Thinkmate Workstation 2022
I just got a new vritually silent Thinkmate
workstation VSX R5354R
for my office (I named the machine``hopf"). While it came with ubuntu installed,
I immediately installed the new ubuntu 22.04 without a single hickup.
After installation, I always rsync the from the installation created home directory /home/knill to one of the 6TB harddrives,
then mount that drive to /home with sudo mount /dev/sda1 /home. The second 6TB harddrive (backup, no raid).
None of my previous thinkmate machine has ever died. They always just retired after a decade or so.
My old office thinkmate (machine name ``space") is now 9 years old. I still keep it. The previous backup ``matter"
(a 15 year old thinkmate) has now retired. Last night, I synced over the content of the old machine
"space" to the new machine "hopf": rsync -avzu space:/home/knill /home. To compare,
I illustrate the /proc entries and run sysbench.
cat /proc/cpuinfo
cat /proc/meminfo
lspci -v | egrep -i --color 'vga|3d|2d'
sudo apt install sysbench
sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
I still appreciate progress in hardware. Running on a
faster machine really helps, also for teaching and research. The second saved add up to
maybe 100 hours a year which already justifies the investment. Also, as all
my machines run 24/7/365 and do work, the risk one of the components
dying of old age increases. CPUs and components are reported to live for several
decades but still, I like the advancements in other domains:
the M.2. harddrives really make a huge difference. The GPU's get multiple times stronger and
smaller (I have now a consumer NVidia T1000 which serves 2.5 TFlops, the old
office machine w with GT610 had 155 GFlops, which is 16 times less)
the RAM has become faster. Here are my last 4 thinkmate basic data for my last two office and
last two home configurations. The graphics card
for my old knill9 machine (now retired in the cellar) had been replaced 2015. Overall,
I estimate ``hopf" is verall 10-20 times more powerful than the backup ``space". And it is completely
quiet. I actually do not hear anything any more.
Name location year CPU RAM cores GPU Bogo Sysbench
mips evnt/sec
--------------------------------------------------------------
Knill9: (home) 2010 Intel i7-960 8G 4 GT970 ? ?
Space: (office) 2013 Intel i7-3770 32G 4 GT610 6784 480
Knill12:(home) 2020 Ryzen 5 3600 64G 6 QP620 7187 779
Hopf: (office) 2022 Ryzen 7 5800X 128G 8 T1000 7586 2140
Here is a picture after un-boxing (the machine is tested and files transferred
while still on the box). I keep working on the old machine until everything
is perfect.
Oliver Knill, 4/28/2022