A Lesson in Spec'ing Up: How to Extend the Life of Your Computer Equipment

I still remember the day I got my hands on this computer, which was supposed to last me only two years as an active money-earning work tool. However, with a well-thought-out plan and focus on what the computer needs to do for me, I've managed to extend its lifespan to 12 years. This experience has taught me that if we spec things up without worrying about cutting-edge benchmark numbers, we can significantly extend the life of our computer equipment.

This computer is a perfect example of how by focusing on the essential requirements and not being too concerned with having the latest and greatest technology, we can make it last longer. With its Zon processor, quiet operation, efficiency, and ample space for storage drives, this machine will be a great candidate for installing TrueNAS and turned into a 10-gigabit NAS appliance at a fraction of the cost of buying one off the shelf.

In fact, I did exactly that last year, and I'm excited to share my experience with you in an upcoming video on the channel. If you're interested in learning how to create a 10-gigabit NAS from old server hardware for a low cost, be sure to subscribe to the channel as the content is coming soon.

I've been reviewing Apple products over the last two to three years and have moved towards this kind of consumer computer environment where it's difficult to upgrade anything. This has led me to appreciate the benefits of using existing components to extend the life of a machine. I believe that by not specing out our machines with the latest technology, we can create an environmentally friendly computer.

My experience with Apple products has shown me that they're not always the most environmentally friendly options. The constant stream of new releases and upgrades can lead to a culture of disposability, which is not only bad for the environment but also creates financial waste. In contrast, by using components from existing machines or choosing devices that are more affordable upfront, we can significantly reduce our environmental impact.

One of the key benefits of spec'ing up our computers in this way is that it allows us to make better use of our existing resources. I've found that many people go out and buy computers that are far more powerful than they actually need, only to find that they're not making full use of their capabilities. This can lead to a significant amount of money being wasted on technology that's not being utilized effectively.

In my experience, using a machine with lower specs can be just as effective as one with higher-end components. My current computer, for example, doesn't have the latest processor or graphics card, but it still manages to handle its daily tasks with ease. This has taught me that we don't always need the most powerful technology to get our work done.

One of the key aspects of spec'ing up a machine is ensuring that it can keep pace with our needs over time. By using components that are designed to be efficient and reliable, we can reduce the likelihood of the machine becoming outdated or obsolete too quickly.

Recently, I upgraded my father's computer with a new 1TB drive, which took about 40 minutes to complete. The cost of this upgrade was around $75, but it has given his machine a significant boost in terms of storage capacity and speed. I've been testing the machine since the upgrade, and it's performed flawlessly.

The experience has also highlighted the importance of using software that allows us to manage our computer's performance effectively. I used Macrium Reflect for this upgrade, which is a great piece of software that makes it easy to clone drives and manage disk space. Although there was one minor issue with restarting the machine after the upgrade, overall everything worked perfectly.

I've been experimenting with different types of storage solutions in recent months, and I'm excited to share my findings with you soon. One of the most interesting experiences I've had recently is turning an old server into a 10-gigabit NAS appliance using TrueNAS software. This has allowed me to provide my father with a reliable and efficient storage solution for his files, all at a fraction of the cost of buying a commercial product.

I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this type of content format and whether you prefer unscripted videos or more formal studio productions. As always, I appreciate any feedback or comments you may have on my videos. Thank you for watching, and I look forward to sharing more content with you in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou catch me today doing a bit of an SSD upgrade on my dad's computer and you might think to yourself that's not a particularly exciting topic for a video and I'd agree with you there but what's interesting about this particular computer is that I built it 10 years ago and it's still going strong and my dad is still using it for his day-to-day architectural work and I think there's some interesting thoughts to come from that so I just wanted to share those with you as I do the upgrade of course because of the age of the components in this machine there's no mvme slot on the motherboard so we're using a SATA SSD and this particular one is the one that I originally installed when I built the machine it's a Corsair Drive Corsair Force 240 GB and the only reason why we're replacing this incidentally is because 240 gigs just isn't enough space dad keeps running out of space on his system drive so I've got this crucial mx500 1 tab drive to put in and that should Sol solve that problem I have to say I have checked this drive and checked the smart data just to see how healthy it is and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it it's still going strong after 10 years of regular daily use I find that a testament actually to just how good ssds are got and bearing in mind this one's a decade old you know the latest generation should be even more reliable and I have said this a lot in a lot of my videos on the channel and um he often gets detractors in the comments section because of course I realize ssds do fail uh they're guarant aned to fail in fact um at some point in their life but the simple reality is that for most people uh these drives will last a lifetime of the machine anyway let's do the upgrade that involves cloning the system Drive uh to this new SSD which is not always as straightforward as it might seem I'm going to use a piece of third party software called eus or easeus we'll see how that works and I guess the first challenge that I face here is deciding how to do this I I was thinking actually of putting this drive into an external USB enclosure to do do the Clone but actually I think I'm just going to unplug the spinning disc that's in here the data drive cuz that's not going to affect anything and I'll just plug it in there to do the Clone in the system that'll probably be the fastest way to do it I'm not even going to screw the drive in I'm just going to hang it on the cable okay I think that should work I'm going to take the computer around to the other desk to do the install now so I've pop around to my desk D's desk just to set it up here because um I got a feeling that the graphics card that's in this machine which is a Quadro 2000 is probably not going to drive a 4K display uh I don't know that for certain I'm just saving time by coming around here um I also tried using that eus software that I mentioned and it's not free at all as soon as you try and use it um they want you to pay a subscription fee um so I've decided instead to go with macrium reflect who do offer a free trial so let's see how this works so I'm just going to go through the process now of trying to clone the disc okay and we're about 2 or 3 minutes in and we're at 1% so I think this is going to be a long job we'll just let that go um the reason that I wanted to make this video was that when looking at this computer initially just to see what the issues were that Dad was having I was really surprised at just how Snappy it still feels my dad's using this still to run Autodesk um AutoCAD software I think it's AutoCAD LT that he uses cuz he doesn't do any 3D stuff but he is using the 2024 version of that and this machine is still running perfectly for that purpose uh it's still plenty quick enough just out of curiosity I ran a geekbench 6 CPU and GPU test and the results by modern standards were pretty woeful to say the least we've been talking about benchmarks in recent videos and I think this is a kind of key Point really you could look at these scores and assume that this computer is completely useless and that you must upgrade but that's simply not the case this computer works fine it still does exactly what it's supposed to do and the reason why is because it was built with quality components in the first place when I first built this I wanted to build my data quality machine and it didn't come cheap it's got a workstation motherboard in it's got a a xon processor 32 GB of RAM and we went with that Quadro graphics card yeah okay it's not going to play any of the latest games by any stretch of the imagination but it's perfectly fine for running these two displays which is how dad prefers to do his work we went with what I thought was a big SSD at the top 240 GB um and it did in fact work for the past 10 years just fine I did put a 3 tbte spinning disc in for data backup and I think that was Overkill cuz dad hasn't used hardly any of that space so it just goes to show that if you configure the machine right in the first place you buy the right quality components you know good quality power supplies if you're building your own PC that's really important uh a good quality Case um this particular case is a fractal design case and um it's got loads of space in it and it's also I don't know how well you can see this it's got this lovely um sort of acoustic foam material and that's throughout the case put that back what that does is makes the computer really quiet and of course these older generation Zeon CPUs don't need massive cooling the graphics card doesn't need massive cooling so it's a really quiet and efficient system and it's lasted all of this time so yes it was an expensive uh setup in the first place but just think about how much work my dad has put through this you know 10 years worth of work has gone through this machine now that's a tool that has returned on its investment I would say and where do we go next with this particular PC it's a bit difficult to upgrade um there's not really a clear upgrade path for CPU it already has pretty much the best one in there there's not much difference between the one I spec and and the top range CPU uh there's no need for any additional RAM 32 GB was a huge amount 10 years ago it's still plenty today do we need to change the graphics card well arguably that would be probably the best upgrade we could do on this system the motherboard is PCI Express 3 and there is a x16 slot so that does open up a number of options for gpus that don't require an additional power connector from the power supply and uh I think the best one of those would give us about 10 times the raw compute performance of the quadro 2000 so that would be a decent upgrade but when I say 10 times the raw compute performance that doesn't mean that my dad will see a 10 times Improvement or indeed anything close to that it might just facilitate him being able to uh use a bigger resolution or a bigger display uh so perhaps arguably it's not the the thing that needs to be done at this point in time now this computer is running Windows 10 and officially it doesn't support Windows 11 but uh Windows 10 comes end of life in October 2025 which is still you know almost two years away so all in all this computer will have lasted about 12 years as an active money earning work tool and I think that's pretty impressive and I'm really proud of that you know it was a well-built machine I got some pictures actually of the machine as it was being built so you can see it minty fresh and the lesson here I guess is that if we spec things up and we're not worried about having those Cutting Edge Benchmark numbers If instead we just focus on what does the computer need to do for me and can it do that job then suddenly the lifespan of our computer equipment can be really extended and this computer won't be dead in two years time and just think about that case it's got a zon processor it's quiet it's efficient uh it's got loads of space for storage drives it'll be a perfect candidate for installing true Nason and you could turn that box into a 10 gigabit Nas Appliance for your network at a fraction of the price of going out and buying one off the shelf in fact I did that last year and I'm going to make a video about that which will come soon on the channel so if you want to see how I made a 10 gbit NAS from old server Hardware that was very cheap to acquire uh then please subscribe to the channel That content is coming soon so this computer still has life in it Beyond its working lifespan for my dad and I think that is quite refreshing actually I've been reviewing a lot of Apple products over the last sort of two three years and we have moved very much towards this kind of consumer computer environment where you can't upgrade anything you've got to get your spec right from the outset and sure that can work if you get your spec right you know with an Apple computer you can have it last just as long as this one but for the majority of people I think that's probably not the case because of the way Apple prices the upgrades uh when you're specking out your machine in the first place and also because you can't repair anything or upgrade anything anymore on the Apple silicon machine Mach and I think that's really sad and I've sat through numerous Apple Keynotes where they've been talking about the environment but the simple truth is this is an environmentally friendly computer by using the components and getting the maximum life out of it and by not paying attention to the consumerism where we're constantly being told you got to have this latest thing you got to have this this next best geekbench number or everything you do is wrong in real world terms this computer doesn't feel as slow as the numbers would suggest and I suspect that's true of a lot of machines and I think a lot of people go out and buy computers that are way more powerful than they actually need and you're putting all of that money down and never seeing a return on it it's now up to 33% on the system Drive swap I'm sure that's going to work fine and once it does he'll have a terabyte of space which is going to keep this machine going uh for the rest of its useful life for my dad and what was the cost of that drive it was about $75 or thereabouts so finished with the upgrade and pleased to report that everything worked perfectly uh so thumbs up to macrium reflect that's a nice piece of software I did have to restart the machine once but other than that it was absolutely fine and I've been uh spending a few minutes testing it I think overall it took about 40 minutes something like that and as you can see the machine is just really Snappy with the new drivein I mean it was Snappy before but uh look how quickly it'll open Microsoft Edge and it just gets me questioning these things you know do we need the amount of power that we think we do you know are we uh overspending on our computers uh if my dad can do his work on this machine with its low scores do use machines become more of an option you know could you get your work done on a machine that's say 5 years old and give that machine a new lease of life isn't that better for the environment i' be really interested to find out what you guys think about this I'm also really interested to see what you think about this kind of video format unscripted uh a simple camera setup no Studio it's much easier for me to produce and get content done quickly I'm not saying that we won't do Studio content of course we will it's just that my main job is quite timec consuming at the moment and we're struggling to get in the studio and get content up regularly so any feedback you've got would be gratefully received and thanks as always for all of the support you give to the channel see you again soon for some more geek Gyou catch me today doing a bit of an SSD upgrade on my dad's computer and you might think to yourself that's not a particularly exciting topic for a video and I'd agree with you there but what's interesting about this particular computer is that I built it 10 years ago and it's still going strong and my dad is still using it for his day-to-day architectural work and I think there's some interesting thoughts to come from that so I just wanted to share those with you as I do the upgrade of course because of the age of the components in this machine there's no mvme slot on the motherboard so we're using a SATA SSD and this particular one is the one that I originally installed when I built the machine it's a Corsair Drive Corsair Force 240 GB and the only reason why we're replacing this incidentally is because 240 gigs just isn't enough space dad keeps running out of space on his system drive so I've got this crucial mx500 1 tab drive to put in and that should Sol solve that problem I have to say I have checked this drive and checked the smart data just to see how healthy it is and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it it's still going strong after 10 years of regular daily use I find that a testament actually to just how good ssds are got and bearing in mind this one's a decade old you know the latest generation should be even more reliable and I have said this a lot in a lot of my videos on the channel and um he often gets detractors in the comments section because of course I realize ssds do fail uh they're guarant aned to fail in fact um at some point in their life but the simple reality is that for most people uh these drives will last a lifetime of the machine anyway let's do the upgrade that involves cloning the system Drive uh to this new SSD which is not always as straightforward as it might seem I'm going to use a piece of third party software called eus or easeus we'll see how that works and I guess the first challenge that I face here is deciding how to do this I I was thinking actually of putting this drive into an external USB enclosure to do do the Clone but actually I think I'm just going to unplug the spinning disc that's in here the data drive cuz that's not going to affect anything and I'll just plug it in there to do the Clone in the system that'll probably be the fastest way to do it I'm not even going to screw the drive in I'm just going to hang it on the cable okay I think that should work I'm going to take the computer around to the other desk to do the install now so I've pop around to my desk D's desk just to set it up here because um I got a feeling that the graphics card that's in this machine which is a Quadro 2000 is probably not going to drive a 4K display uh I don't know that for certain I'm just saving time by coming around here um I also tried using that eus software that I mentioned and it's not free at all as soon as you try and use it um they want you to pay a subscription fee um so I've decided instead to go with macrium reflect who do offer a free trial so let's see how this works so I'm just going to go through the process now of trying to clone the disc okay and we're about 2 or 3 minutes in and we're at 1% so I think this is going to be a long job we'll just let that go um the reason that I wanted to make this video was that when looking at this computer initially just to see what the issues were that Dad was having I was really surprised at just how Snappy it still feels my dad's using this still to run Autodesk um AutoCAD software I think it's AutoCAD LT that he uses cuz he doesn't do any 3D stuff but he is using the 2024 version of that and this machine is still running perfectly for that purpose uh it's still plenty quick enough just out of curiosity I ran a geekbench 6 CPU and GPU test and the results by modern standards were pretty woeful to say the least we've been talking about benchmarks in recent videos and I think this is a kind of key Point really you could look at these scores and assume that this computer is completely useless and that you must upgrade but that's simply not the case this computer works fine it still does exactly what it's supposed to do and the reason why is because it was built with quality components in the first place when I first built this I wanted to build my data quality machine and it didn't come cheap it's got a workstation motherboard in it's got a a xon processor 32 GB of RAM and we went with that Quadro graphics card yeah okay it's not going to play any of the latest games by any stretch of the imagination but it's perfectly fine for running these two displays which is how dad prefers to do his work we went with what I thought was a big SSD at the top 240 GB um and it did in fact work for the past 10 years just fine I did put a 3 tbte spinning disc in for data backup and I think that was Overkill cuz dad hasn't used hardly any of that space so it just goes to show that if you configure the machine right in the first place you buy the right quality components you know good quality power supplies if you're building your own PC that's really important uh a good quality Case um this particular case is a fractal design case and um it's got loads of space in it and it's also I don't know how well you can see this it's got this lovely um sort of acoustic foam material and that's throughout the case put that back what that does is makes the computer really quiet and of course these older generation Zeon CPUs don't need massive cooling the graphics card doesn't need massive cooling so it's a really quiet and efficient system and it's lasted all of this time so yes it was an expensive uh setup in the first place but just think about how much work my dad has put through this you know 10 years worth of work has gone through this machine now that's a tool that has returned on its investment I would say and where do we go next with this particular PC it's a bit difficult to upgrade um there's not really a clear upgrade path for CPU it already has pretty much the best one in there there's not much difference between the one I spec and and the top range CPU uh there's no need for any additional RAM 32 GB was a huge amount 10 years ago it's still plenty today do we need to change the graphics card well arguably that would be probably the best upgrade we could do on this system the motherboard is PCI Express 3 and there is a x16 slot so that does open up a number of options for gpus that don't require an additional power connector from the power supply and uh I think the best one of those would give us about 10 times the raw compute performance of the quadro 2000 so that would be a decent upgrade but when I say 10 times the raw compute performance that doesn't mean that my dad will see a 10 times Improvement or indeed anything close to that it might just facilitate him being able to uh use a bigger resolution or a bigger display uh so perhaps arguably it's not the the thing that needs to be done at this point in time now this computer is running Windows 10 and officially it doesn't support Windows 11 but uh Windows 10 comes end of life in October 2025 which is still you know almost two years away so all in all this computer will have lasted about 12 years as an active money earning work tool and I think that's pretty impressive and I'm really proud of that you know it was a well-built machine I got some pictures actually of the machine as it was being built so you can see it minty fresh and the lesson here I guess is that if we spec things up and we're not worried about having those Cutting Edge Benchmark numbers If instead we just focus on what does the computer need to do for me and can it do that job then suddenly the lifespan of our computer equipment can be really extended and this computer won't be dead in two years time and just think about that case it's got a zon processor it's quiet it's efficient uh it's got loads of space for storage drives it'll be a perfect candidate for installing true Nason and you could turn that box into a 10 gigabit Nas Appliance for your network at a fraction of the price of going out and buying one off the shelf in fact I did that last year and I'm going to make a video about that which will come soon on the channel so if you want to see how I made a 10 gbit NAS from old server Hardware that was very cheap to acquire uh then please subscribe to the channel That content is coming soon so this computer still has life in it Beyond its working lifespan for my dad and I think that is quite refreshing actually I've been reviewing a lot of Apple products over the last sort of two three years and we have moved very much towards this kind of consumer computer environment where you can't upgrade anything you've got to get your spec right from the outset and sure that can work if you get your spec right you know with an Apple computer you can have it last just as long as this one but for the majority of people I think that's probably not the case because of the way Apple prices the upgrades uh when you're specking out your machine in the first place and also because you can't repair anything or upgrade anything anymore on the Apple silicon machine Mach and I think that's really sad and I've sat through numerous Apple Keynotes where they've been talking about the environment but the simple truth is this is an environmentally friendly computer by using the components and getting the maximum life out of it and by not paying attention to the consumerism where we're constantly being told you got to have this latest thing you got to have this this next best geekbench number or everything you do is wrong in real world terms this computer doesn't feel as slow as the numbers would suggest and I suspect that's true of a lot of machines and I think a lot of people go out and buy computers that are way more powerful than they actually need and you're putting all of that money down and never seeing a return on it it's now up to 33% on the system Drive swap I'm sure that's going to work fine and once it does he'll have a terabyte of space which is going to keep this machine going uh for the rest of its useful life for my dad and what was the cost of that drive it was about $75 or thereabouts so finished with the upgrade and pleased to report that everything worked perfectly uh so thumbs up to macrium reflect that's a nice piece of software I did have to restart the machine once but other than that it was absolutely fine and I've been uh spending a few minutes testing it I think overall it took about 40 minutes something like that and as you can see the machine is just really Snappy with the new drivein I mean it was Snappy before but uh look how quickly it'll open Microsoft Edge and it just gets me questioning these things you know do we need the amount of power that we think we do you know are we uh overspending on our computers uh if my dad can do his work on this machine with its low scores do use machines become more of an option you know could you get your work done on a machine that's say 5 years old and give that machine a new lease of life isn't that better for the environment i' be really interested to find out what you guys think about this I'm also really interested to see what you think about this kind of video format unscripted uh a simple camera setup no Studio it's much easier for me to produce and get content done quickly I'm not saying that we won't do Studio content of course we will it's just that my main job is quite timec consuming at the moment and we're struggling to get in the studio and get content up regularly so any feedback you've got would be gratefully received and thanks as always for all of the support you give to the channel see you again soon for some more geek G\n"