Swap the 1TB HDD for the M500 240GB SSD? How much faster does Linux boot on an SSD compared to the HDD? I had Ubuntu on my laptop once but had to remove it...boot to considerably longer than a windows boot.
Fast, but HDD boot is mostly slow due to being Ubuntu. An SSD is going to be much faster at much more, as well, as Linux doesn't have big DBs like the Registry (well, Gnome does, poor thing), but lots of little files scattered everywhere. Take the lack of a Windows license to be paid for as an excuse to go SSD. Installing packages is blazing fast with an SSD, as is removing them, as is searching files, and so on. A full-drive search of the contents of every file for some pattern is even viable, with an SSD.
PCHobbiest said:
Will definitely look into the recommendations. I went with the AMD APU series cause of the built in decent gpu..intel seems to favor the Intel HDxxxx which ive had horrid luck with. If a little bit over i'm not to worried as long as it's reliable.
Haswell's IGP is a whole different thing. I mean, OK, it's IGP, but it works, and well, including in Windows. In Linux, it had release day support, and has good support, multimonitor too, in any recent distro. IB to Haswell was a very big jump in terms of video driver quality, on Windows and Linux. Up until I started setting up and supporting Haswell boxes, I was all for using AMD for better Radeon drivers (as it turns out, so was Dell--basically every pre-Haswell Optiplex at work has a Radeon 5450 or 6450 in it
🙂).
IMO, an i3-4130 would be a good CPU. It will be about as fast as the i5 at most things, and not too much slower when it's not as fast. Such a machine will have a nice service long life, too.
You could get a used box, and that would do well, on the cheap, just to have another PC. The issue there is that if you start needing to upgrade it, or replace parts, the cost savings go out the window (DDR2 v. DDR3 RAM prices, adding a video card, adding an SSD, replacing fans, replacing PSUs...). An i3-4130 is going to be an overkill CPU for the most part, but if you start having to wait on a compiler or something, it will be better to have than a Pentium, or even slower CPU, and you can more easily do things like video transcoding, gaming, etc.. Going from i3 to i5 is a much smaller improvement, without something known to chew up the cores and/or cache.
PCPartPicker part list /
Price breakdown by merchant /
Benchmarks
CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor ($124.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($52.05 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($104.99 @ Amazon)
Case: BitFenix Prodigy M Arctic White MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($69.99 @ Newegg) <- a shiny case makes it go faster
🙂
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Asus VS238H-P 23.0" Monitor ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $573.98
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-22 22:40 EDT-0400)
Not going cheap on the case or SSD. Well, not so cheap, anyway. $600 isn't that hard to do with no Windows nor video card, so I went for
one that looks nice, and not too expensive (it's hard to argue with the $30 Corsair PSU, though). The RAM is set to Newegg for the combo. Amazon has the case cheaper, but only by buying it backordered. Cheaper would be fine, but that's probably what I would get, in the same situation.
Note that some deals at Newegg are expiring tomorrow, and others Monday. This is a really good week to make a cheap PC from new parts, but it's almost over.
If you're brand new to Linux, and this class is using Ubuntu, try to get away with Kubuntu. It'll have all the bells and whistles, but you can start right off with Unity gone/optional
🙂. While you need it for the class, once you're done with that, know that Ubuntu has become quite the annoying complex monster, now, and while it used to be a good newbie distro, it's not so great at that these days. On the bright side, plain old Debian has been getting a lot more TLC, so between that, Mageia(sp), PCLinuxOS, Arch (good tinkerer distro, but has no installer), Fedora, and various Slack derivatives, you've got options that may turn out better/easier, in the end (oh, and Mint Debian! Almost forgot about that one!).
