faster recovery times when faced with a Windows startup/new installation issue.

Sometimes it's laggy, for instance, Trados 2019 terminology/verification took a long time for 8k words with only one TM and a small Termbase. I'd like to know your recommendations.
Also, I don't feel comfortable with CPU with integrated video, but maybe it's a prejudgment on my part.
Thanks in advance!





[Edited at 2019-12-12 18:06 GMT]
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:13
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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@German Dec 12, 2019

German Gonzalez wrote:
AMD Phenom II X6 1075T 3.00 GHz


See also: https://www.proz.com/forum/smart_shoppers/339260-best_desktop_pc_2019_2020.html

So, if you do want to upgrade to a motherboard that is capable of SATA 6 and M.2 for faster SSD access, you're going to have to buy it second-hand. And that means that you might as well consider buying a new processor and a new motherboard, for the same price as a second-hand one capable of taking your current processor. However, a new motherboard will use DDR4 RAM, so you won't be able to re-use your old DDR3 sticks (on the other hand, RAM is quite cheap these days). The only thing you'll be able to re-use will be the case, the hard drive, and probably the graphics card as well.

FWIW, I bought myself a new computer 3 months ago, for about EUR 500, and I'm quite happy with it:
part list

I use SDL Trados 2019 and sometimes Wordfast Pro or MemoQ. I use 3 virtual PCs...


My CAT tools definitely run faster on my new machine. I also have the impression that my virtual machine is faster. I suspect the big bottleneck for us is the speed of the storage, which is why you need to get an M.2 SSD, which would require a new motherboard.

Also, I don't feel comfortable with CPU with integrated video, but maybe it's a prejudgment on my part.


Yes, some people dislike that option (but I can't figure out why). Having integrated video doesn't prevent you from having a separate graphics card.


[Edited at 2019-12-12 18:39 GMT]


 
German Gonzalez
German Gonzalez
Argentina
Local time: 09:13
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Will you be building your new machine yourself? Dec 12, 2019

Thanks for your reply!

My idea is to build it myself, but I have a friend who can help me if things become difficult.

I assume that having more cores in a CPU is better when you have to use them for a virtual PC, is that the case?
Also, Am I right to assume that it's a good idea to have a fast and new M.2 SSD drive for the system and a bigger but older HHD type for storage?


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:13
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@German Dec 12, 2019

German Gonzalez wrote:
My idea is to build it myself, but I have a friend who can help me if things become difficult.


So... pcpartpicker.com?

I assume that having more cores in a CPU is better when you have to use them for a virtual PC, is that the case?


I don't know. But you're not going to be doing anything in the virtual machines while you're doing anything else (I mean, run resource intensive processes in the host and on the virtual machines all at the same time), so logically I would guess that having more cores won't really affect the performance of your virtual machines or their host. On web sites about how to increase virtual machine performance, having more cores is seldom mentioned. I suspect faster storage will have a far greater effect on the virtual machine.

Am I right to assume that it's a good idea to have a fast and new M.2 SSD drive for the system and a bigger but older HHD type for storage?


Yes, that's what I did as well.


 
Jean Dimitriadis
Jean Dimitriadis  Identity Verified
English to French
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I would not necessarily upgrade to a new PC Dec 13, 2019

The three following steps could help vastly improve the experience:

- Switch from SATA to SSD as your primary drive (you can still use the other one, but better leave it for archiving, not active projects). This will noticeably improve the performance. Plus, this requires a system reinstallation, which will result in a fresh operating system.

- Can you combine the three VMs into one? That way, you drastically save on RAM used, which will also be beneficial to system res
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The three following steps could help vastly improve the experience:

- Switch from SATA to SSD as your primary drive (you can still use the other one, but better leave it for archiving, not active projects). This will noticeably improve the performance. Plus, this requires a system reinstallation, which will result in a fresh operating system.

- Can you combine the three VMs into one? That way, you drastically save on RAM used, which will also be beneficial to system responsiveness. If you can't do that, you can check whether upgrading your RAM is supported. Or you can do both.

- A few Windows speed optimizations (disabling animations, etc. - you can find such ideas online) won't hurt either.

[Edited at 2019-12-13 08:07 GMT]
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:13
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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@Jean Dec 13, 2019

Jean Dimitriadis wrote:
I would not necessarily upgrade to a new PC.


Yes, German's computer seems to be quite capable. It is, however, so old that she can't get all the benefit out of newer, faster storage mediums using her current motherboard.

In addition, if she decides to get a higher resolution monitor in the near future (i.e. higher than 1920x1080), her motherboard may not support that, so that's something to take into consideration as well (although as far as I can tell, her current graphics card should be able to support 2560x1600).

Switch from SATA to SSD as your primary drive.


That's what I did, on my previous computer whose motherboard that did not provide full SATA 6 support, and I found that the SSD resulted in no improvement in performance over a 5400 RPM hard drive. I noticed an improvement (quite a dramatic one) when I upgraded to a motherboard capable of supporting the SSD's full capabilities.



[Edited at 2019-12-13 10:01 GMT]


 
Sebastian Witte
Sebastian Witte  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 13:13
Member (2004)
English to German
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Off-topic Dec 13, 2019

Dear all,

I wonder whether choosing a bigger power supply (like 750W instead of 500W) means lower or higher energy consumption drawn from the wall in the case of an otherwise identical system if both power supplies are the same energy efficiency certification level, like 80 PLUS Bronze (viz. entry level in the realm of certified energy-efficient power supplies).

Does anybody happen to know this?

Cheers,


 
Ezequiel Flores
Ezequiel Flores
Cosovo
Spanish
+ ...
Virtualization Tecnology Dec 13, 2019

Hi German,
As Jean says, a really good improvement for your setup is to buy a SSD, and leave the 3TB HDD as archive, in the future, if you want to build another desktop machine, you could reuse that SSD.

do yo use the three VM simoultaneusly?

Always is better to have more cores availables, but perhaps a octa-core of 10 year ago is the same of a quad-core of 2019, b
... See more
Hi German,
As Jean says, a really good improvement for your setup is to buy a SSD, and leave the 3TB HDD as archive, in the future, if you want to build another desktop machine, you could reuse that SSD.

do yo use the three VM simoultaneusly?

Always is better to have more cores availables, but perhaps a octa-core of 10 year ago is the same of a quad-core of 2019, because of the instruction sets of the CPU, which are improved while the technology evolves. And also with newers CPUs the Virtualization Tecnology evolves too.
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:13
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Sebastian Dec 13, 2019

Sebastian Witte wrote:
I wonder whether choosing a bigger power supply (like 750W instead of 500W) means lower or higher energy consumption drawn from the wall...


For all practical purposes, the power supply unit (PSU) will only draw as much power from the wall as is needed. If the PSU is much, much, much bigger than is needed, it may be slightly less efficient than a smaller one, which means that it'll draw more watt from the wall than the smaller one, but it also depends on each PSU's individual efficiency curve.


[Edited at 2019-12-13 21:18 GMT]


Sebastian Witte
 
German Gonzalez
German Gonzalez
Argentina
Local time: 09:13
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
do yo use the three VM simoultaneusly? Dec 13, 2019

Ezequiel Flores wrote:
do yo use the three VM simoultaneusly?


No, but I do OCR in the virtual PC while I translate with Trados in the host.


 
Sebastian Witte
Sebastian Witte  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 13:13
Member (2004)
English to German
+ ...
Thank you, Samuel Dec 13, 2019

Samuel Murray wrote:

Sebastian Witte wrote:
I wonder whether choosing a bigger power supply (like 750W instead of 500W) means lower or higher energy consumption drawn from the wall...


Most geeks seem to think slightly higher (but think of all the advantages!).

The argument is that while for all practical purposes the power supply unit (PSU) will only draw as much power from the wall as is needed, bigger PSUs are generally less efficient (i.e. the more watt it can draw from the wall, the greater percentage of the watt that it actually drawn will end up as heat instead of power). However, opinions differ... in this test by Linus Tech Tips a 450 W, 750 W, 1200 W and 1500 W PSU all drew around 350 W from the wall during a session of heavy load.


[Edited at 2019-12-13 21:10 GMT]


 
German Gonzalez
German Gonzalez
Argentina
Local time: 09:13
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks to all and update! Dec 30, 2019

Sorry for not replying before, but with the holidays and all I couldn't do it before.
So, I think it was like a day after my last post I had a catastrophic failure. I couldn't boot with my PC and I lost the primary HDD. After struggling for many hours I could recover some data with a Hiren BootCD in a USB drive.
It was then when I decided to smash the piggy bank and update my PC. This is my new setup:

HArdware

I decided to keep the old power supply, video card, two 2tb drives which I only use for storage, and the case. I didn't buy a special CPU cooler and installed the one that comes in the bundle, I hope that's a good choice since I'm not overclocking.

I wanted to thank everyone for your input, it was a great deal for me!
Happy new year for all!


 


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Should I change my Desktop PC and if so, for what?






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