Building a New Box-- Please make suggestions!

[Spheniscidae]

I've been blessed with enough funds to build a great Linux box.
I've been using Linux on some old hardware for the last ten years
or so... (Started with RH 6.2).

I need suggestions on Motherboards/Processors, Video Cards and
large screen LCD Monitor. Don't be afraid to suggest something
pricey.

Please do not suggest hardware unless you know for a fact that it
works with Linux.

Thanks!

Spheniscidae

[dkeav]

sun ultra20, throw a dual core in it too

[ions]

Please do not suggest hardware unless you know for a fact that it
works with Linux.

Thanks!

Spheniscidae

Why would anyone on a Linux board suggest non-Linux compatible hardware?

[thaddaeus]

Just curious of a price range, If I know that I can help to find the right parts better.

I suggest going the AMD proc, route. Cheaper and more reliable from my expirence. ALso depedns on what you plan on doing with the machine. Specially with onboard devices, like video or sound, that take a part of the proc.mem to run them as opposed to pci cards which (if there good quality) are ment to take the load off the system for the most part.

Two sites I use for parts are http://geeks.com and http://newegg.com . Geeks has a year end clearence going on right now and most of the parts are about 75% off. newegg has a wide range of hi-end products for low prices and great service.

For hardware suggestions, I have been useing a 64bit athalon/msi combo for my server, I also have a system running on a sempron 3200+ with an msi board. Both work great, but thats comming from a web developer not a hardcore linux gamer, which results may vary, I can say the sempron which is supposed to rival (blow it out of the water though) the celeron from intel, shows greeat preformance (runs with 1gig ram) for some games, causeing little lag, only due to a 32mb vid card.

I'll try find the link I had a while ago for linux compatible hardware.
[edit]
this is alink I just found, not the same exact site I used early on but looks like its trust worthy.

[Spheniscidae]

For hardware suggestions, I have been useing a 64bit athalon/msi combo for my server, I also have a system running on a sempron 3200+ with an msi board. Both work great, but thats comming from a web developer not a hardcore linux gamer, which results may vary, I can say the sempron which is supposed to rival (blow it out of the water though) the celeron from intel, shows greeat preformance (runs with 1gig ram) for some games, causeing little lag, only due to a 32mb vid card.

Here's the thing: I haven't kept up with Hardware developments. Bottom line is that I don't know anything about 64 bit and linux. The last processor I ran 'Nix on was an Athlon XP. Haven't heard of MSI-- can you provide some linkage to the exact board your using?

I'm not a gamer, but I do want some power, because I'll be experimenting with a video production I have to finish next year. So I'll have plenty of RAM and a video card with 256MB (or more) on it. Nvidia or ATI?

Spheniscidae

[dkeav]

video ram doesnt really matter anything over 64mb is perfect, anything over 128 is a waste, though the lil gamers will prolly argue it

nvidia is the only way to go when talking nix

the gamers can argue that one too, but your not a gamer so go with the gusto

[je_fro]

What do you want to do with the box? Just multimedia stuff?

Tell you this: I'll never own another uniprocessor box. SMP just smooths everything out.
If I were you I'd grab:
http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html - get the scsi option
and a couple of opteron 254's, nvidia-quadroFX and as many 1GB registered DDR400 sticks as you can afford with the change...

[dkeav]

heh dont forget the 147gb cheeta drives

seagate rubs them with cheeta blood to make them run faster!

[cybertron]

PETA is going to be all over you for that.

And we should all be so lucky as to be loaded like je_fro.

I'd still go with nVidia for graphics cards. ATI's Linux drivers have improved, but I'm still not convinced that they're quite up to snuff yet. I think about the best you can do price/performance-wise is a 6800 GS or 7800 GT, but if you really want to throw money at it try to find a 512 MB 7800 GTX. Those are kind of rare though and extremely expensive (I think it's similar to the quadro card je_fro suggested). Probably not worth the money since I'm not at all sure you'll get the full performance out of it under Linux anyway. Rumor has it there are some new high end cards coming in the next month or two as well, but for now that's just a rumor. On the lower end you can get a 6600 GT for a little over 100 these days that will give you pretty good performance too. I wouldn't bother with anything less than that unless you're absolutely sure you won't need it.

For a monitor I think it's tough to beat the Dell 2405 for price/size. Watch for sales and you can get one for ~800 give or take 100. I've hardly heard a single bad thing said about them. There's a new 30" version coming out sometime soon too, but for that you'll need at least a 7800 GT video card.

Asus and DFI motherboards are solid in my experience. MSI is pretty good too from what I hear, but I haven't used any myself. I'd stay away from anything from any company that seems to cheap to be true. nForce 4 based motherboards seem to be the standard for quality these days. I guess they have a few more features and are a little higher quality. In any case I'm happy with mine so I feel safe recommending them. Processor-wise I'd definitely go with an AMD Athlon 64 X2. Just get whatever you can afford. If you're willing to overclock you can generally squeeze a little extra performance out of their lower-end stuff too.

[saikee]

Just a report from a poor on-gamer who can't afford a dual CPU and has to buy everything cheap

One MSI K8T Neo with AMD64 3000, cheap FX5200 nVidia video card, on board Gigabit lan card
One Asus A7N8X with Athlon 2800, cheap Radeon 9200 video card, on board Gigabit lan card
One Asrock 939 NF4G with AMD64 3200, on board PCI Express video, Realtek 8139 lan card

Still work with the above 3 machines. Had 100+ systems installed. Only had Linspire panic when running the last machine. Used hard disks in caddies so have migrated the distros across 3 machines. Hard disks were sourced from the cheapest available and ending up with Maxtor Diamond Plus series price about GBP33/100Gb or US$ 66/100Gb.

Never had a need to find a driver yet. That include running 5 BSD and 2 Solaris too.

[thaddaeus]

Haven't heard of MSI-- can you provide some linkage to the exact board your using?

Current Server =>Hers the Link

I have an AMD Athalon64 3(2)00
K8T Neo-FSR 6207 (800mhz bus gig lan)
1 western digital sytem drive(ide, 20gb)
1 300gb sata (maxtor)
1 100gb sata (maxtor)


For video editing you'll want the highest bus speeds you can get, memory amount isn't as crucial, but a fast solid porcessor is. Unless your doing Live video productions such as useing the machine to display dvd movies, or other power point style things (although saying that makes me crings) the amount of video memory isn't crucial, just more conveinent.

Youll also want scsi or sata drive, the only thing IDE should be a system drive, which you'll also want at least 2 drives, a system and a data, this will give optimal preformance.

Also from a bad exprience, I do not suggest a wesetern digital drive, at least in there higher ide ranges (250gb to be exact), for some reason the drive wouldn't keep the ext3 journal correctly and ended up dieing, although works fine in an winxp system...Device contains no bad blocks either.

Nvidia or ATI?

Nvidia for sure if you want some great quality, but if your on a budget, you can pick up an ati 256mb powerspec card for about $60 from microcenter, usually cheaper than that.

Tell you this: I'll never own another uniprocessor box. SMP just smooths everything out.

Now look what ya made me do, I gonna have to build a new system jut because of the mention...Oh well more fun for me.

[Hayl]

please do not post opinion-related questions in our help-forums. they are for technical problems only. /dev/random is for these types of threads.

"Hardware: Hardware-related (modem/soundcard/printer etc.) configuring/troubleshooting help forum."

[Spheniscidae]

please do not post opinion-related questions in our help-forums. they are for technical problems only. /dev/random is for these types of threads.

"Hardware: Hardware-related (modem/soundcard/printer etc.) configuring/troubleshooting help forum."

It's not "opinion-related". It's "experience-related". It's also about
configuration help.

I asked for help in building a configuration.

I posted a similar response, but it's no longer up-- did you delete it?

Spheniscidae

[Sbbath]

ok since your not a gamer you don't need an awesome video card. For you i would suggest a XFX GeForce FX 5500, which is a very nice card and you could get it for about $60.

For a HDD I would go with a Seagate, a nice 120GB or what ever you want.

RAM I would go with some corsair value select, a GB stick will cost you about $86

A CPU, go with an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ for about $140

For a Mobo, Abit KV7-V Via Socket A ATX for about $54 link

PSU, maybe a 500watt or more should do some good.

and you that's about it. those are just some ideas.

[pilotgi]

I have an Apple 20" Cinema display that works great with my nvidia 6600 card. 1680x1050 widescreen resolution looks fantastic with KDE 3.5.

This is powered by an Athlon 64 3200+ on a Foxconn mini-ATX motherboard with nforce4 chipset.