My Old Box WinXP-Pro SW CAD

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Here are some details of My Old Box taken today using MX demo cd 🙂

It was built by a friend and colleague about 12 to 13 years ago when I was still working as a freelance design engineer needing a fast CAD Box for SolidWorks 3D CAD & CAM along with fluid dynamics, stress analysis etc etc.

Intel Core2 Quad Q8300 @ 2.50GHz – 4.0GiB RAM
Quadro FX 580 was a performance-segment professional graphics card by NVIDIA, launched on April 9th, 2009.
Western Digital HDD WD5000aaks 00WPA0

Performance was my top priority rather then money so I gave my friend free reign over construction. As SolidWorks advised that buying more that 4GiB RAM was not recommended or needed I asked for 4GiB of Corsair RAM boards 🙂 Another weird feature is a firewire socket whatever that is..?

It may seem strange to you guys that since about 2010 it has never been hooked up to the internet – OMG. I still do not want AV software slowing my CAD; thus my strategy still is to keep it off line. People are still shocked at just how fast it is loading up a complex 3D CAD Model and rendering materials. The Old CAD box and myself are still dragged out of retirement now and again.
I use it quite often to asses linux distros live CD-DVD and also Windoze XP apps.
XP-Pro also has a built in movie maker – come editor 🙂

I have the original 2.5” HDD out of my old HP G60 and I’m wondering if the interface is the same as the present 3.5” WD5000AAKS 00WPA0 HDD – Such that I could simply plug in Linux..?? 🙂 Above my pay grade..!?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Quad+Q8300+%40+2.50GHz

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/quadro-fx-580.c1324

https://hddfaqs.com/western-digital-wd5000aaks/

You can see all that xf bloat soaking up the RAM…

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Could this be what I need..?

3.5-inch to 2.5-inch SSD Internal Hard Drive Mounting Kit – add up to 2 SSDs

https://www.flexxmemory.co.uk/adapters/3-5-inch-hdd-to-2-5-inch-ssd-internal-hard-drive-mounting-kit/

Then I could plug in the 2.5 SSD out of my old HP Laptop and see how it runs before buying the Old Box one or two new SSD drives..
https://www.teamgroupinc.com/en/product/gx1

Would this be better than USB 2 and a portable SSD..?

https://www.teamgroupinc.com/en/products/ssd/portable-ssd

Cheers 🙂

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[Moderator christophe]

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Internal would probably be faster than usb2. That’s my understanding. But perhaps the portable is better if you ever want to transfer files, since you won’t be connected via internet…

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

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Should have said that I was probably overcautious thinking that the old box could be hacked or compromised such that my inventions and unique designs could be stolen as many have been stolen by USA and patented. Hey; their capitalist corporate lawyers just laugh in your face when you complain – US dollar wins again..!
The simplest solution would be to stash the existing HDD and buy another 3.5” HDD – if available …. then I could safely use Wi-Fi and internet as my engineering files would be safe elsewhere.

So back on topic….

christophe wrote:

Internal would probably be faster than usb2.

Thanks Christophe, I accept your advice about speed 🙂 and go for internal converter card. My only slight experience in this area was being convinced that for my old HP G60 – rather than buying more RAM – never been in swap; it was much better to replace original HDD with an SSD drive. Wo! – speed increase was noticeable even booting up before logging in 🙂 LO and Gimp load much faster, 4x faster. Money, £20 well spent 🙂

Do you think £10 for the kit could be worth it? With its higher end specification; is my Old Box likely to be one of fastest pre 2010 machines out there? Running AntiX-22 of course 🙂
Cheers

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