Saved up for a really long time & utterly confused first build!

Hardware Build a PC
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ok so prices are wacky in india got it. first off the early 2tb seagtes had a problem. look at the date on the drive and if it isnt recent dont get it, get another hdd. for a long time seagate had (maybe still has) the highest failure rate of any hdd company. they are trying to change but dont trust the old drives. also when you get the drives home you may wish to check the drives SMART records to see total on time.
https://linuxconfig.org/retrieve-hard-drive-s-age-and-general-health-information-using-linux

also since you do plan on using virtual machines, i would recommend zen. ipc is the same or close to intels atm and ryzen is rumored to oc to around 4.8 ghz from a reliable source (buildzoid) and 5ghz according to a lot of less reliable hearsay. the leaked release dates say end of February/early march. price wise the 8 core will be more probably expensive and the motherboard will be cheaper. on programs that can use all of your cores, ryzen will probably beat kaby lake. on things that use one core kaby lake will probably win. but since you are using vm's 3 kaby lake cores will loose to 5-7 ryzen cores.

also if you plan to overclock, i would suggest getting a water cooler for the cpu. both zen and kaby lake can really use the heat dissipation when overclocking. i usually recommended corsair as their warranty covers everything in your computer, not just your cooler so if it leaks and ruins something they will pay for the cooler and the parts destroyed. they also are better then decent performance if a bit expensive.

also good luck

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I just assumed those cpus coming in where zen.

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You waited this long, you might as well wait for Ryzen to come out, should be end of the month hopefully

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I should have responded in my previous post regarding MS Office...sorry about that. Here goes...

Nope, cannot claim this privilege regards to Windows 10 Enterprise and Office Student, as I'm not a student.

Nope. No specific reason other than the worry about 'save format' of word and excel documents. Already been reading up on LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice. LibreOffice 5.2.5 does support Windows 10. My inertia of heading away from MS Office is the culprit and nothing else. And hey, won't know it until I try it...

Not sure if this is correct anymore. From what I have gathered from the MS TechNet site the group policy editor option will be disabled/already disabled post build 1607 or the 'Anniversary Update'. I don't have access to a machine with Windows 10 Pro edition to verify this though. The information for this is given in a table format link below -
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/manage-tips-and-suggestions

That is really good news. But the way I figured have to handle my learning curve for KVM is following what's mentioned in @GrayBoltWolf video about using Debian stretch. Right now I'm having a bit of struggle figuring out source of information that clarifies if the MSI GPU rx480 has UEFI enabled or not ? Am sure it is mentioned out there somewhere but so far no success finding this particular bit for the MSI Radeon RX 480 Gaming X 8GB GDDR5 ATI PCI E card.

And yes, you're quite correct about the timelines for Fedora 26 is pretty far off. Checked it on their schedule below -
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/26/Schedule

And to everyone here who have been generous with pointers, if you permit me a slightly off the trail 'regressive' approach - why upgrade to Windows 10 (Home or Pro) ? In the sense that I won't ever be playing very high FPS games. DX12 can come and go for all reasons. But I rarely if not ever chase the latest and the greatest in gaming (look at the games I am choosing on steam - a tad retro in way if one thinks about it)

However, this does not mean that I will give up on KVM or exploring GNU Linux. I will still be going down that route with Windows 8.1 Pro and i7 6700K build put up in the original post. The only difference being that it will now be KVM machine, with a MSI r480 8GB GPU and probably Libreoffice for productivity. I will still have to download all the 'updates' but have the choice to switch it off before any update 'bricks' you know what...
A nagging thought which I can't seem to shake loose is diminished user control in Windows 10. Not everyone can afford an Enterprise version or qualify for other versions which have comparatively more defined user control.
Just thinking aloud here but request your thoughts and comments on this approach of mine.

Thank you @fredrich_nietze for the pointer for the 2TB internal drives. A 2 TB post a dedicated SSD for OS seems a bit of an overkill. Will be looking for alternatives - maybe 1 TB or so...

Would like your observations on my line of thought regarding diminished user control in Windows 10 and switching back to an 'older' configuration centred around Windows 8.1 Pro...

Corsair was indeed my first choice for liquid cooling too. The model I was reading up on is Corsair Hydro Series H80i v2 (single fan set up). Anything better I can start exploring on ?

Need tons of it :-)

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oc did a vid on all the watercoolers they could get in prepreation for kaby lake and made a massive comparison vid.


TL;DR if you go corsair the h80iv2 is the nicest 120mm and both the 240 and the 280mm ones are nice and in the top 5 or so iirc. few others scored better and a few others are better cost/performance but paying extra for the best warranty is probably worth it since aio water coolers only last around 2 tears on avg.
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Wow ! All that dough for a relatively shorter time in my opinion. I mean of course it also depends on many other variables like airflow, overclocking etc.

Thanks for the video @fredrich_nietze. Will login again in a bit...

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Didn't read anything.
Comment anyway.

Wait for RYZEN.

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LibreOffice can save to formats readable by the MS office equivalent, and is able to open them no problem. At work I use LibreOffice, my partner uses MS Office and we can go back and forth between them with no issues at all.

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Just an update regarding rx480...

Been reading up on it. This card is great as far as driver installation is concerned for Windows 7 and Windows 10 but lots of people got stuck with it on Windows 8.1. Although a successful workaround was posted here -

And here...

Additionally for gaming in Linux there seems be no strong consensus on which is better OpenGL or ATI. From what I gather AMD cards have gone open source and seem to have improved.

Still learning about this card and gaming in Windows 8.1 and Linux...

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Yes. You are confused. xD

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I get that there are reasons that some folks can't completely cut the cord with Microsoft, but I don't understand your focus on KVM. Personally, if I were in your position, I'd put Windoze on one SSD, Linux on a second SSD and then have a separate hard disk for mass storage. You can put all of your documents, videos, music, etc. on the spinning disk and then create sym links between the various "Docunemts," "Videos," "Pictures," and ""Music" folders of both operating systems to the respective folders on the spinning disk. You'll have 100% access to all of your files via the MS office suite on W10, or via Libre Office on Linux.

Sure, using KVM, or Virtual Box to have a quick peek at the latest MX16, Solus, or Peppermint build makes a lot of sense, but when it comes to actually USING Linux, the bare metal experience is really what you want ... especially for playing games, or running other demanding software.

Besides, doing bare metal installs will require less processing power, so you may find that an i5 CPU is more than adequate. Additionally, you won't have to worry about setting up any GPU passthrough hacks.

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Thanks for the pointers. But unfortunately, I cannot afford two SSDs and one spinning internal hard disk. At best I can do is manage one 120 GB SSD and one internal hard disk.

I don't understand 'sym links'. If it means system links I don't know how to do that either.

Could you please explain that a bit further. All I'm learning about KVM is what I'm reading up on this link -

Is there any other way to install straightaway ? I honestly would be relived not to use Windows for that matter or use it sparingly for some games. Already dropping MS Office for Libreoffice...

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Instead of symbolic linking ( symlinks), just dump everything on to the spinning HDD.

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Virtualization is not free. It imposes a significant overhead, requiring more powerful hardware, in order to get satisfactory results, than what would be otherwise required if the OS/software were being run natively on the machine AKA a bare metal install. If you aren't virtualizing an OS, in order to play games and use other demanding software, then you won't "need" an i7 and 16GB of RAM, this would more than offset the cost of a second SSD, since a decent 250GB model can be had for less than $100USD.

Sym links, AKA symbolic links are nothing more than shortcuts. They enable you to click on your W10 documents folder and automatically be connected to the Documents folder on your spinning disk. Same for your Linux install, since both OS' support these shortcuts, although the configuration, as you would expect, is slightly different for each. You'll never have the aggravation of being booted into W10, for example, but the document that you need is in your Linux Document folder (since W10 can't read the Linux ext4 file system). Setting up sym links is dead simple, hint: DuckDuckGo is your friend.

I'm not badmouthing virtualization. As I mentioned, it's great for evaluating potential Linux (or BSD) distributions. Once you find one that you like, however, I am advocating that you actually install it on your hardware, rather than continuing to run it virtually. BTW, it should be mentioned that there are a few exciting and worthwhile distributions that simply refuse to run on Virtual Box, or KVM. Also, virtualization is not perfect. There is a wide expanse of grey area between "runs fine" and "won't run at all." You may be tempted to write off a distribution due to its "buggy" behavior on KVM, but find that it runs perfectly fine when it is actually installed on the hardware.

Personally, if I want a more accurate indication of how a distribution runs/feels, I'll put it onto a bootable USB thumb drive, instead.

Dual booting was something of a hobby on older BIOS based machines, but I've found it to be simple and reliable on newer UEFI machines, especially if you keep each OS, including the bootloaders, segregated on their own, separate drives.

I'm with you. I find myself using W10 less and less. I don't even have e-mail configured on W10, 'cause I just don't trust MS as far as I can throw them. Lately, I find myself booting into W10, perhaps monthly, to do software updates, but I don't even find myself playing Windoze games much any more.

As you mentioned, there is a lot of great cross platform software, such as Libre Office, Chrome, Firefox and Vivaldi, to name but a few, which if adopted while you are still using W10, will not only make your W10 installation safer (never, ever trust a MS browser!), but it also ease your transition to freedom, AKA Linux/BSD.

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Great tip on LibreOffice, thanks to everyone who recommended that. I've been using OpenOffice for years and this is an immediately-noticeable improvement.

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Are they really going to add that?

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Yes it is a feature in kenrel 4.10+ which fedora 26 will be using, you also won't need an extra GPU. The new tech is called Virtual GPU. You might google it real quick and see if it would work for you. Kernel 4.10.1 is already out so if you want to do your own upgrade you could test it out, but it will be a little more complicated then just letting boxxes do it for you.

So it isn't technically gpu pass through.

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