Just wondering : For those of us whose gear is old, sad, tired, and not used for anything that would be worth exploiting the system to steal (IE: a machine that only runs my DAW, Modular synth emulator, etc), what is the best way to disable all the "fixes" that would wind up hamstringing my hardware t the point that I would have to scrap my rig and start from scratch?
I only ask because it has been 11 years since I last purchased a system, and about 8 years since I last purchased a GPU. When I went to check modern component prices, especially GPUs, I was violently and explosively ill. No video card save for the top of the line gaming GPU should cost more than I would pay for the rest of the system. I do not feel like buying new hardware at those prices, but fixing these speculative execution exploits on a machine that isn't handling anything sensitive (or even useful to miscreants) seems... well... like shooting myself in the battered sausage.