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Re: Just bought a new used laptop

Reply #15

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI for a large collection of tips.

My "not really doing anything" RAM use is ~6-7 GB on my desktop (most of that comes from Firefox and/or Vivaldi/Opera and a few Electron apps like Skype & Discord); seldom much more than 16 GB I suppose, but 24 GB isn't really something you can/should plan afaik. We did end up putting 24 GB in my wife's desktop. We put hers together with 8 GB (2*4) back in 2014, which had become a big source of complaints by '17 so we upped it to 24 (2*4+2*8). Works fine but they say it can be risky.

Having 32 GB enables certain types of convenience you'd traditionally never think of. You can just stick a several GB file(s) in RAM (tmpfs) without a second thought, which makes SATA-600 feel pretty slow. Sometimes useful. And you (almost) never have to close anything before opening something RAM-heavy like Kdenlive. It's quite liberating.

Which isn't to say I'd recommend 32 GB to my mom or whatever. For her it'd just be a waste of a hundred Euros. Also I was able to get the 32 GB for € 45 extra compared to 16 GB back in '16. That was a decent value even then. Prices are still worse now, although not nearly as bad as in '17 and '18.

But yeah, 8 GB is definitely low-end in 2020, imo. :)

Re: Just bought a new used laptop

Reply #16

32 GB is out of my budget, 1 single DIM 16GB costs 136€ (DDR3L double voltage costs more than DDR3)
For 2 x 8GB I paid a total of 69,90€, much more affordable.
sorry for my bad english

Re: Just bought a new used laptop

Reply #17

Yeah, I guess the 4 * 8 I've got in my desktop is more affordable no matter the current price fluctuations.[1]Pity these CPU sockets change constantly, because otherwise I'd probably just toss a new CPU in my PC in a few years. Oh well, it'll be motherboard+CPU+RAM again then.

The only thing I worry about a bit is my aging HDDs. I took out my oldest a few years back for risk mitigation, but even my "new" 2 TB HDD from 2010 has been powered on for a total of 3 years now. I'm not really sure what that does for chance of failure. I also have one that's been powered on for 7 years, 3 months & 18 days; it dates back to… gosh, 2006 or 2007? Meh. The one I took out was my oldest, which had been powered on for 8 years.[2]
As I said/implied it was € 90 for 32 GB; the extra 16 GB for my wife a little over a year later cost more than that D-:
One upon a time that was my system drive, but I've gone through three different SSDs since… all still in use of course.)
Last Edit: February 03, 2020, 11:45:06 am by Frenzie