# Want to buy new hardware - Linux compatible, good price

## Thms.

Hey everyone,

It's been a pretty long time that I've not been using gentoo because I don't really have much time and my debian homeserver die, so pretty much made my home desktop a stable debian server that I use a a desktop too, no bleeding edge custom kernel or ZFS systems anymore.

But now, I wanna buy one again because I realise it was really usefull and would want a bit more powerfull desktop.

So I have a question:

My actual hardware is, and this will be the server hardware:

Asus P5W DH Deluxe (socket 775)

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600

120gb (replaced with 750gb for the server)  + 500gb samsung SATA  II HDD

2gb DDRII Corsair memory

This server will be used as: Print server, Data/media server (the 750gb for media, and other 500gb HDD to save most of the media and important files), SAMBA server, and of course I'll be using it from my new desktop to copy and access the data, as will do the 3 windows laptop on the familty on the SAMBA server, firewell. I'll install debian as it run fines on it, do you recon debian will work fine for that kind of server ?

Now, for my new computer hardware I don't really know what to buy. I would pay 400- 500er (more 400er if possible), but not sure of what shall I buy, shall I buy a high end 775 socket configuration ? though about basic gigabyte mother board with G31 chipset, Core 2 Duo E7500, 4gb DDRII PC-6400, and a Radeon HD4850 graphic card.

I will be using gentoo and want it to compile faster than what my E6600 used to do, and I'll maybe be dual boot some times to enjoy some new video games if I can.

- Shall I buy a "high end" 775 and C2D with DDR2 config or just buy a new DDR3 and i5 or quad core CPU ? is the price difference really worth it ?

- Does the motherbard chipset really affect the performance ?

- Will my server be okay for that type of use ?

- What would be the 400er - 500er best bang for bucks price and hardware config ?

- What shall I avoid if I wanna have a linux compatable computer ? Can someone tell me the most supported chipset ?

- What is better for linux compataibility, ATI or NVIDIA ?

Thanks,

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## E001754

For compiling, why don't you go for Phenom X2 620 (less than 100 €) on gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P (90 €) ?? 

I don't know where you're from in Europa, but on a major french online seller (www.materiel.net), a comment left by a gentoo user reports a perfect compatibility of the whole motherboard. 

Here's the comment, translated in english : "Runs perfectly with Gnu/Linux Gentoo with CFLAGS=" -march=amdfam10 -O2 -pipe", kernel 2.6.30-r2 custom, GCC 4.3.2". 

Compiling feeds well a 4 core, better than a dual core and this Phenom is the cheapest quad available on market. All the more that you can probably overclock this Phenom, although I wouldn't do it for stability and durability reasons, and that already, this Phenom should give you enough stock power to let it cool (cooling silence is something pricey). 

For a server purpose, correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't really need high CPU. For the same price, you'd rather need low latency HDD, being able of massive I/O per seconds. Huge amount of RAM (4 Gb should be largely enough though), with some tmpfs in RAM disk to avoid the expense of an SSD. 

Of course, if you don't put any graphical interface on your server, just SSH or TTY access and just the needed services running. X server with KDE/Gnome eats huge amount of ressources. Or use some lightweight window manager if you really want some graphical interface (there is XFCE of course but also LXDE). 

Linux is made for running servers. You shouldn't have any performance issues with such hardware, which is not so old after all. If you encounter perf problems, you still can overclock your CPU to see if it solves partially your perf problems. If yes, then switch for more powerfull CPU, but I don't think this will help much. 

For linux compatibility, I've to admit that nvidia runs now better than ATI (I've got an ATI HD4870), mainly for 3 reasons : nvidia runs better with wine (useless if you have a dual boot). nvidia is better with compiz/fusion (I don't use that at all). nvidia gives also better results on video playback when using xv, because there is no tearing. 

A tearing video is a video that shows a splited image, where the splitting line is horizontal. The top half of the screen is in advance of a frame against the bottom which is late of a frame. It's something like that and it's visible on the screen when playing back a video.

To avoid this, I simply switch to opengl renderer and I don't have any issue, eventhough my gfx card is probably less used than it should be. For blueray, this should give problem as blueray needs high power for decoding properly, but I don't own any blueray yet (either disk or reader) !

However, my HD4870 runs smooth on Heroes of Newerth, on UT2004 (for UT2004, it would be a pity that a teraflop capable gfx card couldn't run that game smooth...). On open-source side, if you limit yourself to 2D on linux, a simplier card will be enough and the driver more stable/mature than fglrx (the binary blobs for ATI cards). In the future (but no-one knows "when"), because ATI released specs of their cards to community, open-source drivers should be able to run everything just as fglrx now do. But this is certainly a long run. Buying ATI just for linux is rather a religious choice  :Wink:  rather than an optimal choice. But open-source needs supporters !   :Very Happy:  :Wink: 

On Windows, this HD4870 it's the killing card. The newer 5850 / 5870 from ATI are even better and Nvidia can't hold the line. You'll probably find 4870 / 4890 or 4850 on end of life that should be a good deal and should allow to play any game you want (on LCD 24" or less).

After all, an HDD cost about 40 €, so I went for dual boot for being able to play the few games that I miss on linux.

Hope this helps

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## DaggyStyle

775 socket is dead, why go with a dead hardware where you can get a future proof hardware in the image of am3?

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## E001754

 *DaggyStyle wrote:*   

> 775 socket is dead, why go with a dead hardware where you can get a future proof hardware in the image of am3?

 

775 is commercially dead, but giving still enough power for the purpose he wants to deal with.

So, why wanting to change something that still can work and spending bucks on something not very usefull ??

But that's just my point of view though.

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## DaggyStyle

 *E001754 wrote:*   

>  *DaggyStyle wrote:*   775 socket is dead, why go with a dead hardware where you can get a future proof hardware in the image of am3? 
> 
> 775 is commercially dead, but giving still enough power for the purpose he wants to deal with.
> 
> So, why wanting to change something that still can work and spending bucks on something not very usefull ??
> ...

 

for a 400-500 euros he can get a very nice AM3 based computer which he can upgrade later to X6 if he wants

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## E001754

 *DaggyStyle wrote:*   

>  *E001754 wrote:*    *DaggyStyle wrote:*   775 socket is dead, why go with a dead hardware where you can get a future proof hardware in the image of am3? 
> 
> 775 is commercially dead, but giving still enough power for the purpose he wants to deal with.
> 
> So, why wanting to change something that still can work and spending bucks on something not very usefull ??
> ...

 

True. And that's exactly what I've told. The point is : "what to do with the old computer, which is a Core2 on socket 775", or, more exactly, one of his question was "Can I make this socket 775 a decent server" ?

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## Thms.

I will be using this old PC as a server for sure, it will be more power than enough for my use.

Is the AMD phenom worth it for gentoo compiling and linux games ? I used to prefer Intel for a few years, is AMD on par with quality and performences ?

EDIT: WHat do you guys think of this 

 Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P 	  1   	82,49 €			

 AMD Athlon™ II X4 620 	  1   	93,99 €			

 Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI 	  1   	133,99 €			

 OCZ DDR3 3 x 1 Go PC12800 Gold Edition 	  1   	63,79 €			

 Antec Three Hundred 	  1   	52,89 €			

 Corsair HX - 520W 	  1   	86,99 €			

 Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 S-ATA - 1000 Go - 32 Mo 	  1   	70,89 €

585€.Last edited by Thms. on Tue Sep 29, 2009 2:49 pm; edited 3 times in total

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## DaggyStyle

 *Thms. wrote:*   

> I will be using this old PC as a server for sure, it will be more power than enough for my use.
> 
> Is the AMD phenom worth it for gentoo compiling and linux games ? I used to prefer Intel for a few years, is AMD on par with quality and performences ?

 

PII is more than enough for you needs, depending on you. intel is not the only thing out there, just look around... if you want a build, I can try to create one that will match your needs but I'll have to know what do you need exactly

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## Thms.

 *DaggyStyle wrote:*   

>  *Thms. wrote:*   I will be using this old PC as a server for sure, it will be more power than enough for my use.
> 
> Is the AMD phenom worth it for gentoo compiling and linux games ? I used to prefer Intel for a few years, is AMD on par with quality and performences ? 
> 
> PII is more than enough for you needs, depending on you. intel is not the only thing out there, just look around... if you want a build, I can try to create one that will match your needs but I'll have to know what do you need exactly

 

Take a look at my EDITed post.

As I said,

WHat do you guys think of this 

Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P 1 82,49 € 

AMD Athlon™ II X4 620 1 93,99 € 

Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI 1 133,99 € 

OCZ DDR3 3 x 1 Go PC12800 Gold Edition 1 63,79 € 

Antec Three Hundred 1 52,89 € 

Corsair HX - 520W 1 86,99 € 

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 S-ATA - 1000 Go - 32 Mo 1 70,89 € 

585€.

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## doctork

 *Thms. wrote:*   

> I will be using this old PC as a server for sure, it will be more power than enough for my use.
> 
> Is the AMD phenom worth it for gentoo compiling and linux games ? I used to prefer Intel for a few years, is AMD on par with quality and performences ?
> 
> EDIT: WHat do you guys think of this 
> ...

 

I'm not a heavy graphics user, so no comment on that other than Nvidia has always worked for me.

As far a compiling is concerned, here's a couple of data points.  Compiling kdelibs.4.3.1 gave me the following:

```
15.5 minutes on a Phenom X4 9550

23.2 minutes on a Core2 Duo T7500

32.1 minutes on an Athlon X2 4600+
```

The first two machines both run at 2.2 GHz, the 4600+ at 2.4GHz.  I haven't done any performance tuning on any of the above.  Your proposed Athlon X4 should be considerably faster.

--

doc

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## DaggyStyle

 *Thms. wrote:*   

>  *DaggyStyle wrote:*    *Thms. wrote:*   I will be using this old PC as a server for sure, it will be more power than enough for my use.
> 
> Is the AMD phenom worth it for gentoo compiling and linux games ? I used to prefer Intel for a few years, is AMD on par with quality and performences ? 
> 
> PII is more than enough for you needs, depending on you. intel is not the only thing out there, just look around... if you want a build, I can try to create one that will match your needs but I'll have to know what do you need exactly 
> ...

 

if you are one that gambles, I'd recommend this:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigabyte-GA-MA785GMT-UD2H-AMD-785G-AM3-DDR3-1066-1333-1800-SATA-3Gb-s-RAID-Micro-ATX-VGA for 70.60

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-%282x2GB%29-Corsair-TwinX-XMS3-DDR3-PC3-10666-%281333%29-240-Pin-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-CAS-9-9-9-24 for 70.27

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-Phenom-II-X2-550-Black-Edition-Callisto-S-AM3-31GHz-7MB-Total-Cache-HT-4000MHz-85W-Retail for 

74.99 which costs less, the mb have a o/b hd4200 gpu which you can use if you don't intend to do gaming on it and save the money on the gpu, also the cpu is BE which is great for OC if your into it, it has 6mb of L3 (620 don't have L3) and the best thing, you can unlock the disabled core, wcs you stay with X2, ncs you get a Phenon II X3 for the price X2 or bcs you get a nice Phenon II X 550 BE (equals to 950 BE) for the price of X2.

that is what I would do if I had the money.

edit: take this hd too http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1TB-Samsung-HD103SJ-Spinpoint-F3-SATA-3Gb-s-7200rpm-32MB-Cache-89-ms-NCQ-OEM for 55.95

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## Thms.

Do you recon it's the best hardware I could get for this price, as you seem to know alot about hardware.

Im willing to change the whole thing if there's better.

I think I'll then take AMD Phenom™ II X3 720 Black Edition as CPU, if I keep this config. I'll take the mobo and HDD you said.

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## DaggyStyle

 *Thms. wrote:*   

> Do you recon it's the best hardware I could get for this price, as you seem to know alot about hardware.
> 
> Im willing to change the whole thing if there's better.
> 
> I think I'll then take AMD Phenom™ II X3 720 Black Edition as CPU, if I keep this config. I'll take the mobo and HDD you said.

 

good choice I'd suggest you take the memory because you'll get better performance. also you can try to unlock the fourth core.

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## Thms.

I never heard about this "unlocking" core methode, can you give me links / explain ?

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## DaggyStyle

 *Thms. wrote:*   

> I never heard about this "unlocking" core methode, can you give me links / explain ?

 http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-251526_11_0.html

google it for more info

and yes the g785 bios supports that.

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## E001754

Just one last word : I wouldn't go for gigabyte power supply, or, rather, don't go for a 485W PSU.

It's far too much for your needs, and there you can spare money.

The brands that I would suggest you for PSU are : Corsair, Seasonic, Antec or Silverstone (ST40EF or ST50EF). Pick up that don't exceed 400 W (I got a 425 W for feeding a Q9550 and a radeon HD4870, both @ stock clocks), except if you think going for a strong GFX card in coming months. Avoid absolutely any PSU that wouldn't be labelled "80+".

PSU is an important piece of hardware.

For memory, Gskill makes good memory (as best as Corsair), but is little cheaper.

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## DaggyStyle

 *E001754 wrote:*   

> Just one last word : I wouldn't go for gigabyte power supply, or, rather, don't go for a 485W PSU.
> 
> It's far too much for your needs, and there you can spare money.
> 
> The brands that I would suggest you for PSU are : Corsair, Seasonic, Antec or Silverstone (ST40EF or ST50EF). Pick up that don't exceed 400 W (I got a 425 W for feeding a Q9550 and a radeon HD4870, both @ stock clocks), except if you think going for a strong GFX card in coming months. Avoid absolutely any PSU that wouldn't be labelled "80+".
> ...

 

his planned psu is Corsair HX - 520W 1 86,99 €.

I've looked at scan.co.uk for Gskill but there are only Corsair and crappy once

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## E001754

Corsair HX 520W is very good piece of PSU.

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## Thms.

It is more expensive but usefull if I wanna upgrade later no ?

And this one is as good as a seasonic one ? I want a really silence PC, the gigabyte is passive, my CPU will be later, and my case will have 2 silent fans.

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## E001754

I think at about 99% that Corsair PSU are made by Seasonic. And if they aren't, Corsair PSU are really good, combining though power and silence.

Either Seasonic or Corsair is really good choice, just matter of price at your local store or availlability.

With those PSU, going beyond 450W will garantee you an overclocking capability of both CPU and GPU. I think however that 450W is enough, while standing on reasonnable overclockings. However, is up to you seeing is the price difference between 450 and 550W is worth it or not. Going beyond 550W is crazy IMO.

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## E001754

Going for passive PSU is expensive and generally, fanless PSU usually delivering no more than 350W.

A passive PSU is interresting if you want either sleep in the same room of your PC or use it as home cinema and really have a good hear that could be disturbed by any noise.

I own an Enermax PRO 82+ 425W and I don't hear this PSU. In fact, I don't hear my PC at all, which packs a Velociraptor 10K,  another HDD 7200 (Western Digital Caviar Blue), and radeon HD 4870. The CPU cooler is a Cooler Master V8.

Being on KDE desktop, this PC is noiseless, eventhough I wouldn't sleep in the same room. When gaming, the sounds comes from the HD4870. This card can really be noisy, incredibly noisy. My case is Antec Solo, with sound deadning panels, which help a little keeping sound low.

Corsair (and Seasonic) are producing really low noise PSU. Unless particular applications, you'd better save your money and go for a fanned PSU. You'll hear quite no noise from a quality PSU.

Perhaps try heading for a noiseless case. The antec three hundred is a gamer case and has many holes everywhere. It's good for cooling but bad for sound. Antec makes the Solo and 2 or 3 others with "sound deadning panels", which are holeless. Silverstone is also producing cases with foam on side panels, that should give impressive results.

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## Thms.

I will take the antec Three Hundred as for the price, there don't seem to be better (??).

Now I'm gonna buy the PC Monday, but I've still a question: Shall I buy a HD4850 1gb (passive), or a HD4870 1gb.

Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P 	  1   	82,49 €			

 Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GI 	  1   	133,99 €			

 Antec Three Hundred 	  1   	52,89 €			

 AMD Phenom™ II X3 720 Black Edition 	  1   	114,90 €			

 Seasonic M12II - 430W 	  1   	77,99 €			

 Samsung Spinpoint F3 S-ATA - 1000 Go - 32 Mo 	  1   	69,89 €			

 OCZ DDR3 2 x 2 Go PC10666 Platinum Edition 	  1   	85,49 €

This would be the finale configuration.

Shall I replace the Gigabyte HD4850 1gb for this HD4870 ? http://www.materiel.net/ctl/Cartes_graphiques/50488-Radeon_HD_4870_1_Go.html

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## DaggyStyle

 *Thms. wrote:*   

> I will take the antec Three Hundred as for the price, there don't seem to be better (??).
> 
> Now I'm gonna buy the PC Monday, but I've still a question: Shall I buy a HD4850 1gb (passive), or a HD4870 1gb.
> 
> Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P 	  1   	82,49 €			
> ...

 

good build. the what's the purpose of the build?

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## Anon-E-moose

 *Thms. wrote:*   

> I will take the antec Three Hundred as for the price, there don't seem to be better (??).
> 
> 

 

I bought the Antec Nine Hundred, plenty of air flow, 3 speed fans.

I run the fans on low and the noise factor is minimal, while keeping

hardware at near room temps. YMMV.

Good luck.

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## Thms.

 *DaggyStyle wrote:*   

>  *Thms. wrote:*   I will take the antec Three Hundred as for the price, there don't seem to be better (??).
> 
> Now I'm gonna buy the PC Monday, but I've still a question: Shall I buy a HD4850 1gb (passive), or a HD4870 1gb.
> 
> Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P 	  1   	82,49 €			
> ...

 

Just my everyday-use computer  :Smile: 

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## DaggyStyle

 *Thms. wrote:*   

>  *DaggyStyle wrote:*    *Thms. wrote:*   I will take the antec Three Hundred as for the price, there don't seem to be better (??).
> 
> Now I'm gonna buy the PC Monday, but I've still a question: Shall I buy a HD4850 1gb (passive), or a HD4870 1gb.
> 
> Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P 	  1   	82,49 €			
> ...

 

go for the passive then, try to find reviews on that PSU, I have to clue on it's ratings.

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## Thms.

Ordered   :Very Happy: 

Thanks everyone for your help  :Smile: 

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## Malakai

CPU: Phenom 2 X4, I like the 955BE for price/performance/ oc'ability, but you can go with 945 if you dont care about the unlocked multi, or the older 940BE if you are absolutely sure you never want to use ddr3 with it!! I just replaced my 940 with a 955, so a year or so down the road I can replace my cas5 ddr2-1066 with drr3-2600 (or better!).

Some may suggest you go with an X2 to save a few bucks, and ordinarily I might agree, however since gentoo is a source distro the extra cores will be extremely worthwhile. 

Mobo: Any 790GX or 790FX mobo, with a SB750 southbridge (very important!! you want this) will do. On a budget, the 790gx boards are an absolutely stellar value. The onboard video is (iirc) a hd3300, which will do anything you need to do except playing modern games and good settings. I of course, being a gamer, do not use the onboard, my trusty HD4770 takes care of video. However, it is wonderful to have a backup video card available all the time, in case your main one dies, or your vid card is doa when you go to install!!

Personally I stuck with ddr2 for now, prices are simply to good to pass up. cas5 ddr2-1066 can be had for 50 dollars per 4gb, and I like running 8gb. The page file is basically never touched no matter how much multitasking you are doing!

I personally recommend the Gigabyte MA790gp-ud4h am2+ 790gx/sb750 board. I have built 4 boxes for friends and work so far with it, and every single one runs great, none of them have had any issues. They use retail brand name japanese caps, and double thickness/2oz copper pcb. They are very reliable and STURDY!! I hate when it feels like my mobo is gonna snap when Im plugging in expansion cards. Oh and it has great and silent passive cooling.

Memory: Choice of ddr2 or ddr3 if you go with a 945/955/965, or just ddr2 if you go with a 940 (i dont recommend this if you dont absolutely need to save a few bucks, as ddr3 will probably continue falling in price over the next year, and a 3ghz+ quad core Phenom II is going to have a long lifespan as your main pc's cpu). 

I went with the 955 and a am2+/ddr2 motherboard. But, down the road, if I ever see a great combo deal on an am3/ddr3 mobo, I can always just drop my cpu into the ddr3 setup and off I go. For now though, if you want to save some money and suffer a very minor perforance hit, ddr2-1066 is the best value for memory on the market. But if you only want to go with 4gb (2x2), then it might be worth it to just drop the extra 30-50 bucks on some ddr3-1600. Lower speed ddr3(1066-1333) is IMO not worth the increase in latency and price over cas5 ddr2-1066!.

I went with 4x2=8gb of g.skill cas5 ddr2-1066, I got it all for 100 even. Games are not bottenecking at the main memory bus, its the video card that holds your fps back (on a modern quad core box like I am outlining here anyway), putting the money you save going with ddr2 into your video card will yield much better fps, and not much software is needing more than ddr2-1066 offers (right now anyway, when the time comes that you do need that extra bandwidth, all you need is a new mobo and memory, drop that am3 ph2 right in and off you go!)

Video card: Im not super familiar with what video cards and drivers work best on gentoo right now. It used to be that you basically had to go nvidia to game successfully on gentoo, but hopefully this is no longer the case. At the 100 dollar price point, you have the ATI HD4770 & HD4850. Both are drop dead amazing performance for the price, these cards play any modern game at full settings and high resolutions, you might not be able to use AA at say 1920x1200 (my monitors res), but you are good elsewhere. The cards are quite different, the 4770 is newer, its atis test run of their new 40nm gpu. It runs much cooler and uses much less power than the 4850, and it overclocks better (most of the time much much better), but it is slower than a stock 4850. Pre volt mod my 4770 is running 830/1060, from stock 750/800. The gddr5 it uses is stock 1000mhz megahurtz memory, so you have lots of headroom. I dont know how ocing works, or if it can be done, in gentoo yet. But most people will have a windows partition for gaming, all of this info is totally accurate for windows vista/7/xp.

can't stress this enough, compiling code on a phenom 2 x4 is absolute computer zen! My 955 compiles code so fast, every time I emerge something and plan to go get some food ect, its always done or almost done before I even get out the front door! Considering the 955be is only 180 dollars, there is simply no reason not to wait until you can save up an extra 50-80 dollars to get the quad core. Also, quad cores are the future, IMO almost every app that can possibly require it will be heavily multithreaded in the near future!

I need to run out atm, more to come soon.

Cliffs for this post: Phenom 2 is simply the hands down best price/performance computing has ever seen. Ph2's rival i7's, they get beat in some raw computing apps, and can tie or even beat the fastest i7s in many games, and the total build cost including memory and motherboard is roughly 50-75% that of an i7 build. Even most good core2quads still cost more than phenom 2 quad cores, and they are a totally dead architecture.

If you are not totally made of money or loaded, theres not much reason in my book to go expensive intel quad core box over insanely cheap phenom 2 box. You also have a lot of control over your final price with choice of ddr2 or ddr3, which 770 chipset/mobo you go with, and lots of room for upgrades with the compatability of an am3 cpu!!

And on AMDs video card front, the ATI 4800/4770 series are unparalleled for the price. I mean, you have several options from AMD/ATI at the 100-150 dollar price range that will run any game at max or near max settings at high res.

I almost ditched amd due to the crappiness of the phenom 1, I was about to go with a core2quad when the phenom 2's hit the market, and I absolutely cannot be happier with both my box's total build cost and performance. Shes a screamer, and ram/video/cpu/mobo was only 450 bucks! I got a good cpu/mobo combo deal, the memory was on sale+free shipping, and the video card was 99 bucks free shipping, <3 newegg!!

Im not an amd fanboy I promise you, if i was rich id be running an i7. But we are in a recession, work is hard to come by and hold, bills and food cost (AND GAS OMG) is always rising, I could not afford to spend a single extra dollar on my upgrade than I had to. AMD rode in to save the day, letting me get a top performing box for what a total budget net&email lemon box would have cost a few years ago, or a total build cost less than that of several Intel cpu's!!

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