Is this possible?

[rikona]

Hello compdoc,

Wednesday, October 5, 2016, 4:15:04 PM, compdoc wrote:

>> would there be any disadvantage to make the swap space even larger?

> All nix/bsd operating systems including Ubuntu, (and I think Windows
> but I never check) create a swap partition that’s as large as the
> amount of ram you have. 

> I always use that default, even though under optimal conditions it
> should barely be used. I think it’s a bad idea not to have any swap.

Agreed. I have swap = mem. But it's on a HD and is slow.

> Also, as Bob said, I never heard of an OS killing processes. It
> should just slow to a crawl, while the drives go crazy reading and
> writing.

I've run the IO test again, and again saw similar behavior. I have not
looked for this before, so didn't know about it. It looks like the
trigger/pgm crash is when one of the CPU cores is stuck at 100%. With
the extra mem I installed swap may not be maxed out when this happens
- before it was usually maxed out and I thought that was the problem.
Before it would get slower and slower [as swap filled up?] and finally
crash. Now it keeps the speed but abruptly stops. Could this imply
that there is likely some pgm bug causing it?

>> Another thought is to use a small SSD for swap.

> That’s a good thought, but even better to just install the entire OS
> on an ssd. Prices arent that bad these days. A decent 240G on sale
> is around $80.

I do have the system on an SSD. Swap is currently on a HD, and I was
considering putting it on another small but separate SSD, which may
have short life. I'd like the sys SSD to have as long a life as
possible, and was hesitant to put the swap on it.

> MLC is said to last longer than TLC drives. (that’s the type of nand
> chips that SSDs use) 

Didn't know that - thanks much for the info!

>> Would you recommend going with the Z170 chip

> I considered the 970 and 990 AMD chipsets to be 'gaming' chipsets,
> and they always sold for a premium. I feel the same way about the
> Z170 chipset. If that’s what you want, fine, but you might end up in
> the same situation where some onboard devices aren't supported.

You seem to be right about the 'gamer' label. :-) I heard that a new
kernel has just been released with better support for the Z170 chip.
Is it likely that that will be put into 16.04 or will they stick with
the one they started with?

> In fact, I recommended the earlier generation of chipsets with
> socket 1150 for that reason. They've been around a while and are
> well supported, and it's still much faster than what you have.
> Motherboards that support 32G start at $65.

It's beginning to look like a prime problem for me is getting enough
memory. I'm looking at approaches that might allow me to [eventually]
get to fairly large memory, say 64 G or more. [currently I can't even
get 32G to work on a 970] In my *initial* looks, it seems that one has
to go to ddr4 to do that, which in turn requires an 1151 processor.
But I don't want to end up on the bleeding edge either. :-)

> I would also recommend a separate video card, because they have
> their own memory, and because its faster. I think one would help
> with large numbers of windows open on the desktop. 

I do have one, a very modest no-fan one for the quiet, but since I'm
not a gamer it may be OK.

I appreciate your ideas and suggestions. Thanks!

-- 

 rikona