New Build Advice

aix0 · 3 Nov 2018 at 10:17

Hey Chaps

So, I want to build a new machine - I've been a long time laptop user but it spends all of its life on a dock, and I want something with more grunt and less noise, but will get more for my money by going down the desktop route, I guess.

I'm a developer and I don't really game (casual gaming might be nice), so I just need a lot of RAM (probably 32GB), and top CPU. I do need to support a 4K display, though.

What I'm unsure of is, if I go the AMD 2700x route, I'll need a discrete GPU, something decent enough to run 4K. If I went with an Intel chip, maybe the 9700k or 9900k, I can get on-board graphics (I think), which should sufficiently run my display (again, I think). So with Intel, I could spend more on the CPU because I'd have the on-board GPU, and would save money. Although, I'd have the option to add a GPU at some point in the future, if required.

Anyone got any thoughts on the best route? Any advice for me?

Any help would be appreciated.

aix0 · 3 Nov 2018 at 10:30

I'll be keeping my current display.

In terms of budget, I don't really want to go over 1200 quid.

aix0 · 3 Nov 2018 at 10:38

And also, storage wise, I don't need a huge disk. I've seen 250GB SSDs on here for around 60 quid-ish. That should do fine for me.

aix0 · 3 Nov 2018 at 11:01

Cheers mate, appreciate you putting that together.

Hardware really isn't my thing, so I'm going to ask a really dumb question - what is the benefit of that particular motherboard over some of the AM4 ones that I've seen around the 150 quid mark (obviously paired with a Ryzen chip)?

aix0 · 3 Nov 2018 at 11:39

To be honest, I don't foresee my requirements going that far beyond what they are now. The 2700X with a good chunk of RAM would see me right for a pretty long time, and should be more than enough for me to do a bit of work on. Looking at the TR4 boards, and the 1920X, they're all out of stock or pre-orders - and I might actually pop over to OC at some point today. I don't think that it's meant to be.

Saying that though, the more I look into the 1920X, the more appealing it is. And you make a very good case for going that route. So I'm kinda in two minds now. I may take some more time to do a bit more research.

Vidar said:
As a developer what software are you using, as dependent on that you may need more threads or more single thread performance to get the most bang for your buck.

I work on distributed systems, in Linux. Main thing for me is having a decent amount of resource for spinning up VMs for testing.

Vidar said:
What monitor do you have op?

I've got a 43" inch 4k Acer display. I normally work on a couple of vertical screens at work, so I wanted a single screen that gave me the same space, but without having 2 displays - it's nice to use a single terminal with multiple splits in vim and tmux, without bezels. It works rather well.