Re: from 4GB of mem to 8GB

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:46:33 -0800, alexandre_paterson wrote:

Hi to all c.o.l.h.'ers,

In late 2006 I bought a *cheap* desktop system that has worked
flawlessly, with 4 GB of RAM.

I put emphasis on the "cheap" side, because I want, once again, to buy a
cheap system...

But this time I want it to support 8 GB of RAM and I wanted to know if
anyone here could share the exact hardware setup and software setup
(distro / kernel) he has running a 'desktop' Linux PC with 8 GB of
memory.

Here's my current setup:

- Asus mb P5LD2 (allowing max 4 GB of mem) - Core 2 Duo E6300
- 4 GB of Kingston 533 memory

I've used that system basically daily for 18 months and I think I
rebooted it maybe 4 times or so (current uptime being only 3 months, for
I moved it to another room).

It's really more a 'workstation' than a desktop (for example I never
bothered to configure the sound on it: it's really a machine I use just
for work).

This setup as been rock-stable-solid (that is I never had any problem
other than occasionnally "kill -9'ing" Firefox-the-pig after I let it
running for weeks, with tens of tabs).

It has been running on Debian etch with a custom-build 32 bit non-PAE
kernel:

Linux saturne 2.6.16.33 #1 SMP ... i686 GNU/Linux

I also made a lots of test with Xen using hardware virtualization and
everything was working really well (now I only use Xen on my SVN, Samba,
NFS, Squid, etc. server which is a separate machine).

I'm not using Xen on this machine anymore, but I'm constantly running
Windows XP inside VMWare's free vmplayer (and I do need to run Windows
XP all the time).

I was thinking about the following setup:

- Asus mb P5B-VM SE (chipset G965) (73 Euros) - Core 2 Duo E6320
- 8 GB of 667 Kingston memory (200 Euros)

Since 4 or 5 "generations" I've been using Asus mobo's, Intel CPUs and
Kingston memory and I've always been very happy with these brands so I'd
rather stick with that.

Is anyone running such a cheap 8 GB setup as a 'desktop' Linux ?

What are the gotcha's ? Should I go the 32 bit + PAE or the 64 bit
route ?

Will VMWare's vmplayer run fine on a 64 bit Linux ?

I don't want to go the server/ECC route. I want something cheap that
will work as flawlessly as my previous 4 GB setup was.

I need a Core 2 Duo E6320 setup that supports 8 GB of non-ECC mem and
that supports hardware virtualization (just in case in want to go back
to Xen and/or KVM).

Any help, hints, tips, gotchas from anyone here currently running a Core
2 Duo with 8 GB desktop/workstation Linux on cheap hardware are very
welcome,

Thanks and see you here,

Alex

My recommendation is that you buy DDR2 800 memory instead of DDR2 667,
the price is almost the same and it will give you more timing margin if
you run it at 667 or 533 instead of 800. 2G DIMMs are double sided so
they present twice the load as a single sided DIMM which can lead to
problems. I'm using 8G of GSKILL DDR2 800 RAM running at 601MHz in my
system (the 601 is because I'm overclocking my 6700 to 3GHz, the basic
clock is set to 300 instead of 266, if you multiply 533 * 300/266 you get
601). My system has been running 24/7 for 15 months without a problem.

With 8G you will definitely want to switch to a 64 bit kernel.

.

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