this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2025
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I wish dual CPU motherboards were mainstream.
I could then use the one I am keeping aside, during compilation/encoding tasks.
But my current computer definitely come above on everything other then the VRAM.
That's not how you compile fast. I mean they exist but better buy a second PC for the price. Or optimise your project, or get a build cache.
What about a virtual machine with half of the CPU's assigned?
Yeah, I get it.
But what if most motherboards were just expected to have 2 slots, you know?
Of course I won't be switching to Threadripper just for getting 2 CPUs on a single motherboard and have kept the other CPU lying around, thinking of using it for keeping all the storage HDDs, and maybe offloading all re-encoding stuff onto it.
For compilation though, I'm fine with just using my main PC, although I did look into distributed computing options, specially when using my laptop, I think I'm fine for now.
It's more like a fleeting though that came to me a few times, when I felt like playing a game while reencoding, but was unable to properly set the CPU usage for the encoders in ffmpeg.
Time to get a little homelab :-) ! Like it can encode stuff for days without getting in the way and keep those drives accessible. Nowadays any tiny pc comes with an ethernet port so usually its just plug & play too.
I was looking more towards something that can use my spare CPU and have enough SATA ports to last a long time.
And while USB to SATA is expected to be inherently unreliable, all PCIe SATA devices I see seem to be problematic in their own right^[doesn't make sense to have a SATA adapter that goes around corrupting the data in a way that it is hard to detect] (from the reviews). The only one that seemed fine was the PCIe SCSI device, for which, I would be very careful, making sure I don't get a fake.
Then the available motherboards having >6 SATA ports seem to all be high end ones, which doesn't make sense considering I am trying to save some money.