Re: Product idea

On 2/13/2025 1:58 PM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 13/02/2025 14:08, Don Y wrote:

On 2/12/2025 11:00 PM, bitrex wrote:

Desktop computers that put out significant heat have gone the way of the dodo for most people under the age of 40 probably, those who aren't PC gamers, anyway.

>
That's likely because desktop computers have gone away -- except in
corporate settings.

 Even in corporate setting you can get things the size of a shallow lunchbox now that can do everything that any normal office worker will ever need. Many of them will clip onto the back of an LCD display.

Yes, I have several i7 NUCs.  But, IME, most shops are still using SFF
and USFF boxes.  I base this on the boxes that I see those firms
"recycling" (discarding).

My laptop at idle doesn't heat a thing and at full tilt puts out enough to warm up one finger, maybe.

>
Laptops tend to be bad examples as they will throttle themselves to keep
the CPU from melting.  Desktops can rely on larger fans to spin up to
move more heat.

 My laptop back around Y2k was I think a Pentium 4 and left permanent scorch marks on the table where I used it. It was definitely not a laptop by any stretch of the imagination unless you wanted to be cooked!
 OK I will admit that I did run it fairly hard for max performance.

I have a similar box -- but I only use it for the in-built serial port
and *floppy* (for those cases where I need access to same).  It is
fairly heavy.
I used to have a SPARC laptop (that I regret discarding) but it was
dog slow (no doubt complicated by running Slowaris)

You don't realize how much heat most kit throws off until you site it
in a poorly ventilated area and note the temperature differential,
over time.

 I choose systems these days for maximum performance and minimum power consumption. If I am not running a heavy maths simulation and just typing like I am now then in winter I can get a "Warning CPU fan 0 rpm" message - it used to bother me at first until I checked the CPU temperature which was under 30C so totally safe.
 Modern OS and modern CPUs throttle back the clock and make all the performance cores idle when there is no serious computational load.

I choose boxes based on what I can rescue (i.e., < $10).  This typically
means multiple Xeon CPUs, redundant power supplies, multiple NICs and
lots of *SAS* spindles (the sorts of boxes you would find in or around
a datacenter) -- because "mere humans" don't want to be bothered with
such behemoths (so, the boxes would just end up scrapped -- which is sinful).
The boxes that tend to run 365/24/7 are chosen to be much smaller
(so I can "hide" them, out of the way), lower power/fanless (so
I can put them *in* an occupied bedroom and not know of their
presence -- if the power LED is covered with electrical tape).
The little Atom box that does my DNS/TFTP/NTP/xfs/RDBMS/etc. has a full
system on it (including sources) so I can use it for chores that don't
need much horsepower/memory.  It is not uncommon for me to set it to
"make world" while it's providing those other services.
OTOH, rendering 3D video or SfM tends to be an iterative exercise so
I want to see results "soon" in order to change the models and turn the
crank, again.
The boxes that I use to build NASs are dreadfully over-qualified for
the application (12 core Xeons with ~100G DRAM).  But, they have the
important feature of many (8) spindles!
[Amusingly, the "system" on these resides on a 16G thumb drive tucked
inside the machine so none of the spindles is "wasted" on something
as banal as the application software!]
In the next week, I'll replace the 24" TV in the kitchen with a similarly
sized AiO so I can eliminate the attached media server (SWMBO has become
addicted to watching videos and the DVR there).  This lets me discard some
kit (I can probably find someone who wants a 24" TV more easily than a
24" computer!)