On Thursday, 27 May 2021 22:05:07 BST Walter Dnes wrote: > It was nice to have a newer "hot backup" (XPS8940) to switch over to > quickly when an older machine started locking up occasionally. Now I > need a "hot backup" for the newer machine that I ordered last October. > Dell Inspirons seem to top out at 12 gigs ram, so I'm looking for an XPS > model in order to get more ram as the bloating of linux continues. All > current XPS models seem to have 256G or 512G M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State > drives in the base configuration. Questions... > > * do NVMe drives function well under Gentoo (driver issues, etc)? > > * how long do they hold up (wear and tear)? > > * can I simply disable them if I run into problems? > > If someone can suggest an alternate supplier to Dell, that ships to > greater Toronto, at similar prices, I'd be willing to take a look at > them.
I'll leave others to comment on NVMe drives, I've not had any experience with these. Dell used to satisfy a sweet spot between price and performance, compared to other more expensive mass producers. I have not purchased any of their products for some years now. I found the choice they offer to customise some components was great, but as soon as you asked for something different in ways that matter to horsepower (CPU, RAM or graphics) the price offering stopped being attractive. Funny enough, the component which failed just after the warranty expired was not CPU, RAM, or graphics, but the PSU. Having suffered similar kind of failures with other mass market box-shifters I've learned my lesson. Have you looked at building your own box? The bang for your buck should go farther, because for the same money you should be able to get better components.
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