How compatible will my new PC be with Linux?

[EarthMind]

I'm setting up a new computer and before I make the purchase I'd like to know how compatible the components will be with Linux.

The PC exists out of the following parts:

AMD Phenom II X4 955
ASRock K10N78 (will probably need to be flashed to enable support for the PII 955)
Details: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=K10N78
Seagate ST31000528AS 1 TB
G.Skill DIMM 4 GB DDR2-1066 Kit
2 x Arctic-Cooling AF12025 PWM
SilverStone ST50F-230
Sharkoon Desperado Economy

I will also purchase an Nvidia GTX 260 graphic card and a better sound card (need to find one with good Linux support) at a later time.

I'm also open to suggestions.

Thank you for your time

[deanjo]

I'm setting up a new computer and before I make the purchase I'd like to know how compatible the components will be with Linux.

The PC exists out of the following parts:

AMD Phenom II X4 955
ASRock K10N78 (will probably need to be flashed to enable support for the PII 955)
Details: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=K10N78
Seagate ST31000528AS 1 TB
G.Skill DIMM 4 GB DDR2-1066 Kit
2 x Arctic-Cooling AF12025 PWM
SilverStone ST50F-230
Sharkoon Desperado Economy

I will also purchase an Nvidia GTX 260 graphic card and a better sound card (need to find one with good Linux support) at a later time.

I'm also open to suggestions.

Thank you for your time

Should be fine.

[Adarion]

CPU = fine & fast but a powersucker, AMD has better models, though these 125 should be a TDP and average consumption may be far lower. Make sure to have ondemand/conservative governor and the appropriate AMD driver in kernel activated.
Board = huh, well. If Asrock works for you... I don't trust them too far but that's the pure HW quality side, compatibility should be ok.
Though you should take note that nvidia does not have free drivers. The nv one is only 2d and noveau... *cough* noveau to all honors but they are still long behind the HW development (can't blame them) since reverse engineering and trial + error is one hell of a job and time consuming.
You'll have the binary drivers only.

ASRock Instant Boot sounds like some Linux derivate. Can you flash the BIOS without having to use windows? Check if they provide some in-BIOS flash program or at least their chips can be flashed using a freeDOS boot media.

HDD, RAM fine
PSU looks overdimensioned to me. What's the efficiency on lower power usage? Don't be fooled by 85+ or something, that's maybe when your system really draws 450 of the 500W. But if should normally be far lower.

Nvidia GTX 260
see the issue with the drivers, don't have power usage numbers now

a better sound card
Why? You don't need one. These onboard chips are far better than back in the early 90ies. I don't see a point in it unless you do really lots of professional audio work.
If you need one Creative is definitely not the one to look for. They had their golden time back in 486 days but the issues of the last years on Linux as well as W32 were just horrifying me.

Anything else? Optical storage? Cardreader, something? Generally you could review the power profile.

[EarthMind]

Hey Adarion,

I certainly agree on the CPU part, it's a powersucker indeed. But so are the other AM3 chipsets and since I'm not a fanatic I'd like to use my computer as long as possible and make it easy to upgrade certain parts, other than the CPU & motherboard, when really needed.

Can you please elaborate on this:
Make sure to have ondemand/conservative governor and the appropriate AMD driver in kernel activated.

Finding the right mainboard was a really tough call (I spent 2 full days on finding the right hardware...) and the ASRock one was the best (http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=K10N78) one from the list and worth less than 100 EUR (I don't want to spend more on the mainboard). If you feel like, kindly have a look at the AM2+ list (note: site is in German but it shouldn't cause any problem) here (http://www.alternate.de/html/categoryListing.html?cat1=16&cat2=374&cat3=0&tn=HARDWARE&l1=Mainboards&l2=AMD&l3=Sockel+AM2%2B&criteriasCount=6&order=5) and tell me if you find something better but please follow these requirements:

- It has to support at least 8GB 1066 RAM (to be one the safe side)
- It has to have at least 1 PCIe 2.0 port and at least two PCI ports (or better)
- At least 6 USB ports in total (front & back of case)
- Onboard Nvidia, at least from the 8 series with a VGA port (No new ATI card on Linux for me yet)
- Onboard Realtek sound card, ALC888 or better (I trust them more than the VIA ones)

I read somewhere on the net that it's possible to flash the BIOS in BIOS mode but I'm going to re-check that. If it isn't possible it wouldn't be much of a problem since I also will be installing XP on my new PC for the games and Photoshop.

As for the power supply, in my (not-so-experienced) eyes it looked like a good one, taking into account that it should be able to handle an NV GTX 260 + Phenom II 955 + 4GB 1066 RAM at 500W, which is the minimum requirement for a GTX 260 card. Once again I'm open for suggestions and will certainly appreciate your input :-).

I know Nvidia has very bad open source driver support but I'm taking the overall quality of the hardware + driver in mind (yet again, not a fanatic). Despite the driver being proprietary, nvidia has great support for Linux, plus they also already have VPDAU (the biggest reason for my choice) in Linux while there is no ATI alternative available yet. To be honest, I was really tempted to get an ATI card because of the nice balance between quality & price but unfortunately it was a no go.

There is no need for me to buy a new drive because my current one isn't older than 1 or 2 years. It's a Plextor DVD writer and I'm very happy with it, although I did have DVD formatting problems in the beginning with other software than the official Plextor burning tool. I don't know if it's solved now because I haven't burned a DVD in a long while.

No need for a card reader yet, enough said :-).

Oh and there is also the WLAN adapter: Edimax EW-7711UTn. My D-Link is giving my periodic lag while I don't have it really long. At first I thought this was a driver issue because of it ocurring in Windows games only at first but after my upgrade to Jaunty I started noticing it in Linux games too. So no more D-Link for me in the future.

There is one more question I'd like to ask because you seem to be very experienced. Is the 1066Mhz RAM an advantage over 800Mhz RAM? I've checked several benchmarks and they do say so but I'm having my doubts since I also read that DDR2 RAM above 800Mhz are all factory overclocked and that they are not so stable as 800Mhz DDR2. Another thing was that the website where I'm buying the hardware at mentioned they would set the RAM to 800Mhz because of some reason written in German and that I couldn't understand.

Many thanks for your help!

[Ex-Cyber]

I also read that DDR2 RAM above 800Mhz are all factory overclockedThey aren't all factory-overclocked, but most of them are. More importantly, they're overvolted in order to achieve this. The standard voltage is 1.8V (which OCZ has the temerity to call "low-voltage").

[Adarion]

I certainly agree on the CPU part, it's a powersucker indeed. But so are the other AM3 chipsets and since I'm not a fanatic I'd like to use my computer as long as possible and make it easy to upgrade certain parts, other than the CPU & motherboard, when really needed.

Well, upgrading... I started with that in mind when I had my first own 486 and it was upgradeable. But that won't help for longer than maybe 3 or 4 years. After that sockets change and then you can buy a
whole new mainboard, CPU, RAM, sometimes even the ISA/PCI stuff since a new technique has come, or the PATA HDDs because today everything ships only with SATA and poor PATA support, a new PSU and even a new tower (AT->ATX)

Besides: You can still be upgradeable. There should be models with lower wattage by AMD on the market and you still can upgrade the CPU if neccessary. The CPU itself isn't that expensive. I got my 4850e (passively cooled) (without the passive cooler) for 45/50 Euro. They aren't that expensive. And the computing power should last a while.

Can you please elaborate on this:
Make sure to have ondemand/conservative governor and the appropriate AMD driver in kernel activated.
How familiar are you with Linux kernel configuration? Or what distribution are you going to use?


Finding the right mainboard was a really tough call (I spent 2 full days on finding the right hardware...) Yes, recherching can take some time. Especially when one is picky like me and each board I evaluated had one no-go with it so I was never really satisfied. :/
But that's nothing in comparison to notebooks where you don't have the choice of parts.

> and worth less than 100 EUR
Well now I wonder where you did look. I know tech equipment is more expensive in .de than in the US but it shouldn't be more expensive than in .be.
So ASRocks normally go from 30 E to 70E.

here (http://www.alternate.de/html/categoryListing.html?cat1=16&cat2=374&cat3=0&tn=HARDWARE&l1=Mainboards&l2=AMD&l3=Sockel+AM2%2B&criteriasCount=6&order=5)
Deutsch ist kein Problem. I am German. ;)
But alternate is not really cheap. Anyway there are plenty of boards e.g. at mix-computer.de for 30 to 100 Euros and only a few "deluxe" models with questionable addons for >100E. (e.g. you probably don't need 4 graphic card slots)


> It has to support at least 8GB 1066 RAM (to be one the safe side)
Surely. Surely. I still have 3 boxes going very fine with 512M. Linux doesn't eat memory like some Windows Vista does. Note that you will need either a 64bit system or PAE to access all the memory above the 4GB-32bit frontier.
Some things are still not available on the 64bit side (Windows and Linux).
8 GB is more than enough unless you do openoffice dev+compiling every day or do scientific calculation.

> It has to have at least 1 PCIe 2.0 port and at least two PCI ports
Keep in mind that now most things are graphic cards that are really available for PCIe. 2 PCIs should be there, indeed. Especially since there are a lot of PCI cards around. And they're often cheaper than PCIe equivalents.

> At least 6 USB ports in total (front & back of case)
Can't speak for all manufracturers but the average ASUS motherboards comes with 10 to 12. USB is not a problem anymore today.
However USB3 will someday hit the shelves (Linux kernel already has a fist implementation to use it) but then you would have the upgradde problem. But on the other hand USB2 should fit most purposes nicely.


> Onboard Nvidia, at least from the 8 series with a VGA port (No new ATI
> card on Linux for me yet)
VGA? Okay, if you want some analog output that's fine. But it should also offer DVI.

> Onboard Realtek sound card, ALC888 or better (I trust them more than
> the VIA ones)
The new VIA onboards aren't that bad but with Realtek you're normally on the safe side. However, make sure it is not a special run of chips. I think some MB manufracturers had RealTek make chip series only for a certain issue of boards and then there is sometimes no specs and thus no driver for the chip (or at least not so soon).
But I guess the ALC888 should work. In doubt check ALSA's list.
And depends on the Kernel version you distribution is using. (But anything recent should do fine.)

> I read somewhere on the net that it's possible to flash the BIOS in
> BIOS mode but I'm going to re-check that.
Yeah, same mechanism but every vendor has a different market name for it.
These solutions are very nice and comfortable. I have a horror flashing a BIOS from any multitasking environment.

Give GIMP (capablilities of PS) and Inkscape (vector imaging) a try if you're already doing PS.


> As for the power supply
Umm, sadly the test from Germany's popular and serious mag c't (heise press) is quite some time ago. They had a nice number of PSUs tested and shown a lot of values, including efficiency on ultra-low (ACPI-off), low, med and high usage. Note: they refuse to have "test winners". So they give you the pure values and facts and let you decide in which situation which would be the best for your purpose.

> I know Nvidia has very bad open source driver support but I'm taking
> the overall quality of the hardware + driver in mind (yet again, not a
> fanatic).
Umm, yeah. Well. Time will show. I had nvidias back some years (some still in use on older computers) but they have this "legacy" issue so I switched to 2d use only on them with the free "nv"-driver.
I'm going with ATI now and yes, it's not all perfect but ok and developing. I just would suggest you not to invest too much money into a graphic card for now until the situation has cleared. (Unless you need it e.g. for Windows gaming)


>Plextor
Uh. Bad PR with the linux folks. Very bad. Someone wrote a tool that implemented the capabilities of the PlexTools on Linux and the mother company sued him. Even though it was free software. Furthermore Plextor has gone relabeling, a.f.a.i.r. they don't build drives anymore.
Anyway, I you already got it and it still works...


> My D-Link is giving my periodic lag ...
Humm, well. I'm not so familiar with different WLAN adapters and I do not trust WLAN in general. I have seen quite some boxes with WLAN at friends and most of them were not really well working (some better on Linux than Windows, some only on Windows and so on, but most of them often had sudden interrupts of connection or other crazy behaviour).
Can also be a router problem sometimes. Difficult to find a reason quickly. You will have to try (and hope).


> Is the 1066Mhz RAM an advantage over 800Mhz RAM?
Not that much if you ask me. The memory controller on the AMD-CPU must support it otherwise it will work with just the fastest speed the controller can do. But the Phenom2 should do the job.

>thing was that the website where I'm buying the hardware at mentioned
> they would set the RAM to 800Mhz because of some reason written in
> German and that I couldn't understand.
Can you send me the link or the text? I can look at it and translate it for you into English.

[deanjo]

They aren't all factory-overclocked, but most of them are. More importantly, they're overvolted in order to achieve this. The standard voltage is 1.8V (which OCZ has the temerity to call "low-voltage").
Actually DDR2-800 is a JEDEC specified speed and only the older OCZ ram modules require overvolting to reach that speed. Depending on series, DDR2-800 modules even from OCZ run @ 1.8 volts and higher voltages are only required for tighter timings (ie so called SLi ram or EPP ram) and OCZ specs them out at their more aggressive timings (the white sheets that come with the ram often will show a voltage operating range of 1.8 to 2.x. They will run fine at less agressive timings @ 1.8v)



How familiar are you with Linux kernel configuration? Or what distribution are you going to use?


I haven't seen a distro out there in a long long long time that did not have powerstepping enabled by default.


> Is the 1066Mhz RAM an advantage over 800Mhz RAM?
Not that much if you ask me. The memory controller on the AMD-CPU must support it otherwise it will work with just the fastest speed the controller can do. But the Phenom2 should do the job.


Actually if he is going a 4 DIMM layout then he will be limited to 800 Mhz unless he manually forces it in the BIOS (no guarantees with a ASRock BIOS) Even the Phenom II's memory controller only supports 1066 speeds when only two chips are used.

[EarthMind]

Hey Ex-Cyber,

Thanks for the reply. It seems like I've chosen the good RAM then since these are 1.8V ones :).

Hey again Adarion,

Well, upgrading...

I've had my current PC for ca. 10 years now. In the beginning it was only a 1Ghz, 256MB RAM, 20Gb HDD, CD writer. After like 5-6 years I added 256MB more RAM, replaced the HDD with a 40GB one and replaced the CD writer with a DVD writer. That's what I meant with upgrading; just replacing the broken parts and upgrading the outdated stuff as it was really necessary and not making big changes such as replacing the motherboard or CPU as long as both are good enough for recent software. As long as it works smoothly there is no reason to upgrade. If I would want to change the CPU I'd be buying a complete new PC anyways just like now.

How familiar are you with Linux kernel configuration? Or what distribution are you going to use?

I'm very unfamiliar with the kernel, I'm just a level or two above a regular user and don't know much about the insides. Google helps me most of the time. Btw, I'll be using Mandriva and/or Ubuntu.

Yes, recherching can take some time. Especially when one is picky like me and each board I evaluated had one no-go with it so I was never really satisfied. :/


I know what you mean, I think I'm as much of a perfectionist as you on this matter, I just need to find the right stuff for the money.

But that's nothing in comparison to notebooks where you don't have the choice of parts.

That's also one of the reasons I won't be buying a notebook instead of a new PC (lifetime being the biggest one).

Well now I wonder where you did look. I know tech equipment is more expensive in .de than in the US but it shouldn't be more expensive than in .be.
So ASRocks normally go from 30 E to 70E.

That's true, only some hardware are cheaper than in my own country, especially the AMD processors. But other than the processor being much cheaper German shops mostly have a wider range of choices while in BE I either have to go with the really expensive or cheap junk hardware, there isn't much of a choice really. A big difference in price is for example the Phenom II 955. Here it would cost me 220 EUR and in Germany only 170-180 EUR. That's 40-50 EUR cheaper!

mix-computer.de

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have a look soon.

Surely. Surely. I still have 3 boxes going very fine with 512M. Linux doesn't eat memory like some Windows Vista does. Note that you will need either a 64bit system or PAE to access all the memory above the 4GB-32bit frontier.
Some things are still not available on the 64bit side (Windows and Linux).
8 GB is more than enough unless you do openoffice dev+compiling every day or do scientific calculation.

Yeah, I know about the 4GB with 32 bit thing. I read it yesterday that 32 bit systems only support up to 4 GB RAM and that the graphic card's RAM has to be taken into account too. Since I'll be buying a GTX 260 512MB RAM I'll only be able to use 3.512GB RAM. I'm not sure whether to go 64 yet because of compatibility issues.

However USB3 will someday hit the shelves (Linux kernel already has a fist implementation to use it) but then you would have the upgradde problem. But on the other hand USB2 should fit most purposes nicely.

That's not a problem, I've been working with USB 1.1 for years after USB 2.0 came out and in the end I bought a PCI card with USB 2.0 ports. As I said, I'm not an enthusiast ;).

VGA? Okay, if you want some analog output that's fine. But it should also offer DVI.

Yes, I didn't mention DVI-I as it's available on almost every recent graphic card. And the reason why I want VGA is because I'll still be using my CRT screen with the new PC for as long as I have the money to buy a good TFT one. Next to those, HDMI would probably come in handy too.

Yeah, same mechanism but every vendor has a different market name for it.
These solutions are very nice and comfortable. I have a horror flashing a BIOS from any multitasking environment.

About the BIOS part, I contacted ASRock about it yesterday and found out that I'll be able to flash the motherboard with a bootable floppy disk. I hope it won't matter if it's floppy disk or CD because I won't be using a floppy drive in my new PC.

Give GIMP (capablilities of PS) and Inkscape (vector imaging) a try if you're already doing PS.

I'm very familiar with GIMP but unfortunately it doesn't meet my needs. I find PS to be much easier to work with and I've never been able to let GIMP do some things which I could do in PS.


Umm, sadly the test from Germany's popular and serious mag c't (heise press) is quite some time ago. They had a nice number of PSUs tested and shown a lot of values, including efficiency on ultra-low (ACPI-off), low, med and high usage. Note: they refuse to have "test winners". So they give you the pure values and facts and let you decide in which situation which would be the best for your purpose.

That's a shame... :(

Umm, yeah. Well. Time will show. I had nvidias back some years (some still in use on older computers) but they have this "legacy" issue so I switched to 2d use only on them with the free "nv"-driver.
I'm going with ATI now and yes, it's not all perfect but ok and developing. I just would suggest you not to invest too much money into a graphic card for now until the situation has cleared. (Unless you need it e.g. for Windows gaming)

I'll be testing with the onboard one first and if it works as it should I'll be buying the GTX 260. And yeah , I'll be needing it for windows/Linux games mostly.


Uh. Bad PR with the linux folks. Very bad. Someone wrote a tool that implemented the capabilities of the PlexTools on Linux and the mother company sued him. Even though it was free software. Furthermore Plextor has gone relabeling, a.f.a.i.r. they don't build drives anymore.
Anyway, I you already got it and it still works...

That's too bad, I have good experience with Plextor. I used AOpen in the past and had many problems with it, it also had a low lifetime. After I tried Plextor all these problems - except for the *new* DVD formatting feature problem - were gone and I'm still using it :). As long as it works I won't buy a new one and when it's time, I think I'd be buying something else than Plextor anyway.

Humm, well. I'm not so familiar with different WLAN adapters and I do not trust WLAN in general. I have seen quite some boxes with WLAN at friends and most of them were not really well working (some better on Linux than Windows, some only on Windows and so on, but most of them often had sudden interrupts of connection or other crazy behaviour).
Can also be a router problem sometimes. Difficult to find a reason quickly. You will have to try (and hope).

Trust me I've tested and tried (drivers, routers, USB ports, etc. etc..) a lot and in the end I could not think anything else than the adapter causing the problem. I'm not a fan of WLAN myself and would like to go ethernet mode but unfortunately that's not possible.

Can you send me the link or the text? I can look at it and translate it for you into English.

Der von Ihnen gewählte DDR2-Speicher entspricht nicht dem JEDEC Standard. Daher werden wir diesen Speicher auf JEDEC-konforme DDR2-800 Timings einstellen, falls Sie die Konfiguration inklusive Zusammenbau bestellen.

Actually, I don't really know what they mean with the standard. I tried Googling but there just was too much to read...

Hey deanjo,

I haven't seen a distro out there in a long long long time that did not have powerstepping enabled by default.

Thanks for telling, I'm glad that will save me some trouble.

Actually if he is going a 4 DIMM layout then he will be limited to 800 Mhz unless he manually forces it in the BIOS (no guarantees with a ASRock BIOS) Even the Phenom II's memory controller only supports 1066 speeds when only two chips are used.

So in other words: you think 800Mhz RAM would be better in my case?


Thank you all for your help!

[deanjo]

So in other words: you think 800Mhz RAM would be better in my case?


Thank you all for your help!

When it comes to end user performance you won't be missing anything. Synthetic benchmarks will show you a small increase but real world apps don't show any appreciable difference. Save some money and headache, go with DDR2-800, and use the money saved to send me a case of beer. ;)

[EarthMind]

When it comes to end user performance you won't be missing anything. Synthetic benchmarks will show you a small increase but real world apps don't show any appreciable difference. Save some money and headache, go with DDR2-800, and use the money saved to send me a case of beer. ;)

Thanks for the suggestion :). I'll consider that case of beer ;)

[Kano]

I would use a Intel Q9550 on a P45 board, should oc much better...

[EarthMind]

Thanks for the suggestion but an Intel CPU is a no go for me, plus I don't plan to overclock any of the hardware

[Adarion]

Hi EarthMind

I'm very unfamiliar with the kernel, I'm just a level or two above a regular user and don't know much about the insides. Google helps me most of the time. Btw, I'll be using Mandriva and/or Ubuntu.
Ah, well. Once you did kernel configuration a few times it will loose some of its horror. Still every new version brings features that probably only kernel developers understand. Also some of them are rather undocumented. :/
It was because of the powersteppers, but when you're going to use some normal distribution it should be all in. It needs a CPU-vendor specific driver (and also CPU-generation specific), these are in kernel. Then the next choice is the governor, a prog inside the kernel (or userland) that will decide how to handle frequency stepping. There is e.g. "performance" which keeps always freq. at maximum, the so called "powersave" which does the opposite (but doesn't really save power) and the best soulution is ondemand/conservative. They set frequency depending on CPU load. So if you just browse phoronix forums or write some text then frq. will be at the lowest point. If you do compiling or excessive gaming, audio or video compression it will raise frq. to max.
Very useful and will save you and the environment a lot of wasted power.

Furthermore I think newer AMD models are also able to set frq. to the (multi)cores individually for each core and I saw during my Kernel 2.6.30 config that "CPU hotplugging support" was automatically enabled. That seems they already built in to switch off cores completely. My 4850e is older generation so it has always the same frq. on both cores and a minimum of 2x1000MHz and both cores on (but I have a system suckup measured on the power plug of 45W when idle so it's ok). Newer CPUs might switch off one (or more cores in your case) completely if not needed.
I'm not giving any warranty on this info but I thought AMD planned to do so and I guess it should be workin meanwhile.
Would be interesting to see some power figures of your box when it is finished.
Your disribution should to that hopefully all out of the box.

That's also one of the reasons I won't be buying a notebook instead of a new PC (lifetime being the biggest one).
Yep. When something on a notebook is broken you can often throw this "black box enclosed in resin" away as a whole. And if a component will not work in linux because the manufracturer refuses to give out specs then you can't just leave it out of your concept.
Still from time to time I'd really need a notebook but still I found none yet. Though there are a few good signs emerging at the horizon.

That's 40-50 EUR cheaper!
Indeed. But so make sure to check a few online shops. This mix-computer folks delivered ok to me, just make sure it's on stock. (Look for the green "LED" in their shop. Yellow can mean some delay, red is currently out (could be ordered) and blue is only on your request (often the horribly expensive things that normally nobody orders).
I don't know about shipment to .be though so make sure to check it first.
Mix has not the lowest shipment costs here but for a large order they have a good sortiment of stuff and the prices are nice in most cases. Alternate has also often a lot of stuff to choose from but they are pricey sometimes and they're MS gold or something partners and yes, I'm a little bit of a fanatic when it comes to certain enterprises. Like MS.


I'm not sure whether to go 64 yet because of compatibility issues.
Well. As far as I know you only need RAM if the shared mem option is used (normally with onboard chips). Some models have so called side port RAM which is a dedicated VRAM for onboards.
W32 will not even let you use the full 4GB.
Linux can give you access to all of it if neccessary and with PAE even more (if you have more RAM). Still a 64bit one would be better in this case. I run a 64bit Gentoo system for some years and on the linux side I have no problems. Adobe Flash was a pain somewhere y'know, but that always is a p.i.t.a. regardless if it's 32 or 64bit browser plugin.
It's normally only the closed source stuff that makes problems. And there are few things in the Gentoo x86 tree that are not yet in Gento's amd64 tree.
On the other hand the AMD CPUs will run most 32bit code with nearly the same speed as native 64bit code.
But I suggest you to start with 4 or less GB of RAM first. You can add more later if you really need it.


I've been working with USB 1.1 for years
I still have a box in use with USB 1.1 and I really notice the difference, esp. since I do some digital photography and then copying 1-2GB of data off a compact flash card... huh. You don't want to do this on USB 1.1.

using my CRT screen
Ah, yep. When they are not too old some models still offer good image quality.
The TFTs save some power (about 50-70%) so that was the trigger for me to switch. Still there are few 4:3 ones out there. Everybody is only producing these 16:9 stuff. *shrugs*
And VGA is handy for some beamers and so on. I mean, the VGA finally was a standard, and it was widespread. DVI was just starting to spread then they came with their stupid HDMI (copy/play protectings thanks to HDCP) and now there is even DisplayPort (which also received some play protection...). So which to use now?


I hope it won't matter if it's floppy disk or CD because I won't be using a floppy drive in my new PC.
Normally yes. Often they offer a file with the BIOS image, then you need the flasher (often awdflash or something like that) and you can put it on USB media and boot from a freeDOS bootCD and start the flashing.
Even more comfortable is this in BIOS prog where you just have any VFAT media with the image file and there you go.
Though one has to wonder if MS get nasty with their trivial shit patents on long filenames for VFAT. (First they "invent" a horribly old filesystem with a limitation to 8.3 and then they extend this very 8.3 scheme with some crutch and patent it and later sue everybody who has some implementation of long filenames on VFAT. Stupid.
But back to topic.


I'll be testing with the onboard one first and if it works as it should I'll be buying the GTX 260. And yeah , I'll be needing it for windows/Linux games mostly.
I'm not sure how far nvidia is with a real hybrid system that will switch off the big card when you do office work and switch it on when you need it for gaming. The dedicated GPU cards are often by far the biggest powersuckers on today's systems.
I took my HD3870 out, even though it's passively cooled, but it still sucked too much power and I did not want this since I "recently" (the last 3-4 months) lacked the time for gaming. :(


That's too bad, I have good experience with Plextor.
Oh yes. Back at the time when they built their own drives I had one and it was a really neat CD Writer. It wrote everything besides their own plextor CDR/CDRW media, whatever that was meant to be... lol.
But today...
And you will find stories probably about any hardware vendor making some mistakes. I remember LG and when one put on mandriva the setup routing used the FLUSH_CACHE ATA command to check if it is a burner or a CDROM/DVDROM drive. Ah well. And what did the LG? It flushed the firmware instead the write buffer and bricked itself. :)
That's some years ago now but things like that happen from time to time.
B.t.w. it was not Plextor itself with the sueing, it was the mother company, some international business group, I forgot what they were called.
It was inexcusable for me since Plextor did not even offer their PlexTools for anything but windows. So they should have been in joy that someone did the job of making the full power of the devices accessible to non-windows-users.
I would maybe have understood if they sold their tools for Linux but so...


Der von Ihnen gewählte DDR2-Speicher entspricht nicht dem JEDEC Standard. Daher werden wir diesen Speicher auf JEDEC-konforme DDR2-800 Timings einstellen, falls Sie die Konfiguration inklusive Zusammenbau bestellen.
The memory you have chosen does not comply with the JEDEC standards. That's why whe will set the RAM timings to a JEDEC conformous DDR2-800 if your order this config including assembly of the computer.

So I dunno which RAM you chose but for compatibility reasons they wanted to clock it to 800. Ah, as it was said just stick to standard DDR2-800 RAM, that should do fine, not be much slower and maybe even a little bit cheaper.

Good luck with your box and feel free to ask quastions.

PS:
Intel CPU is a no go for me,
;)
Yes, I mean they normally build fine CPUs but then I remember the time when there were the pentium1s around and they suddenly dropped prices from 1000 DM (500E) to 500DM( 250E). So I saw what I haid paid just for the name "intel". And later they sued DVD-inside, just some harmless news forum for new DVD and movie releases. Just because of the "inside".
Whoa. "Jokes" like this. That did it for me.

[EarthMind]

Ah, well. Once you did kernel configuration a few times it will loose some of its horror. Still every new version brings features that probably only kernel developers understand. Also some of them are rather undocumented. :/
It was because of the powersteppers, but when you're going to use some normal distribution it should be all in. It needs a CPU-vendor specific driver (and also CPU-generation specific), these are in kernel. Then the next choice is the governor, a prog inside the kernel (or userland) that will decide how to handle frequency stepping. There is e.g. "performance" which keeps always freq. at maximum, the so called "powersave" which does the opposite (but doesn't really save power) and the best soulution is ondemand/conservative. They set frequency depending on CPU load. So if you just browse phoronix forums or write some text then frq. will be at the lowest point. If you do compiling or excessive gaming, audio or video compression it will raise frq. to max.
Very useful and will save you and the environment a lot of wasted power.

Furthermore I think newer AMD models are also able to set frq. to the (multi)cores individually for each core and I saw during my Kernel 2.6.30 config that "CPU hotplugging support" was automatically enabled. That seems they already built in to switch off cores completely. My 4850e is older generation so it has always the same frq. on both cores and a minimum of 2x1000MHz and both cores on (but I have a system suckup measured on the power plug of 45W when idle so it's ok). Newer CPUs might switch off one (or more cores in your case) completely if not needed.
I'm not giving any warranty on this info but I thought AMD planned to do so and I guess it should be workin meanwhile.
Would be interesting to see some power figures of your box when it is finished.
Your disribution should to that hopefully all out of the box.

Thanks for the thorough information. I do hope this will all be automatically configured because this sounds kind of complicated. :confused:

Indeed. But so make sure to check a few online shops. This mix-computer folks delivered ok to me, just make sure it's on stock. (Look for the green "LED" in their shop. Yellow can mean some delay, red is currently out (could be ordered) and blue is only on your request (often the horribly expensive things that normally nobody orders).
I don't know about shipment to .be though so make sure to check it first.
Mix has not the lowest shipment costs here but for a large order they have a good sortiment of stuff and the prices are nice in most cases. Alternate has also often a lot of stuff to choose from but they are pricey sometimes and they're MS gold or something partners and yes, I'm a little bit of a fanatic when it comes to certain enterprises. Like MS.

I checked out mix-computer.de and I have my doubts regarding them shipping to BE as there was no country option at checkout. I've sent them an E-mail and hopefully they'll reply asap. I did notice some components being a few euros cheaper, fortunately that will save me on shipping costs! :-)

Well. As far as I know you only need RAM if the shared mem option is used (normally with onboard chips). Some models have so called side port RAM which is a dedicated VRAM for onboards.
W32 will not even let you use the full 4GB.
Linux can give you access to all of it if neccessary and with PAE even more (if you have more RAM). Still a 64bit one would be better in this case. I run a 64bit Gentoo system for some years and on the linux side I have no problems. Adobe Flash was a pain somewhere y'know, but that always is a p.i.t.a. regardless if it's 32 or 64bit browser plugin.
It's normally only the closed source stuff that makes problems. And there are few things in the Gentoo x86 tree that are not yet in Gento's amd64 tree.
On the other hand the AMD CPUs will run most 32bit code with nearly the same speed as native 64bit code.
But I suggest you to start with 4 or less GB of RAM first. You can add more later if you really need it.

I've decided to go a bit lower than 4GB RAM because I doubt that I'll be using them fully, even with multitasking. I'll post my new hardware choices at the bottom.

I still have a box in use with USB 1.1 and I really notice the difference, esp. since I do some digital photography and then copying 1-2GB of data off a compact flash card... huh. You don't want to do this on USB 1.1.

The reason I bought a USB 2.0 PCI cart was because I also noticed a major difference between the two and it was practically NOT possible to use them with my 500GB external hard drive. It just took ages to transfer a file...

they came with their stupid HDMI (copy/play protectings thanks to HDCP)

I found out about that while searching for the right graphic card and luckily it helped me make the right decision.

Normally yes.

Luckily ASRock has both a BIOS flash utility and a Windows one so that answers my question.

And yes I'll still be going for ASRock, compared to the other motherboards I've checked they offer a full featured one for a good price, AND with an onboard NVidia GC <= that was a real PITA. I've searched for ASUS boards but didn't like them because either they didn't have an onboard NVidia GC or a bad (or too new) onboard sound card or one I've never heard of)

And you will find stories probably about any hardware vendor making some mistakes.

Hopefully I won't personally experience a mistake of that kind because I already got a big-ass headache from searching for the right hardware for my new PC...

Just because of the ...

That's daily stuff nowadays :P

My new hardware configuration looks like this:

AMD Phenom II 955 (yeah, ain't gonna lose this one :P)
Buffalo DIMM 2 GB DDR2-800 Select series (I'm starting off with 2GB 800mhz, I can always upgrade)
Seagate 1 TB Barracuda 7200.12 (ya never have 'nuf space)
ASRock K10N78
Some cheap ATX case, a not too heavy one
2 x case coolers

About the PSU, if I buy a 500W one, will it use that 500W all the time or only when needed? Because I was thinking of buying a 500W for when I'm ready to buy a GTX 260 card but I may change my mind depending on the power usage.

Thanks a bunch, you've been really helpful!!

[Adarion]

Thanks for the thorough information. I do hope this will all be automatically configured because this sounds kind of complicated. :confused:

It should do so.
Only if you're going to compile your own kernel (which can be a nice thing, and I do it always since I'm using Gentoo) you'll need to make a Kernel .config
Basically it's saying Y to the things where they say "if in doubt or if you do not know what it is say Y" ;) and a knowing your hardware (lwhw, lsusb, lspci are helpful).


mix-computer.de
Darn, I looked at it and it had a saying that they only ship inside .de. Never needed it before so I didn't know. Anyway.

But there are still many other online shops around. B.t.w. in case you ever need a card reader or going to look for a new wifi installation you should look at www.tuxhardware.de, they do as the name says, they check the HW they sell if it runs with Linux. I got my card readers (I need them for the photography and as a modern floppy) from there and they do the job.

> Luckily ASRock has both a BIOS flash utility
Sounds good. Probably they use the same like their mother company ASUS.


>searched for ASUS boards but didn't like them
I'm not aware of the current situation for AM3 boards but choice was very limited months ago when I got my new AM2+.
And yes, ASUS sometimes puts on some stuff on some boards that is really strange.
Besides even the c't magazine noted that many vendors ship a lot of really stupid software for windows with their boards. And that was exactly what I thought when I had tried the stuff. They praise it to work wonders but it does nothing but ordinary things, redundant things when it does anything at all. Or it just fucks up the windows.
I'm so glad I don't have to mess with this in Linux. (Of course one doesn't have to mess in W32, too, but when there are 2 CDs with stuff, hey, you're going to have a look at it).

My new hardware configuration looks like this:
Looks nice and when the ASRock won't break on you... good thing.

About the PSU, if I buy a 500W one, will it use that 500W all the time or only when needed?
Nah, this 500W is the maximum dimension. Then there are also different max. wattages (or amperes) on the outgoing (or in-the-computer-ingoing) cables. I had an older on in my old box and when I attached two HDDs to one powerline the box would not boot. :/ (Heh, so I took the power from a different computer that stood directly besides the weak one. Strange construction but it worked some weeks until I got a new PSU.)

So this 500W is the max, and usually computers draw most power during POST / bootup. Because then everything starts, the HDDs draw max power and there is no powersaving at boot time.
Later when the Tux has kicked in with his powersteppers it will settle down.
But what the problem is, is that when you have a laaarge PSU the efficiency will be low when you don't use all that power. So some examples still had measurable watts running even in soft-poweroff-mode (ATX/ACPI-off) when you would expect <0.5W. But also when the box is drawing, let's say like my case 45W idle or my VIA with less than 20W idle the 500W would be wasting still too much power. The PSU should meet the dimensions of the box (at boot time) plus a little more if you want to add some HDDs later.

There are some nice PSUs around, some also with a very quiet fan. Absolutely fanless was no option for me since I had everything else passively cooled. So I don't know about these.
I have this Nesteq 400W one (very quiet, stable, power efficient, but already about a year old) plus 2 ultrasilent (inaudible) Scythe case fans. The BeQuiet ones aren't bad either, but I have 2 older models of these running and I don't know if they still serve my need for 350W and such or even lower. Can't tell much about the other firms but you should avoid ultracheap ones directly from China (m'kay, most stuff is mad in China nowadays). They're instable, loud, and have no efficiency. Some even have short cables (check this if you're going to use a tower case or something) so you can't attach the board to the PSU. Xp
They're just cheap, that's all.

Some also have a system where you have plugs and cords and only attach the ones you need. So you don't have many cables floating around and it looks cleaner inside the box if this is important for you.

[EarthMind]

Just noticed this at mix-computer:

Lieferung nur innerhalb Deutschlands.

So, that's too bad for me :(. I also noticed that the PhII 955 has risen with 10 EUR so I'll have to hurry.

Oh and just noticed your new post so I'll read that now.

[EarthMind]

Darn, I looked at it and it had a saying that they only ship inside .de. Never needed it before so I didn't know. Anyway.

I just noticed that too... :( I'll just stick with alternate as they are quite cheap compared to most shops in BE.

www.tuxhardware.de

Will remember that, thanks.

Looks nice and when the ASRock won't break on you... good thing.

Better try and see ;). If that happens then it'll be the last time I buy ASRock.


But what the problem is, is that when you have a laaarge PSU the efficiency will be low when you don't use all that power.

Will take that into account when choosing the PSU

Thanks very much for your help, it's time to buy now :)


Edit: It's already been risen with 30 EUR in those few minutes I was putting my PC together so I chose the PHII 940 CPU instead.

[AdrenalineJunky]

on the ASRock subject, i've been reading rave reviews on them from all over the net for a while now... they also make alot of the top customer rated motherboards on newegg...

i've had one in my pc for about 8 months now and its been working great for me.

[EarthMind]

on the ASRock subject, i've been reading rave reviews on them from all over the net for a while now... they also make alot of the top customer rated motherboards on newegg...

i've had one in my pc for about 8 months now and its been working great for me.

Yeah, same for me and that's why I didn't change my mind. I did read a lot that they are not really fit for overclocking fanatics.

[Adarion]

Note on your shipment: Consider possible taxes by the Belgian customs. Not sure if this applies but in .de iirc at above 50E the customs can charge you some fees.
And tuxhardware ships into EU countries on previous request.

[EarthMind]

Note on your shipment: Consider possible taxes by the Belgian customs. Not sure if this applies but in .de iirc at above 50E the customs can charge you some fees.
And tuxhardware ships into EU countries on previous request.

Thanks for the info but since it's a European purchase there should be no extra customs fees. And Alternate already charged me my local VAT so everything should be fine :).

[curaga]

Ahh, the joys of living in Europe, no customs inside EU :)

[nanonyme]

Ahh, the joys of living in Europe, no customs inside EU :)Funny enough sometimes you still get cheaper off by ordering from the USA and paying customs...

[curaga]

Funny enough sometimes you still get cheaper off by ordering from the USA and paying customs...

Yeah, but since over-the-pond shipping is _really_ expensive, that's rarely the case (for bigger stuff at least).

[EarthMind]

I finally got my new PC :). I'm having problems with audio and display in Linux but hopefully I'll be able to fix that soon (using Win XP at the moment).

[Adarion]

Umm, what are the problems? Mute speakers? Check alsamixer on the console and then alsactl store in this case.
Display problems of which kind? And which driver are you using?

[EarthMind]

Hey,

I managed to solve everything. I just upgraded to the latest ALSA as described in an ubuntuforums.org thread and used the latest NVIDIA drivers from a repository instead of installing it manually.

Everything works just fine :D

[Adarion]

Everything works just fine :D
Now that is good to hear. I don't know which kernel your ubuntu uses but yes, sometimes the ALSA isn't recent enough there, that can happen with very new chips.
Well, do you have some power consumption numbers? (idle/max load)

[EarthMind]

How can I check those?

[Adarion]

Just use a household power consumtion determination device, one of those which you put in line between power outlet and the plug of your computer. Most devices let you directly read from their display the current power uptake.
You can get them on electonic sellers, some supermarkets and sometimes also lend it from a few supermarkets that have a d.i.y. homework and craftsman part.

[EarthMind]

I'll put that purchase aside at the moment because I have a feeling that it's going to cost me quite a lot.

Currently I'm searching for a cooler for my onboard graphic card because the temperature raises very fast when playing a game. Windows already showed me 2 blue screens and shut a few times down.

[EarthMind]

Actually I do seem to have a big problem which is not directly caused by Linux because it's happening in Windows too (and even more often).
My computer crashes or freezes when I play a game, such as vendetta-online, combat arms, cossacks II, etc.

I have a case cooler but my onboard Nvidia 8200 works by default at 60°C and when playing a game it raises (I don't know how high). Could this be caused by the Nvidia chipset?

[EarthMind]

Problem solved: I bought an Nvidia 9400 GT card. The 260 GTX will have to wait.

[EarthMind]

I guess I'll update this thread with the solution since I forgot to do it.

The issue was actually caused by a voltage setting in the BIOS of the motherboard. I had just set the RAM voltage to the right value instead of on auto and my problem was fixed. I would have never found a solution without the great support of the Dutch Asrock support staff.

Now I bought an ATI Powercolor HD 4890 and Samsung 24" T240 screen and I'm scared to use it in Linux... Well, I'll see how my experience will be soon enough.

So far I can't check the power usage but can you suggest a not too expensive tool to do the job?

Thanks

[deanjo]

Now I bought an ATI Powercolor HD 4890 and Samsung 24" T240
Thanks

Nice monitor for the price, beware that the HDMI connection doesn't give the correct mode lines in linux though. DVI and the Analog work fine though. I've got a couple of them and the only real thing I wish it had was VESA mounting capability.

[EarthMind]

Nice monitor for the price, beware that the HDMI connection doesn't give the correct mode lines in linux though. DVI and the Analog work fine though. I've got a couple of them and the only real thing I wish it had was VESA mounting capability.

I'm not really planning to use HDMI and to be honest, I don't really know why I should. The only stuff I know about it is that is has built in video and audio support with some kind of copy protection and that it's used for watching Blu-ray videos.

It seems like a good screen indeed but I had no idea that 24" was THAT big. Hopefully it won't cause too much trouble with web pages. But I'll only be able to check that later as I had to send it back because it didn't work... :(

[Max Spain]

So far I can't check the power usage but can you suggest a not too expensive tool to do the job?


You could try one of these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001).