Hi. I'm looking to get a new computer to replace this rather dated P4 with 512MB RAM, and since I've never really gotten a new - as in brand-new - PC before, I'd like a bit of help to sort out the finer details. First up, this PC won't be a gaming PC. Consider it the PC of Macs: this box will generally be used in a creative media setting. So I need something that can pack a punch: I don't want to have to wait 2 weeks for stuff to render, I do actually want a machine that is, uh, *usable*. I also want a PC with a BIOS, so I can try out various operating systems, and I want something that is actually upgradeable in the sense I can upgrade the mobo or what not, so for these reasons I'm not just going to fork out some $ for a Mac and be done with it.
Now, graphics/creative work aside, I will want to do some low-level gaming with this box, although my gaming expectations are not high. Put it this way: due to life circumstances (that actually aren't money-based), I've had high disinterest in 3D gaming in the past however recently have had some interest in the field, so am interested in pursuing it. So, since my interaction with 3D games in the past hasn't been great beyond the occasional visit to a store with a demo game console, I haven't had [the interest to have] much exposure to high game quality so what I'm trying to say is that since I have had no experience/exposure, I don't need astounding game quality, so notwithstanding the fact that the cards will need good quality with handling animation work in Maya or Blender, game performance doesn't need to absolutely rock. Although I may need to get the latest and the best; I'm not sure.
So you know what the bank's limit actually is, the general limit of the budget is about (or if you absolutely must, slightly over) $5k, and while that might seem quite high/decent... two things. Firstly, I live in Australia, which loves to overprice things so we can consider $500 already gone just on inflation (or whatever it is that makes computer hardware so expensive here), and secondly, I want to upgrade 3 things at once here - I need a new system unit, want to "make the switch" from CRT to LCD, and I badly need some more diskspace - say 1TB or 2TB. I have absolutely no disk space left on any of my disks, so in terms of an upgrade I couldn't keep those and upgrade everything else.
A friend of mine has been helping me with my configuration, but I'd still like to run the possibilities by you all, considering that two [knowledgable] heads are better than one... having said that, this guy knows a heap - from when RAM moved from parity to ECC (in '98-'99) to knowing a motherboard's power system by looking at it to knowing about the next Intel CPUs that'll be coming out (the Nehalem chips) to what type of display I should get (an 8bpp one vs. a 6bpp one) - his bag is hardware, but sadly he's only had minimal real-world experience and isn't currently in a position to gain any experience as yet... therefore, you lot, who have been able to test out the latest and greatest configurations, are in a better position to really give me a good indicator as to what a good system would be.
I'm the exact opposite of my friend: his aptitude is hardware, mine is software. We fail in each other's respective departments. I talk software much better than hardware so I'll itemize what sort of software I want to run, list hardware I think I need (mostly thanks to my friend), and let you tell me what I've got right, what I need to fix, etc to run the software I want optimally.
Wrapping up, without knowledge that only comes from experience I could easily be cut a deal that leaves me stranded 6 months from now with faulty hardware that just got out of warranty. This PC is the first leg of a life course that will take me through the graphics arena and into the realtime animation field so I can pursue my life's dream, so I'm asking for integrity here - this is the computer I'll most likely see and use for most of the next 7 or more years (considering upgrades and such), so I need a workhorse. When recommending things, please do only recommend things that you know won't randomly die - especially in the graphics department - but not something that'll break the bank.
So you know, this same post is popping up on various other forums, and while juggling the responses will be interesting to say the least, more responses in a potentially life-changing situation as this (yes, this really is a life-changing situation, it'll be the start of a new chapter in my life) is definitely better.
Therefore, without further ado, let me begin. Note: I need equal Linux and Windows support for everything here. So, if something I list doesn't have the best Linux support, please do tell me so I can correct it (unless I've noted here that I already know, in which case... you may have a bit of a convincing job on your hands 
).
General requirements
- I'm a visual thinker, so a lot of visual real estate and good display quality is definately a big plus, so I've had my eye on a 22"-30"-22" configuration (I was thinking perhaps the HP LP3065 for the center 30"er, since it's an 8bpp display). Back in my Windows days I was able to get an old ATi card to run 2 heads and (impressively) get my onboard video to run a 3rd head, producing a tri-screen configuration I never, ever forgot. Ever since, I've been waiting for the day I would get my 3 display configuration again. That last 3-display setup produced a maximum width of ~3000+ pixels, but it did seem a little cramped. A 30" display plus two 22"ers sure would be pricey, but would produce a 5000+ pixel workstation which would definately be a huge productivity boost over my current 1280x1024 configuration (I tried to convince my integrated Intel *shudder* 82845G to go to 1400x1050, but in doing so I got to learn what "moderately severe hardware instability" meant).
- I want to be able to watch full HD (think HDTV and Blu-Ray disc) media on my PC. So I need a BD-ROM and TV tuner card. And a surround sound speaker system.
- I need to be able to use desktop effects such as Compiz Fusion, enabling next to everything, and still be able to have full motion video running as well, with the effects on, and get little or no "okay and now you can see that it's starting to tax the CPU and GPU".
- The ability to drag any window to any display in Linux is pretty much a requirement, so I'll need one copy of X running all the displays, and therefore since 3 displays are going to require >1 video card, the cards I get will likely need to be of the same type. Also, I want Compiz Fusion's cube to span all 3 of my displays as one gigantic "wow" if that's at all possible =P
- I require a stable system! A $5k computer that will break in 6 months is not something I will be able to justify adding to the menu.
- Initial hardware no-brainer must-haves (for me anyway)
- My case: the Lian Li PC-V2110B. Yes, expensive ($528 ftw), but it's both a full-height case, will fit under my desk (which has around 660mm of height available), and looks clean while still retaining character. It's the only case that looks minimalistic enough to be something I'd call my own, yet it isn't horribly boring. It also has 4 USB ports, Firewire, eSATA and audio connectors under a little pop-up flap *at the top of the case*, can handle more hard disks than I own (and I have quite a few...), and is mostly unbranded (except for a logo on said flip-up flap). WIN. All. The. Way!!!
- IDE support on the mobo, so I can run OSes that don't have SATA support. One channel is enough.
- FDD support. All my PCs and laptops have had FDD support, and I want to continue this lineage. I'll also probably use it at least once XD
- An onboard buzzer or speaker!
- The Logitech MX Air mouse, which can adopt a Wii-like pointing system.
- The G15 gaming keyboard, for its LCD and programmable keys. The LCD "protocol" was reverse engineered and the extended keys figured out, and an unofficial driver was developed for Linux to support these.
Software in general
- One of my interests is operating systems, both when virtualized and on real hardware. I will be running multiple virtualized OSes at once, likely in VirtualBox or QEMU.
- The GIMP, possibly editing rather large images
- Inkscape, possibly editing rather large images
- Firefox, with a prodigious (200+) amount of tabs open for an indefinite period of time; more likely than not with multiple windows open as well (with their own huge amount of tabs open). Put it this way: I only close tabs so my browser is usable, not because I want to, so given half the chance I'll just keep opening new tabs.
Software - Linux specific
- Compiz Fusion with basically everything enabled
- Beagle (or comparable/better equivalents)
- A full GNOME or KDE desktop (taking into account that I'd be using Emerald, not Metacity or KWin)
- Blender with very complex scenes such as true-to-live video (can you do that sort of thing? I'd assume you can)
- The Banshee audio player (which requires Mono and stuff, to give you an idea of its dependancies)
Software - Windows specific (whichever of Vista or XP are required)
- Still- and moving-image rendering systems such as Maya/RenderMan, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, etc.
Gaming
- I've never really played 3D games before, since I only have 64MB of Intel video (that 82845G I mentioned briefly before), which I was never able to "get going" under my distro, Arch Linux (glxinfo has always reported no direct rendering, and I've never really bothered to try to make it say yes), but I want to get into the latest 3D games and be able to play them without jittering, but like I said before, medium or medium-low quality to everyone else is okay quality to me (notwithstanding hardware requirements).
Stuff I'm not sure about
- Should I, say, get 1 or 2 1TB SATA2 disks for data storage, a 16GB or 32GB SSD for my main OS (Arch Linux), a smaller SATA2 disk (eg 250GB) for misc. OS data (not my main OS), and finally an IDE disk I already have for OSes that don't "do" SATA? The SSD sounds like a smart concept, but since /home and the package cache (what would likely benefit the most from the use of the SSD anyway) would be stored on one of the 1TB SATA HDDs (for reliability) I don't really see the benefit in using an SSD. What should I do? What should I do? With an SSD, am I looking at both increased application speed/performance/responsiveness, lowered bootup / application startup time, or both?
- The CPU vendor/model. Should I go Intel or AMD? I was told by a computer store that AMD + Linux is worse than Intel + Linux. Is this true, or simply a ploy to make me buy the more expensive Intel processor? Regardless of vendor, I think I should go quad-core, so that said, what MHz should I try and reach for (remember, my bank is easily breakable =P)?
- The graphics card vendor/model. Like the CPU, I don't know if I should go ATi. I've had a very, very bad experience with an ATi card recently; ultimately, I was left in textmode, albeit at my own error (I managed to get the idea that blacklisting intel_agp from the module list modprobed on boot would be a good idea - I mean, why not disable all unused modules? ) but it was the fault of the ATi card. It really was (RV505 isn't supported; had to recompile X and everything; X didn't work properly due to ld.so preload issues; tried to overwrite X build with distro packages; thought I broke something; etc)! However, the point is that card or no card, I have a bad taste in my mouth associated with ATi, but am willing to give them a go provided I can be guaranteed a no-hassle setup/installation (within the as-is limitations that Linux constrains everything/everyone to, of course). I do know that ATi's RV770 chipset line look promising... very promising...
- The mobo. This is the big blank. I just don't know what's good/optimal and what isn't. I know I need IDE support, but I only need a single channel as two IDE HDDs will be fine: one for OS data, and one for user data that will (probably) ultimately end up on my SATA[2] user data drive. Or one with a few partitions on it for each (which will most likely be what happens, considering I have a 250GB IDE disk I can migrate to my 1TB disk when I get the latter). Once again considering the GPU, I think I should get a board with CrossFire support.
- If I were to go nVIDIA, Would getting a 9800GX2 - which only has two video outputs - along with eg an 8600GT be a worse idea than getting, say, two 8800GT cards and SLIing those together to get 4 video outputs along with dual link for the 30" LCD?
- Ever since I recieved an old "multimedia PC" from the early-mid 90s which had an (ISA) SB16 in it, I immediately liked my SB16, the SoundBlaster line, and Creative... because myself and the SB16 share a common interest: bass boost. So, fast forward to today, where I've listened to my P4's onboard, bassboost-less audio for the first time in... uhh... months, and have discovered that my poor SB16 is really, uh, garbage quality. So, in my quest for good quality audio with bass boost, I've settled on the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio, which has an audio breakout box (which is automatically a new shiny gadget to add to the desk and look awesome with
), however I've heard that this card has terrible Linux support... because it doesn't work with ALSA. I have, however, heard that it works fine with OSS, so what's the problem there? OSS is reported to have good Creative X-Fi support. I don't really care (but in a nice way) what audio framework I use, provided it works, gives me okay quality, and doesn't hit me with "*BAM*. Sorry, cannot run this." in areas that'll really prevent me from exploring possibilities that may be critical to my life work. What should I do here?
Finer-grained rough hardware ideas
- A quad-core CPU, to handle all the stuff I want to be able to do.
- Like the X-Fi, the Logitech Z-5500 includes an "audio accessory" I can add to the desk, which even includes a backlit LCD and everything... but really, is this audio controller worth it? It doesn't even have a headphone jack that I can see, so I wouldn't even be able to apply the audio effects the controller can produce through headphones - and I'll actually have headphones plugged in most of the time anyway, and unplug them to listen to music in a movie, or when I want to share a video or a piece of music with someone but don't want to be constrained to headphones.
Draft computer layout
This was provided thanks to my friend; he's recommended a dual-socket server board which I can stuff two quad-core Xeons into, supports 64GB RAM, has more network ports than I can shake a fist at, SATA, etc. It also has IDE and a buzzer. Items colored red indicate choices I disagree with.
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That would make a mighty fine server system, and a temendously reliable workstation - which is definately a plus - but at $7000, it's $2k over my price limit.
-dav7
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Topic: Major hardware upgrade - advice needed
dav7
Jul 25, 08 at 12:14pm
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Jul 25, 08 at 5:01pm
Jul 25, 08 at 7:35pm
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. It would be a lot easier to read if you cut out some of the 'back story', and just explain what you want to build and what you need it for.