March 19, 2024

Getting A Much Needed Upgrade!

I wanted to create a simulated network for a virtual lab, but while trying to setup the limitations of my CPU and Ram kept me from growing it much bigger than a few machines at a time. it was time for me to upgrade my PC!

Both my CPU and RAM are max out.

There are two options I have, It was neither getting another computer or upgrading. I thought about using more than one computer or a virtual online lab, I do have some laying around. I wanted to keep it simple and keep it to one computer, nor did I wanted to deal with online lag or outages. So I deiced on the upgrading route, the gear was 10 years old and I been wanting to get a Ryzen CPU for a while now.

Upgrading neither my CPU or Ram wasn’t really an option. A better CPU from the old Intel q6600 would only gain me about 5% to 10% in performance at most. Plus my computer can only support 8GB of ram. Since virtualization requires a lot of memory and 8GB ain’t gonna cut it. The only way forward was upgrade my motherboard, which means I need to get a new CPU and RAM.

Since my main focus was virtualization and not gaming I needed a Lot of ram and CPU power. The Cpu I went with was a Ryzen 3700x, it has 8 cores with 16 threads. Since Infinity Fabric on the AMD Ryzen CPU works best with fast ram, I went with two 16GB sticks running at 3600mhz. I’m also replacing the power supply since the one I have is older than 10 years; it has a good chance of exploding on me! With about $700 in new parts, I really Don’t want to buy it all again!

As for the heat sink, I’m going to use the one provided by the CPU. It’s more than good enough for my needs since I have no real plans to overclock it. I don’t like using the paste they supply on heat sinks with Heat sinks. So I replace it with Arctic Silver 5 it lasts and has great thermals transfers.

test
clean off factory thermal compound.

For the rest of the parts, I’m reusing the graphics card, storage, and case. I got everything Now for putting it together.

With the new parts installed, now I need to give it a test run and see if the upgrade was worth the trouble.

Leagues better then was it was before.

The performance was astonishing, This beast will get the work done! Before I struggle with just 2 VM’s, but now I can run more than double! There a bottle cap issue with my storage, as it’s not keeping up with the VM’s. I will differently be upgrading to an NVME drive later. But for now, with this upgrade, I will be able to continue my studies.

colby

Computer guru with years working with technology. I find it fun to tinker with computer new and old, and make them do my work for me.

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