- CPU: The R7 1700 is a good choice.
- CASE: No idea.
- RAM: Depends on your budget and use case. The current prices are rising. But it is a gamble anyway. Here in Germany the price of 16GB (3200) modules increased by 60-90% (depends on the product) in the last year and there is no decrease in sight.
- GPU for Linux: For desktop and video only or gaming? The small option is a RX460 or RX560, these cards shouldn’t be affected by the mining prices as much. For Gaming i recommend a RX580 for MSRP. Vega is to expensive, mining prices make no sense. And nvidia might be faster at the moment, but you have Windows for gaming anyway and the FOSS AMD drivers are just much less of a hassle¹
- Fans: For the CPU? No. The stock cooler is great. You can get another one latter after some testing with noise and temps. As for the case if nothing is included get two huge silent fansthat pull the air from the front to the back or the other way round.
- You already have the USB part right.
1: Audio via HDMI and FreeSync is a bit of a hassle, that will be fixed in the next 5 months and easily worked around at the moment.
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Doesn’t really sound like a server in any way, but as a gaming build sounds fine other than the HDD (I don’t recommend 3TB disks, 2 or 4 are both more reliable), however its on the high side of the ideal price to performance ratio everywhere but the CPU, so consider if you may be fine with the current performance results of spending less, as if you put the same cash towards upgrading slightly sooner you will get better average performance
If you do plan to add a second GPU, and won’t leave all the clock speeds stock, consider a bigger PSU, the gtx1080ti’s are 250w in founders trim, but can be up to 300w average (absolute peaks being up to 360w in very short timescales) with the factory overclock and 340w average with user overclock on aftermarket coolers. The 1700 is another 80w average in a max load test (only like 45w average during gaming), but will skyrocket to as much as twice that if you OC. You probably have a peak of somewhere under 50w of other stuff in an average system, so overclocked you currently have like 550w of load, which is perfectly fine on a 650w PSU to run constantly (and on a gold rating will still be pretty reasonable on efficiency curve even), but it doesn’t leave enough to add a 2nd GPU, even a 1050ti type card, although a non GTX card like the GT 1030 would be totally possible if there are linux drivers for that. None the less if that is your plan, I’d go a 750w PSU for extra safety, it’ll also often increase your fanless power throughput, which can be awesome if you care about noise.
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SheepInACart,
Great advice, I will make some changes tomorrow to increase the PSU and I didn’t realise there would be more reliability in evens vs. odds on the hdds - so I will take that to 4TB as well. You are right in that the parts list is not too indicative of being a server - I guess I kind of want it to do everything.
In regards to the pricing, I should have noted it was all NZD - vs. USD - so the prices will appear about 25% higher if you rightfully thought you were looking at USD. I have updated the posting to reflect that it is in NZD.
Thanks again - great advice!
Stu
Its not so much evens vs odds on the HDD, its just 3tb disks, a 1tb tends to be just as good as a 2tb.
As for pricing, yeah, NZ is pretty raw deal on PC parts, currently in Australia so conversion rate is pretty similar, although local retailers here are a bit bigger so better priced. I’ve bought from Canada in the past, big items like a case\monitor is too much shipping, but a order like graphics card, ram, CPU ect can be bought for far less than locally.
Lightonflux,
I have not been following memory prices - I will make sure I check what has happened in my local market, something for me to think about.
The GPU on the Linux side is unlikely to be used for much gaming, I will do some research into the three cards you noted - and I might fall towards the middle RX560 option as a safe middle ground choice.
Oh, thanks for the voice of confidence on the R7 1700 selection.
Cheers,
Stu
SheepInACart,
I found the NZ island tax (literal and figurative) to be a little out of control in NZ when comparing against the price of most things I used to get when I lived in Japan. This time round I did end up importing the monitor from the States to save $800 after costs. For the parts list I did some calculations against the US shops and it would have only ended up marginally better - which surprised me. For piece of mind I might just double-check with the parts list calculations against the US sites on the final parts list.
I was surprised you sourced from Canada versus the US. I wouldn’t have thought of checking Canadian pricing for anything.