Hardware For a Cheap Linux Desktop (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Outside of the limelight of Intel's Core "Skylake" processors is the cheapest model, a $60 Intel Pentium G4400 dual-core processor that runs at 3.3Gz and has built-in HD Graphics 510. Ubuntu Linux results for this CPU show the cut-down Skylake graphics are the worst aspect of this budget processor while the CPU performance is okay if speed isn't a big factor and your workloads don't mind the lack of AVX support. To pair with the cheap Skylake Pentium processors are more Intel H110-powered motherboards appearing, with some also retailing for under $60 while being basic yet functional as a severely cutdown version of the Intel Z170 chipset. If pursuing this route for a budget Linux PC, it's possible to build a socketed Skylake system for less than $200. Those of you who have recently built, or are planning out a new budget Linux machine, what internals do you recommend?

Comments

AMD

[rlp]

I have a couple of AMD based desktops I use as file / compute servers. Both running Ubuntu and hosting VM's with VirtualBox and running as fileservers with software RAID-5 and RAID-10. The CPU's are 6 and 8 core and were fairly cheap. Graphics was not a consideration and the machines are servers.

Dell T20 server for $139 (CyberMonday sale)

[JoeyRox]

Nice base system with Pentium G3220:

http://slickdeals.net/f/829851...

Re: Dell T20 server for $139 (CyberMonday sale)

[kenh]

The quad-core Xeon version with a 1 TB drive at $279 strikes me as a better deal.

Oddly, this server includes a built-in sound card and can support 4x 3.5" drives AND 2x 2.5" drives, as well as an optical drive.

It uses slightly more expensive ECC RAM

Quality cheap system

[slaker]

I've been building inexpensive PCs with Gigabyte H81 ITX motherboards, LGA1150 Pentium G CPUs, 4GB RAM, 120GB mSATA drives and Rosewill ITX chassis. I can build a whole machine for around $250. The chassis will still have room for an optical drive and a pair of hard disks, should you want them.

I specifically like the Gigabyte board for having both mSATA and mini-PCIe slots, plus the cutout to add antennas for 802.11/bluetooth. There's just a lot of flexibility for an ITX machine.

Re:Good quality memory

[bobbied]

I think I'd avoid doing a torture test of a disk drive of any type, but especially an SSD. Technically you are wearing out the SSD which has a finite number of write cycles before it will stop working on you. Problem is, you don't really know how many cycles an SSD has, so you are just wasting your drive's life. Plus, SSD's slow down over time as they are used and the drive controller attempts to level the number of writes in each sector.

For memory, sure, test away, get the whole system good and hot, and make sure you don't see errors. But for SSD's buy them on sustained read/write rates and reputation. Also buy them bigger than you need and only use about 70% of the capacity, just don't try to exhaustively test them.