linux friendly hardware inquiry/advise

On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:24:37 +1000, yudi v wrote:

Building a new PC, will be used for coding mostly, running 2-3 VMs
simultaneously.

Then -although you have not say any specific number- add more ram (8 up
to 24 GiB is a good starting point) ;-P

Debian Linux will be the host OS. I need some suggestions on
Motherboards. Which manufacturer has good linux support?

Nowadays is very hard to tell. My advice is that you choose a set of 5
motherboards that you like and come back here with the results.

Will use Intel on board graphics. No gaming. will use couple of HD
monitors. Thats about it.
Looking at getting Z68 chipset board. There is a lot of choice.

While I'm an Intel user, have you also considered AMD? You will get
better graphics performance for an overall lower price. Also, a word of
caution: Z68 chipset seems very new and Linux tend to give less problems
with not-that-new hardware.

I heard that Intel has good linux driver support, most of the Mobo OEMs
use Realtek NICs, are they fine or should I avoid them?

There is not a unique answer... you can find problematic Intel and AMD
chipsets so sometimes it's difficult to tell what is better or worse.

Again, I would make a pre-selection of some motherboards you like with
any additional components you want to add and search on Internet about
their support status for the Debian version you want to install (hardware
support is not the same for stable than testing).

Greetings,

Camaleón


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On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:24:37 +1000, yudi v said:

Y> Building a new PC, will be used for coding mostly, running 2-3 VMs
Y> simultaneously. Debian Linux will be the host OS. I need some
Y> suggestions on Motherboards. Which manufacturer has good linux support?

The Ars Technica Guides are great if you're building your own box. The
system guides go through parts for a budget box, a hot-rod (better than
average) and a God box (top-notch, hopefully with someone else's money).
The most recent system guide I've seen was last March.

http://arstechnica.com/guides/
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guid...dition.ars

Karl Vogel I don't speak for the USAF or my company

I've seen people with new children before, they go from ultra happy to
looking like something out of a zombie film in about a week.


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On 10/19/2011 11:28 AM, Camaleón wrote:

On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:24:37 +1000, yudi v wrote:

Building a new PC, will be used for coding mostly, running 2-3 VMs
simultaneously.

Then -although you have not say any specific number- add more ram (8 up
to 24 GiB is a good starting point) ;-P

8-24GB? For a development box running 2-3 VMs? That's overkill. Let
me explain.

At a previous $day_job a few years back we were running a mix of 13 SLES
9/10, W2K3, and Sarge VM guests across two dual CPU dual core Opteron
2GHz IBM blades (4 cores/blade) with VMware ESX3. Each blade had "only"
8GB RAM. Additionally, were were running the 32 bit VMware kernel with
PAE as the native 64bit kernel wasn't available yet. All the VMs were
32bit as well.

These were all production server VMs and many had decent load all day
long. This included our MSSQL server, two MS AD DCs, a print server, a
file server, Novell iFolder server (heavy load), two DHCP servers, a Zen
server for imaging laptops (heavy load), two intranet web servers, and
the Sarge VM serving NTP, etc, etc, all to ~500 laptop and desktop
clients. Even without using the memory consolidation feature of ESX, we
were able to vmotion all the guests to one blade allowing us to do
maintenance on the other. That's 13 Linux and Windows guest VMs on a
single 8GB box, and there was no noticeable decrease in performance on
any application when all the VMs were on one blade with only 8GB RAM.

With or without using KSM
(http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt), Yudi should be
able get by easily with 4GB of RAM. As memory is so cheap these days he
may as well get 8GB. Anything over that is money wasted, no matter how
little, on simply having more buffer cache. If we were runing 13 VMs in
8GB, surely he can run 3 in 4GB.

Stan



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On 10/19/2011 10:54 PM, yudi v wrote:

8-24GB? For a development box running 2-3 VMs? That's overkill. Let
me explain.

<snip>

I think 8GB should give me enough room.

Agreed. And it should only cost you about $40 USD for a dual channel kit.

Now that's taken care of, moving on to Motherboards;

I was keen on the Intel board:

Intel BLKDZ68DB Z68/ATX/4DDR3/LGA1155/INTEL

Why Intel? AMD will get you more bang for the buck.

after reading the reviews, I decided to not get it as it's layout is very
poor. everything's crammed close to the CPU socket.

next option was to get the Asrock
*ASRock Z68 PRO3-M LGA 1155 Intel Z68 4x DDR3 2133 (OC) **

*Phoronix review of Asrock z68 pro-m inspires confidence, one only real
issue is with intel graphics, but that should be fixed by using one of the
new kernel versions.
*
*it's got everything I am looking for, Raid 1, HDMI and DP output, read that
it's easy to overclock, though to get decent graphics I will have to use at
least kernel 3.0.1.

I really do not want to go for discreet GPU. Heard Intel's HD 3000 is very
good.

You didn't mention what processor performance you're after, or core
count. If you're not hooked on a Chipzilla solution, take a look at
these AMD components:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6813131657
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6819103953

The ASUS mobo should have all the features you require. The onboard HD
4250 GPU is more than plenty for your described need. The 3.4GHz dual
core Regor 270 is inexpensive and should do everything you *need*, and
at a low TDP of 65 watts--always good for building a low noise
workstation. Speaking of which, this is the quietest case I've ever
seen/owned, and has a nice aesthetic IMO:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6811144140

Compact cube style chassis cooled by 2 low RPM 120mm exhaust fans.
Great front-to-back straight through airflow. All aluminum chassis.
Decent layout. PSU cabling can be a little tight. I have a retail
Regor 240 in mine using an embedded HD4250 (no GPU fan). The stock AMD
CPU fan is quiet enough that the entire system is barely noticeable.
It's a pricey case compared to what I normally buy, but the silence is
well worth the ~$85 USD. The only possible downside is only two
internal 3.5" HDD bays. But if you need more than 2 drives a decent
4-in-1 2.5" SATA hot swap cage takes care of that problem:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6817994095

Stan


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On 10/19/2011 10:54 PM, yudi v wrote:

8-24GB? For a development box running 2-3 VMs? That's overkill. Let
me explain.

<snip>

I think 8GB should give me enough room.

Agreed. And it should only cost you about $40 USD for a dual channel kit.

Now that's taken care of, moving on to Motherboards;

I was keen on the Intel board:

Intel BLKDZ68DB Z68/ATX/4DDR3/LGA1155/INTEL

Why Intel? AMD will get you more bang for the buck.

after reading the reviews, I decided to not get it as it's layout is very
poor. everything's crammed close to the CPU socket.

next option was to get the Asrock
*ASRock Z68 PRO3-M LGA 1155 Intel Z68 4x DDR3 2133 (OC) **

*Phoronix review of Asrock z68 pro-m inspires confidence, one only real
issue is with intel graphics, but that should be fixed by using one of the
new kernel versions.
*
*it's got everything I am looking for, Raid 1, HDMI and DP output, read that
it's easy to overclock, though to get decent graphics I will have to use at
least kernel 3.0.1.

I really do not want to go for discreet GPU. Heard Intel's HD 3000 is very
good.

You didn't mention what processor performance you're after, or core
count. If you're not hooked on a Chipzilla solution, take a look at
these AMD components:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6813131657
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6819103953

The ASUS mobo should have all the features you require. The onboard HD
4250 GPU is more than plenty for your described need. The 3.4GHz dual
core Regor 270 is inexpensive and should do everything you *need*, and
at a low TDP of 65 watts--always good for building a low noise
workstation. Speaking of which, this is the quietest case I've ever
seen/owned, and has a nice aesthetic IMO:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6811144140

Compact cube style chassis cooled by 2 low RPM 120mm exhaust fans.
Great front-to-back straight through airflow. All aluminum chassis.
Decent layout. PSU cabling can be a little tight. I have a retail
Regor 240 in mine using an embedded HD4250 (no GPU fan). The stock AMD
CPU fan is quiet enough that the entire system is barely noticeable.
It's a pricey case compared to what I normally buy, but the silence is
well worth the ~$85 USD. The only possible downside is only two
internal 3.5" HDD bays. But if you need more than 2 drives a decent
4-in-1 2.5" SATA hot swap cage takes care of that problem:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6817994095

Stan


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