Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Banana Junior 6000
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
One wins, unless there's a zero.
Sorry, no time to participate...
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.
Damnit! How can it be a "contest" when the same people always win? :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.