New Workstation (Linux)

Hi All,

Let me start out by saying that this is the first desktop computer I'll be building, since I replaced my AMD 400Mhz with an ALPHA 533 from Microway; I've been using commercial workstations and Mac's since... So I'm far under-versed in this atm.

But alas, the time is here where I need a new workstation, and would really like to build a new one.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/BNQVgs

This is what I've come up with so far, this machine will be 100% Linux (Fedora 21) and will be used mainly for development, system work (lots and lots of emacs, terminals, and browser tabs), general browsing (youtube/music/flash music sites (like spotify)); and maybe even a venture into Steam.

It will also be regularly running multiple virtual machines via VirtualBox (spawned via Vagrant) for testing of workloads and solutions...

I have (1) monitor included in the parts list, but would like to move to (2) in the future (if not immediately), so please keep that in mind.

I appreciate any and all comments on the parts I've chose, please let me know what you think, or if you believe a better direction would be warranted.

Thanks in Advance!

 

Also including the relevant pieces of the 'General Guidelines' answered... Thanks again!!

 

  • Budget. How much are you willing to spend? [[$2500]]
  • Where do you live (what country),  and what currency do you use?
  •   -Is there a retailer you prefer? [[US/Northeast]]
  • Do you need or already have peripherals? (this can add to costs) [[Yes]]
  • What will you be using your future computer for? Gaming? Rendering? Mix of both? Or is this a home media PC?  [[Workstation, Work, Development, Testing, Virtualization, Lots of web browsing (text/flash), Maybe a dabble in Steam in the future]]
  • Do you overclock or want to get into overclocking? [[doesn't really apply]]
  • Do you plan on going for custom watercooling now, or in the future? [[I'd wish to avoid water in my computer if possible]]
  • OS. Do you need a new one? [[(Linux) Fedora 21]]

Looks pretty good, however I would personally probably have my CPU and GPU brands swapped. Generally AMD cards are a bit friendlier with Linux, and as a long-time user of Intel CPUs, they simply have a 'brute force' power to them that I've never gotten from an AMD part.

Thanks for the input BlueKoda!

Interesting; I thought it was nVidia that had the most 'Linux friendly ecosystem'... is this no longer the case?  I remember trying to make the `fglrx` driver work on FireGL laptop a few years back and it was a mess :(

 

Thoughts?

That was true until about a year ago AMD's open source drivers have gotten good enough to game and render on and their proprietary drivers have gotten much better, too.

For VM workloads I would recommend LXC if you are virtualizing linux you get great performance from it.