Building a linux box for my dad

Hardware Build a PC
1

My dad complained that his last pc was getting laggy and all that jazz.
So I'm planing on building him a small MiniITX box.

  • APU- AMD A6-7400K 3.5GHz
  • PSU- Corsair CX 430M 430W
  • MoBo- Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI - mITX / A88X
  • Case- Streacom F7C - Silver
  • HDD- WD Blue 1TB
  • RAM- Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3

This is a just a thing I threw together today. I'd be happy if you guys gave some directions on how well thees parts would work together and if I done goof at some point. In this preliminary build. Thanks for ant tips.

2

No its fine you are making a linux machine, so the wonder of linux drivers is that it straight out works with any piece of hardware. But there are some bugs I seem to always find in Ubuntu distro with the audio drivers, and of course you would need to use proprietary drivers for your APU. Other than that your golden dude.

3

No. No, God, no. Just don't.

4

@swick What do you mean?

And I don't think I´ll be using Ubuntu. It will probably be Manjaro.

Edit: I just noticed that the case requires a pico-PSU so Ill have to choose a new one.

5

The components are fine, I think (wifi is always problematic so I don't know about that), and the kernel has all the drivers. You really should not install catalyst (proprietary AMD drivers) but stick with the in-kernel driver.

6

I think you should try and find a way to fit a ssd in there. It will make a huge difference when just doing normal things on your computer.

7

@swick I'm using Manjaro on my laptop and the wifi runs just fine. It there a difference if it is on mobo?

8

What do you think would 60 Giga be enough?

9

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/LKFCvK
Here you go. Much better performance for what he needs all for ~$440. Also includes an ssd so there's faster boot times on OS and programs. If he needs more storage, a ~$50 1TB HD add on should do the trick.

10

I rigged up Linux Mint looking 98% like Windows XP for a friend. I was even able to find the mouse cursor. Linux Mint and Lubuntu are very intuitive and easy to use and understand.

11

Depends how much he needs I guess. I can do just fine with a 120gb ssd myself. I would recommend a Crucial ssd.

14

Linux Mint has been problematic for me in the part. I recommend either Ununtu 14.04 or OpenSUSE. Both well supportited and reliable.

I got my farther running Ubuntu with Unity while I was fixing his computer for a couple of weeks. The easiest way to explain it is Windows 7's Superbar snapped to the left. He settled into it pretty quickly, more confused by libreoffice than the OS itself so getting Office running in wine may be something to look into.

15

Crucial MX100 is a good drive.

Since a Linux installs typically takes up less than a Windows one it should give you more room for files and applications but I'd go with either 128 or 256.

16

True I heard they are really buggy, I use them on my nvidia card I don't have any problems with it...but from time to time weird things happen lol

17

Run OpenSuse 13.2 On it instead of Arch (Manjaro) Much more stable an OS and quite up to date

18

Hey even better Manjaro is a clean distro, I was just generalizing as many who speak of Linux usually are talking about Ubuntu. Xubuntu is favorite of mine along with MInt.

19

It looks really nice! But too bad I don't reside in north America.

20

I would defiantly recommend more then 8 GB ram. Also, an SSD if you can afford to throw one in there, just make sure the the swap partition isn't on the SSD.

21

Why would one need more than 8 Gb ram? In a linux home box? He is not gaming, just browsing interwebz and keeping track of bills he writes up.

22

Depends on how much of much of a tab whore you are, I have found that I've been using 6 GB of ram while browsing, and I like to have quite a bit of overhead so running 8GB makes me nervous. Also I personally like to have a bunch of programs running at once and I forget that some people don't use computers as intensely as me.