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Rhapsody
February 15th, 2008, 06:17 AM
The time has finally come for me to place the awkward, underpowered Chihiro into retirement and start drawing up specs for my fifth PC, Shizuku. But I think I need some advice.

Of course, this PC will need to work well with Linux. I may be sticking with Kubuntu, or moving to Debian, or maybe even some other distro, so I want components that are dead certs to work well with Linux. If at all possible, I want FOSS drivers for video and sound, but the thought of dealing with Chihiro much longer has made me flexible on that.

I also have other requirements. I want the PC to be powerful, with a good CPU, motherboard, video, and sound. I want an LCD monitor measuring at least 17 inches diagonally, I want good quality speakers, I want a new cordless mouse, I want a good new keyboard, and I want a chassis that is both practical and attractive.

All in all, I want to get this PC right from day one, and I'd like input and advice from anyone willing to help since I may be living with this one for five years or more, and I'd very much like it to work as good as possible, with no compatibility niggles or performance bottlenecks.

Z_o-s-o
February 15th, 2008, 06:44 AM
From my experience, heres some stuff to keep in mind:

1) Nvidia chipsets always seem to play nice on all the ubuntu boxes ive worked on.

2) Same goes for Nvidia graphics, most of the time. Still pretty far ahead of ATI's linux support.

3) CPU's dont seem to matter much from my experience with Core 2 Duo's and Athlon X2's.

4) Atheros wireless cards also seem to be less hassle to set up over their Broadcom counterparts.

k2t0f12d
February 15th, 2008, 06:45 AM
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/video
http://free3d.org/

Dark Hornet
February 16th, 2008, 01:38 AM
I am not sure what kind of budget you are on, but System76 pc's build great boxes for a really good price. I know you are looking into building your own...I build all of mine as well, but they are something to look at..and they support only Open Source, which is great!

http://www.system76.com/

Rhapsody
February 16th, 2008, 02:37 AM
I am not sure what kind of budget you are on,
The budget is however much I can get. I plan to draw up some very high-end specs, then negotiate until I think I've got as much as I can.


but System76 pc's build great boxes for a really good price. I know you are looking into building your own...I build all of mine as well, but they are something to look at..and they support only Open Source, which is great!
That has given me some ideas. I was looking at the Wild Dog Performance page
and several thoughts came to me.

CPU: The Core 2 Duo E6850 seemed about what I'm looking for. I can't really justify a quad-core CPU right now, especially given that I'd be paying a lot more for a CPU that would actually be slower in most situations.

RAM: I'm not sure why I'd want two 2GB sticks rather than one 4GB stick considering how much more expensive the former is, but I'd probably be looking for 4-8GB here.

Graphics: I'm really tempted to go all out and splurge here, since graphics have always been the first thing that went out of date on my old PCs. But then maybe that means I should go more mid-range now and upgrade later.

Hard Drive: I am going to splurge here. The 160GB default made me laugh. I'd fill that without even trying. My thoughts are along the lines of two of the very best 1TB hard drives I can get. You can absolutely never have too much HD space.

Optical drive/second optical drive: These are becoming less important these days. A single DVD-RW drive will do me fine.

Wireless: I want some of this. Setting up a wireless network in the house must have lots of exciting uses that I haven't thought of yet. It's hardly going to be expensive either.

Monitor: Must be LCD, but anything more than 19" seems like a waste to me.

Speakers: 2.1 or 5.1? Who am I kidding? I'll never use 5.1 surround sound on my PC. I'm a console gamer through and through.

Keyboard and mouse: I'll be able to find a new cordless mouse and decent keyboard easy enough.

Portable flash drive: Can't see what I'd even use this for. Pass.

Going with this, I end up with anything from $1985 to $2726, depending on how mad I go with it. Converting those figures to something actually relevant to me, that's £1012 to £1390, which isn't actually as bad as I thought it'd be.

Still, I don't see things like a motherboard or sound card listed on there. So I don't actually know what motherboard a system with these specs would have, and I am absolutely, positively, NEVER having integrated sound again. Ever. RealTek have scarred me for life.

I have had some ideas though, and I think now may actually not be the time go FOSS on my graphics drivers. I don't really want to deal with ATI Linux drivers in the near future, and I want my next graphics card to be up-to-date for at least some of the time I own it.

Dark Hornet
February 16th, 2008, 03:01 AM
--I am in the process of building a new box as well..in addition, I am planning on buying a new laptop from System76 on Friday.

But as for my desktop, I am going with the the Intel E6850, or the Q6600--I haven't decided yet...and from what I gather, Intel motherboards seem to work really well with Linux--so I will be buying the Intel 975XBX2KR along with 8 gigs of PC6400 800mhz RAM. I can't see the real difference in performance with the DDR3 RAM yet...its just too expensive. For graphics, I will be going high end, and I will be getting another BFG 8800 GTX card...I have one now in another box, and I love it.

Hard Drives...I couldn't agree with you more...you can never have too much! I will be purchasing one 10k 160GB Raptor, and two 1 terabyte drives.

Anyway...this will set me back about $2k...so not too bad.
Good luck with your build!

leftorvo
February 16th, 2008, 03:29 AM
The time has finally come for me to place the awkward, underpowered Chihiro into retirement and start drawing up specs for my fifth PC, Shizuku. But I think I need some advice.


are you one of those crazy people who name their computers?

Rhapsody
February 16th, 2008, 05:24 AM
are you one of those crazy people who name their computers?
Yes, but I would also note that the Ubuntu installer asks you to name the PC for what I believe is network identification purposes. Why not be imaginative?

leftorvo
February 16th, 2008, 05:38 AM
Yes, but I would also note that the Ubuntu installer asks you to name the PC for what I believe is network identification purposes. Why not be imaginative?

it's just something that i've always seen as odd. it can be interpreted to be kind of creepy, naming a computer like you'd name a pet to love and care for or something. for the hostname, i always used the default os name - ubuntu or debian.

oh well :)

perce
February 16th, 2008, 05:58 AM
If you have a network with 100 computer - say a math department - you have to give them names. Or you want to talk to your users about something like 131.128.34.26?

antisocialist
February 16th, 2008, 08:08 AM
well if you arent too concerned about price you can get a nice server box from sun with 30tb hdd 6.144tb ram and I think like 1700Gbit internet connectivity for like $5000000 or so





























p.s.
it's a joke, I wouldn't expect anyone to spend 5million on a computer

Z_o-s-o
February 16th, 2008, 09:16 AM
I just name the computers on my network like we do at work, no time to think of something unique.

For example: Say the network was called Ubuntu Forums Network. The pc scheme would simple be UFN-001, UFN-002 and so on.

Rhapsody
February 19th, 2008, 01:28 AM
I do have one more question to ask. Since my experience with this integrated RealTek sound has been awful, and my experience with the Sound Blaster Audigy in my last PC was great, what's a good soundcard that's not very expensive but will definitely work with Linux? I don't have many needs in sound at all, I just want something that works with Linux and won't fall apart.

regomodo
February 19th, 2008, 01:29 AM
there isn't much between the e6850 and the e6750 other than price