# How much is Discourse affected by a faster CPU?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-is-discourse-affected-by-a-faster-cpu/58407
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** hosting
**Created:** [05.Март.2017 11:11:37 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-is-discourse-affected-by-a-faster-cpu/58407 "2017-03-05T11:11:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 1

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### Author: ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [05.Март.2017 11:11:37 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-is-discourse-affected-by-a-faster-cpu/58407/1 "2017-03-05T11:11:37Z")

</div>

I recently moved my own Discourse from **Digital Ocean** to a **colocated [mini-PC I purchased from Ali Express](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/)**. This is a good apples to apples of increasing CPU performance with the exact same Discourse instance.

### Digital Ocean Droplet specs

- [E5-2630L v2](https://ark.intel.com/products/75791/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2630L-v2-15M-Cache-2_40-GHz) (Ivy Bridge 2.4 - 2.8, 2 core)
- 2 GB RAM
- 40 GB disk (unknown SSD)

cost $20/month

### AliExpress box specs

- [i7-7500u](https://ark.intel.com/products/95451/Intel-Core-i7-7500U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz-) (Kaby Lake 2.7 - 3.5, 2 core / 4 thread) — $400 on Ali Express
- 16 GB RAM — [Crucial 16GB DDR3](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007B5S52C), $100
- 500 GB disk — [Samsung 850 Evo SSD](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TGIVVKU), $170

cost $700 plus colocation hosting fees ($29/month)

### CPU benchmarks

`sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run`  
`sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=40000 --num-threads=8 run`

35.6s vs 21.3s  
41.9s vs 15.7s

(1.7x faster single core, 2.7x faster multiple core)

### Disk benchmarks

`ioping -RD -w 10 .`

12.8k iops, 50.0 MiB/sec vs 13.6k iops, 53.2 MiB/sec

(roughly the same disk performance)

### Discourse benchmarks

Before and after I did the move, I compared performance in three places:

1. Topic back button (same topic)
2. Topic refresh (same topic)
3. Homepage refresh (latest)

I did this 10+ times in the same browser. Here are my results. Digital Ocean droplet on the left, Ali Express mini-pc on the right.

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/9/4/94457914b3cb89a565bbfd62338a54d42b14fe41.png)

1.6x faster, 1.8x faster, 2x faster

As to the question in the topic title, Discourse **scales more or less linearly with the CPU speed you throw at it**. If you want a faster Discourse, have enough memory, sure, but _you want the fastest possible single threaded performance_.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-is-discourse-affected-by-a-faster-cpu/58407)._