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Ask Slashdot: What Hardware Is In Your Primary Computer?
An anonymous reader writes: Here's something we haven't done in a while: list the specs of your main system (best one) so we can see what kinds of computers Slashdot geeks use. Context would be interesting, too — if you're up for it, explain how and why you set it up as you did, as well as the computer's primary purpose(s). Things you can list include (but are not limited to): CPU, motherboard, video card, memory, storage (SSD/HDD), exotic Controllers (RAID or caching), optical drives, displays, peripherals, etc. We can compare and contrast, see what specs are suitable for what purposes, and perhaps learn a trick or two.
AMD 8350 (best value per crunch at CPUbenchmark.net)
32G ECC RAM (because single bit errors suck, and lots of VMs are nice)
Nvidia Geforce 210 (fanless, because video card fans are the cheapest most common failure points)
(and because 2D XFCE doesn't need a Titan-X to be wicked fast)
Patriot 240G SSD (for small data sets and zippy desktop responsiveness)
Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 (runs well out of the box with Centos/RH 6.6 and Fedora 21)
2 x 23" 1080p IPS monitors (best value in screen real estate)
Everything on this system runs in RAM after the first read. I took the 4 magnetic drives out for the sake of quiet. Since there are cores to spare and 4.0 Ghz clock I have 3 desktops open with a dozen Firefox/Chrome windows each (with many tabs in each) and lots of PDFs and there is still RAM to spare. In my youth I put more money into "the fastest processor" and "the best possible video card" only to find most of my annoyances were from storage latencies and noise.
At a fundamental level, everything in my computer seems to be filled with this magic blue smoke.
Mac Pro
2.7GHz 12 Core CPU
1TB Storage
64GB Ram
Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
Macbook Pro, 15", Mid 2012 (I buy them refurbished from Apple for best price/specs). Whatever they come with (except for the Samsung 1Tb SSD, 840 EVO with all the recent fun that it implies).
In fact, this is not only my primary, but the only computer. I find that software is more important, and having just one computer makes it easier to keep track of things, back up etc. I do have several VMWare virtual machines with several version Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, all within this one, used for their respective development purposes. I'd hate to deal with that many physical boxes, though.
A big box. The sort that holds the MB horizontally with the drives underneath.
A sabertooth motherboard. The sort with the plastic housing the direct the air around the chips and muffle the noise. Why doesn't everyone do that?
A 4 core top end Ivy Bridge i7, 64GB dram.
Dual 500Gig SSD mirrored. In hotplug housing.
Dual 1TB rotating mirrored, for local backup. In hotplug housing.
Some expensive Nvidia card.
Why?
#1 The CPU is the first model with my logic in it. So it's personal. Also employee discount.
#2 I wanted to play 3D games after a hiatus of a few years.
#3 Hotplug housing is awesome. You can pull em out and put em back in again.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Things you can list include (but are not limited to):
CPU: YES
motherboard: YES
video card: YES
memory: YES
storage: YES
controllers: YES
optical drives: YES
displays: YES
peripherals: YES
That's why I like filling databases with garbage. The joke's on the people who actually pay money for such corrupt data. Oh well, caveat emptor.
Anyway my specs might be:
Intel Core i7-4470K, Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI, 64GB RAM, 3TB storage on SSD's and a couple high end graphics cards, or maybe I just copy pasted most of this stuff from some gamer website.
Ahh, to include the data or not to include?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Shuttle XS35 GT. 2GB ram and 500G hard drive. Ubuntu 14.04LTS
About $400 in this 4-5 years ago. The less I spend on computers the more money I have to enjoy the finer things in life. Like Thai food. In Thailand.
Pentium Overdrive 83mhz, 64mb edo simm, rage video card, sound blaster 16, 20gb hdd through pci card IDE controller. Plays MP3's as long as I don't move the mouse.
Earth Mark II
I bet you didn't even notice the failover, did you?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I have the upgraded version: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock
No good deed goes unpunished.
It's been a while since we've done that, too.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
MacBook Pro 13", Mid 2012, 2.9Ghz i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB Samsung 840 EVO drive. Running latest OSX 10.10.3 with latest build of Fusion 7.
Life is not for the lazy.
Banana Junior 6000
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
quad-core AMD FX-4170
Asrock 990FX mobo
32 GB RAM
128 GB Ocz (crap but was on shelf) SSD - Primary
1TB RAID 5 - Storage and weekly system images.
AMD R7 260 GPU
1x 23" display, 2x 22" displays
Old Cooler Master Cosmos case
Home:
AMD FX-6300 Vishera 6-Core 3.5GHz
Asrock 990FX
16 GB RAM
256 GB Samsun 850 Evo - Primary
1TB and 750GB - Storage drives and media server. (backups on separate NAS)
AMD R9 270X GPU
1x 24" and 1x 20" displays
Cheapo gaming case
Tertiary rig - old poweredge 2950.
32 GB Ram 2x dual-core xeons
6TB storage.
Boatloads of VMS for testing
Silence is a state of mime.
Wildly incorrect samples are known as outliers, and statisticians should know well how to recognize and ignore them.
If you want to just announce your frustration (and possibly get it noticed), that method will work fine. If you want to actually corrupt the data, you need to be more subtle.
To me, a more interesting question would be how do you economically back up a 20TB NAS (or, generally, any large storage array). I have a 24 GB raidz2 that I simply depend on hardware robustness and small, selective backups rather than a full backup.
Proteins, water, DNA, RNA, synapse interconnects ...
All the other computers I use are controlled by this one.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I spend the most time on my Thinkpad X60.
CPU: Core Duo T2400 1.83 GHz
RAM: 2 GB (recently upgraded after scrounging dead stuff)
Hard Disk: 160 GB
I bought it for about $200 several years back, and it still does everything I need. I had to switch from kmail/KDE to Thunderbird/LXDE after the latest Debian release (stupid akonadi), but after that switch I have no speed complaints.
My desktop has a Core 2 Duo E5200 (or so), but I don't use it that much these days.
------- Mark
I have older systems, but this is my best one... it just keeps doing everything I need it to.
Gigabyte GA-MA700-UD3P v1.0
Phenom II X6 1045T
Cooler Master Hyper TX2 cooler
Cooler Master 460W PS
Zotac GF750Ti
4xG.Skill 2GB (2x f3Â-10666-cl8dÂ-4gbhk)
ThermalTake Shark case
Samsung 850 Evo 500GB (heh heh) and Intel VO0160EC HPL (160GB HP-branded, eBay-sourced Intel SSD)
Viewsonic VP2655wb 25.5" IPS, Gateway FPD2275W 20" LCD, Dell E228WFPc 20" LCD
HL-DT-ST GH22NS50 DVD-blah blah blah
Kenwood KA-305 with Yamaha Monitors and Sennheiser HD420s
Microtek MRS-2400A48U scanner
Dell media keyboard with 2-port USB1.1 hub
Logitech Trackman Wheel USB T-BB18
The total cost of this system was below $1000, including displays, because I sourced so many parts used, including two out of three of the displays. Maybe I'm in $1100 including my HPLJ2300DN.
This system started out with a hand-me-down 160GB HDD, a Sony/Optiarc DVD which has since died as they all do, a flea market X-Blade case and a Phenom II X3 720, as well as only half the memory, and a Gigabyte 240GT, later an Asus 450 GTS OC.It seems likely I will upgrade again, but the next upgrade is MB+CPU+RAM and I haven't felt the need to go that road. Skyrim is the most demanding game I play, and it runs OK with almost everything turned on at 1920x1200. I have replaced microswitches in the trackball twice. The pot on my Kenwood amplifier could use a cleaning or replacement. The Sennheisers were $5 at a yard sale and I had to refoam 'em, that was around $20 and some scissor work. I have a fancier (active, high-wattage, high-efficiency) PSU to install, but it has no SATA power so I need to solder some in so I don't have a bunch of stupid Y cables.
My very first PC was an IBM PC-1 and my first Linux box was a 386DX25 with 8MB of DIP-socketed DRAM. I'm constantly amazed at what you can dig out of the trash: I've got a C2D with 2GB at my left that I did precisely that with. There's genuinely nothing wrong with it, and it even had an HDD in it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wanted responsiveness of the machine due to having loads of memory and CPU available, because 25 years has taught me those are the things which become limitations in a few years when you can no longer buy the right kind of RAM.
I find that RAM follows a downward arc pricing pattern... you get enough to get you by when you build your PC and leave some slots free, then in a few months the memory price hits its lea (possibly when the new memory comes out) and you fill it up. Then, as you have noted, a while later the old stuff goes more or less out of production and the price goes up again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I upgrade my system piecemeal over time as bits get too slow and/or fail. It's currently:
Case: Corsair Obsidian 550D
Mainboard: ASUS Sabertooth R2.0
CPU: AMD FX 8350
Memory: Crucial 16GiB ECC
GPU: AMD Radeon 6850 w/ 1GiB VRAM
Disks: 256GB Crucial M550 SSD (Windows 8.1), 120 GB Intel SSD (FreeBSD 10.1), 256GiB Seagate HDD (data)
(Important data is on a FreeBSD NAS w/ ZFS RAID)
Monitor: HP LP2475w
Keyboard: Kinesis Freestyle2
Primary use is software development and secondary is gaming. People criticise the AMD 8350, but with 8 cores it's a beast for parallel building; shared FPU isn't a big deal at all.
Planned upgrades:
New monitor; I'd like a 16:10 (or greater aspect ratio) at least 4K resolution with at least 10 bit depth (I do scientific imaging work). Might have to settle for the 5K Dell or similar if the ghastly 16:9 is all that's available.
New GPU: I'm waiting on the forthcoming AMD releases, probably wait until the new year for a reasonable deal; might have to wait on the monitor as well if I need a new one to drive a much bigger display.
sure, also you get troubles installing osx on that hp-box, if it's even possible (let alone allowed by apple). raw power doesn't cut it, if you're snugly locked into apple's ecosystem, or just prefer osx. i'd rather monkey around with apple's os and trade some render time for the frustration and maintenance time windows always gave me. whatever floats your boat/works best for you, but comparing PCs and Macs by hardware specs alone is a bit narrowminded
Notice the interesting trend of people on Slashdot being generally happy/content with machines that are up to 5-6 yrs old?
That's intriguing from a group of technology happy people who mostly earn good money.
I suspect it's the combination of family obligations (time and money), good work machines, and portable devices...that have reduced our desire and allocation of money for frequently updating our machines. And of course the fact that CPU performance has largely been flat lined over the past several years while SSD upgrades have dramatically improved the performance of our older machines.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Build, actually. I can build PPC compatible binaries on it.
It's not a database server. I simply don't find myself IO bound. When I do, it's a long running task that I usually kick off and walk away from. I have more need of disk space for redundant backups of my stuff, not raw speed.
This is why you need a proper bitch box. A box to get your bitch work done with out tying up your main desktop. My bitch box doubles as NAS and has a AMD FX-8350 shoved in it. It also has 16 GB of memory. When I have bitch work for it to do I spin up a VM and crack the whip.
This I can get long term tasks done while leaving my main workstation open for more important tasks. Like GTA5.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Same here. I bought a 2012 Macbook Pro Retina and other than its video card showing its age, it is still holding up just fine. I thought I'd want to replace it after 2 years but that's not even on my radar.
Somewhere in the last five years I've lost track of the spec wars, I'm just not waiting for my computer anymore. I am, however, enjoying having a primary machine that is easy to move or travel with. On several occasions I've finished up some free-lance work on the couch with my wife while watching TV.
I'm honestly starting to wonder if, in the not too distant future, I'm more reliant on a tablet-style device. I'm not there yet but I'm starting to see the possibility.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I consider that a feature, not a bug.
I dont really want to be locked into a single ecosystem, I dual boot Linux and Windows, except for the box that runs ESXi but technically that also runs Windows and Linux in VMs. I haven't found a use for OSX that these two didn't cover... in fact I haven't really found a use for OSX at all.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.