Been a while since I’ve been here but things have been running kinda rough in life lately. I’ve decided I’m going to save a couple of hundred bucks and build a dedicated Linux workstation (just for kicks). Both of my machines I have at the moment are getting long in the tooth (one is a Ivy Bridge i5 3570K, the other a Haswell Refresh i5 4590). So neither is really current gen tech.
I’m thinking since this machine isn’t gonna be used for gaming or anything really heavy I’ll be able to get away with a low end build. I’d prefer a full ATX MB (but mini ATX would be good too) and I probably won’t run more than 8 GB of RAM. I have a R7 370 4G video card to put in it, a case, and a HX1000W PSU that’s in said case just sitting around.
Ideally I’d like to run a small 120GB M.2 SSD (NVME would be nice, but not in the budget). I haven’t decided to go with a Ryzen based Athlon or a Pentium chip. Overclocking isn’t my thing, so basic parts would be good enough.
If anyone has a recipe for a good budget rig in the $200-$250 range I’d love to see it (I fully admit I didn’t do a search.)
Thanks in advance for any/all suggestions. Oh, and if you want to suggest a Linux distro, that’s always welcome. I usually use Debian or Ubuntu or Linux Mint, but I’m in a learning mood, so whatever else is out there is welcome. So long as it’s not terribly hard or time consuming to install (like Arch used to be.)
So is one of these your current Linux system? If so don’t bother, you’d be downgrading. There is no PC you can get for 250$ that would get you anywhere near that performance. Especially not an Athlon/Pentium.
Nope. Both are Windows boxes. One I use for gaming, the other is one I allow my Wife to use for her computing needs. This is more or less a “just for kicks” and because I want to do it kind of thing. Performance isn’t really a goal in this situation. It’s getting hands on with the newer technologies and learning their little quirks.
your not gonna learn any new tech with that kind of budget even if you buy used. if you want to learn linux then i would go to ebay and buy a shit oem prebuilt and throw some new parts in it. Youll have a few pcie lanes for a GPU, network card, and maybe even a pcie to m.2 adapter.
Throw linux on the HDD or even a SSD if you want it and think of something you want to do with it. youre not gonna learn linux by just trying to use it like windows. you need a project that forces you to actually learn the internals and structure of the entire operating system.
Let’s get back on focus here. Does anyone have any useful hardware suggestions for building a low end Linux workstation? Instead of the previous posts suggestion of buying a prebuilt obsolete model. The entire scope of this project is getting hands on with AM4 or socket 1151 generation of hardware. I think a few of you are too hung up on the fact it’ll run a Linux based OS (for the record I’ve been running Linux in one form or another since 2008, so I’ve been around the block a few times.).
DDR4 is way to expensive to make a rig worth upgrading to with that budget
Used i3 w/ 8gb ddr4 and mobo will be like $160+ on the used side getting a decent deal.
New Low end CPU is like $100 mobo gonna be like $50+ for super low end + 4gb ddr4 is like $30 so $180 with no psu/case/gpu/storage All of that for minimal gains
/thread
Note: you can check out pcpartpicker.com if you want to see prices of stuff and try and build in your budget.
I have a case, psu, gpu and a spare 120 GB SSD just sitting around (it’s a Mushkin Eco2 so I don’t trust it much which is why I didn’t mention it earlier.) And I know all about PCPartpicker and TBH I don’t really trust it much.
I do like your idea about buying used from someone though. Maybe now that it’s a tiny bit older maybe I can find a good 6th gen i3 or something with a decent mb and ram.
Two things to try, 1stly; Buy $250 of memory\HDD and run VM’s… your i5 will happy become 3 machines with better specs than what you can buy for that budget. you can learn a lot trying to do so if you have the time. 2ndly; Follow the existing forum posts and guides to buy hardware (like a barebones from ali-express) to make a custom PFsense box or simlar.
Intel Pentium 4560, hyperthreaded and 56 bucks it is the best budget choice.
With 4 threads it’s good for linux gaming for a while.
Since your not overclocking the cheapest MB
No Ryzen based Athlons yet, Ryzen 3 is about twice as much as the Pentium with twice the cores also.
Check the combo prices of whatever retailer you plan on using, sometimes a cpu that is 50 bucks more but with a 30 buck combo discount is the better deal.
Hope this helps
The Kaby Lake has the advantage that if you smoke the GPU you can still use your system
Yeah I was eyeballin’ the 4560 after reading it’s getting a rebrand to “Gold Pentium” and maybe a small bump in speed. If I can find it with a decent MB at Fry’s come Black Friday or Cyber Monday I plan to jump on it. I’ve had good luck with Pentium’s in the past (G3258 I had was a magic chip, went to 4.4 GHz on stock settings, just had to crank the multiplier and away she went. Now that chip is in my parents machine.)
If I can find a nice MSI PC Mate series MB for it and hopefully by then DDR4 prices will have come down, I think it’d be a solid performer for what I want to do.
At Microcenter if you have an account you can put in your basket and “hold” it for 72 hours, Fry’s may have simular. BTW bought my first cpu/mb combo at Fry’s, a cyrix 486 DX2 50. Just to play Doom
Ahh, microcenter. Wish we had one here but the nearest one here in Cali to me is in the LA area (for the record I’m in the Bay Area, so kind of hard to go to LA just for PC parts. I really need to make friends with people down there so we can ship parts back and forth.)
