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On 12/07/15 23:13, Simon Waters wrote: > Finally can't be put off.... > > I need a new machine for home. > > Whilst at some distant point in the past I would have had a clue what is > current, because I bought hardware, I've been deskilled by the cloud to > the point where I have no idea what is out there beyond those shiny and > expensive DELL laptops aimed at developers (I'm tempted but no....). I've got one of those, and it's awesome - Dell M3800 Precision. It was a fair bit over £2K but it's really, really nice and effortlessly annihilates even most people's gaming or workstation boxes. The boss paid for that though: I don't think I could face spending that much of my own cash on one brand new. Like you, I'd ideally like to retire sometime this side of 90... > I need a box that will run a free software operating system. You're in luck - that's all of them. > It doesn't need to move (e.g. not a laptop). > > It needs to support several small virtual machines (think one to serve > music/files to house running a fair bit, several for testing stuff). > Unlikely to run more than 3 virtual machines are once. > > It needs to be quiet, and scale down power use effectively when not in > use (e.g. power management wants to be decent), since it'll never be > switched off, but it mustn't destroy the planet. These are highly reasonable and extremely moderate needs - an older Q6600 or similar from 5 or 6 Intel generations back and 8Gb of DDR2 RAM would handle that without even breaking a sweat. You're going to need to find the right balance of cost vs need here. It certainly doesn't sound like you need a screaming i7/Xeon, £500 worth of ECC DDR4 RAM and a bunch of NVME SSDs in RAID mode... > I have previously backed up remote servers to this device, this should > continue. Also runs Nagios and related types of test/monitoring. Not going to tell you how to do your job, but haven't you got that the wrong way around? I'm guessing that with the 24/7 requirement your new workstation will kind of double as your centralized server as much as your regular PC? So it will run the aforementioned monitoring and backup jobs as well as being your daily driver. Makes sense. > I use it as desktop, previously GNOME (but not fussed as long as it is > reasonably sane). > > As I back-up to it, I will want disk mirroring, at least for any data > (/home). No here I do think you've got this the wrong way around. Surely your /home - which I'd imagine will be based on a small, fast and expensive SSD this time around - wants to be backed up routinely instead, to a RAID mirror and then offline backup. Otherwise, yes, feel free to mirror but then you'll have to buy two SSDs! If you're thinking about not having your / on SSD this time around, I'd really, really, *REALLY* urge you to reconsider. SSDs are the best thing to happen to computing for a long time and you'd be seriously cheating yourself out of massive performance benefits by sticking with spinning rust, or even a hybrid. > I don't expect to use it for gaming, but basic 3D graphic support so > that if I try a game, or other program that requires it, it will at > least run without me aging too much. You'd have to go way, way out of your way for that not to work. It would be unforgivable for any half modern system to not support this out of the box, even on Linux. Fortunately, much like your power-saving requirements, if you just stick with Intel this stuff all Just Works (TM) these days. > The old monitor whilst working fine is 1024x768, so will be replaced by > something with full HD, and big enough for my aging eyes. Yikes. There are quite a lot of gotchas when it's come to higher end stuff, but if you're literally happy with a random 24" 1920x1080p monitor then good news - you can get them for a hundred quid these days. > I'm in the lucky position where I can afford all sorts, but would prefer > to spend the money on cars/kitchens or possibly even retiring before I > die. Guessing with such modest requirements by today's standards this > sort of box isn't going to be as much as I spent on the current machine. > > Is there a compelling OS, hardware, graphics card, monitor combination I > should leap at? > > Is there any reason not to find a cheap tower-like box that supports > 16GB of RAM and that will run Debian, and fill it with the hardware of > my choice. Yes, no problem - I build quite a lot of these for people who don't have unlimited cash. The build often starts with a cheap, but solid, mid-size case by Corsair or Antec (~£30). Basic commodity hardware, carefully chosen, properly assembled and then maintained well will get you 90% of the performance envelope you want for <50% of the price usually, and can last just as long as the expensive gear - frequently longer. Now personally, I have always and still do favour the industrial strength gear: unusually perhaps for an IT person computing is still really my main hobby as well as my job so I'm a little guilty of fetishising hardware. I spend quite a lot of time poring over reviews of enterprise level gear that to my missus' absolute horror I sometimes actually buy. > Oh and is there a good up to date tutorial on running server side > filtering with Postfix, and Dovecot (ala Sieve), since the box is still > doing client side email filtering for me and that sucks. Has to be > filtering configurable by my relatives (as they are no doubt still > cursing me for being "relaxed" about replacing the x509 certificate on > the mail server). Sorry, I'm a sendmail man myself (yeah, yeah, I know...) Here's a list of suggestions - general principles rather than specific parts (I could gin up a list though if you like). First, check out arstechnica's informative periodic system builder guides: for someone like yourself who's fallen a little out on the current field it should be a great refresher. Spend the most time and money on the central component, the motherboard. Chosen wisely it could last for a decade as you piecemeal upgrade the rest of your system around it. It will have more features, better components and should last much longer than some budget crap. X99 boards are the current "enthusiast" highend but you can buy for example an MSI X99 SLI plus for ~£150, which gives you a *lot* of features: Socket 2011-3, Intel X99 Chipset, 4x PCI-E 3.0 x16, 2x PCI-E x1, 10x SATA 6Gb/s, SATA Express, M.2 Slot, 12x USB 3.0, 6x USB 2.0, Intel Gb LAN, 7.1 HD Audio. It can take 128Gb of DDR4 RAM too, which should probably give you enough upgradability along with the socket set supporting Haswell-E and Xeon CPUs. Initially populate the board with as little RAM and CPU grunt as you want or can afford - 16Gb as mentioned will cost you another £120 or so and choose the cheapest compatible Intel CPU you feel like springing for. If you pay attention to the integrated Intel on-die GPUs you'll note that the more powerful Iris series GPUs are usually on the cheaper CPUs, which is convenient for you. The stronger Intel on-die GPUs are more than up to providing the graphical firepower you need so you can save cash on not getting a discrete GPU. To be fair, I've suggested here Haswell-E series kit which doesn't actually include integrated graphics - the cheapest compatible CPU is an i7 5820K 6-core hyperthreaded £300 part, which may be a lot more than you want to spend. I personally don't think that's a lot to spend on a CPU. If you ignore the really high end and go with the cheaper but still very fully featured Z79 motherboard instead, you get to spend a bit over a hundred quid on a board with most of the X99 chipset (minus the best stuff, like DDR4 support) but cheaper - you also aren't limited to relatively expensive enthusiast CPUs and could plumb for a much cheaper part, including one with integrated graphics. These are candidates: i5-5675C & i7-5775C The i7 is still nearly £300, but the i5 is £200. Basically check out the Broadwell Intel SKUs, they all have the latest generation Iris GPUs baked in which should comfortably be enough for you. Buy yourself a half-decent after-market cooler as well (for example, Artic Cooler: £20) and throw the Intel stock one away immediately. Let's not even talk about AMD as a CPU vendor here. Sad, but true. Don't skimp on the PSU - reliable companies only, get at least a Bronze rated one. I'd personally only buy a Gold rated unit with comfortably enough power because of all the things in your PC you really, really want to trust, it's this one. It's not worth skimping. Blow £100 on a 600W+ Gold rated fully modular PSU. Over 5-10 years of Gold rated efficiency it will probably pay for itself anyway and the modular cabling is essential to keep your case tidy, efficient and quiet. That's pretty much it I guess, except try to choose a well thought out case with a decent HDD cage, room for fans, etc. Cheap is fine for the case, just choose carefully. Last of all is your new SSD storage (you would honestly be mad to not go this route). They are cheap enough now that getting a 512Gb model is the sweet spot - you'll have enough room on your root disk for VMs, sprawling compilation projects and all your other stuff without having to worry about troubling your creaking spinning rust anymore. Don't cheap out and get a smaller model than 512Gb: they have less controller lanes to the NAND banks and don't perform as quickly. A standard Crucial MX500 SATA3 SSD can be had for <£150 these days (I have several, highly recommended). Investigate msata/M.2/PCIe-attached and even NVME SSDs for even higher end, considerably faster storage options. Don't forget to check backwards compatibility before ordering as well: if you're planning on transferring for example an older Adaptec RAID card make sure your new chipset has a spare PCI slot, as opposed to PCIe - many don't anymore. Wow, that email got quite long somehow. Hope any of that helps. Cheers PS: I'm also in the market for a new workstation but am perhaps not in such a hurry. I'd advise if possible, hang on just a bit longer for Intel Skylake, out later this year. Major new architectural "tick" release. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq