Hey all!

I am feeling the age of my old pc and I am wanting to build a new PC from parts. I have hard drive/optical drive. I have keyboard/mouse as well. I am looking for a system to last me for 3-5 years. I usually run gentoo, but am open to others if they serve my needs better.

Looking for suggestions for these parts:

Cpu - AMD, that's final, thinking about 64-bit, but not sure what socket to invest in for some long term use.

Motherboard - was looking at abit/asus, any good compatible boards with linux? Any Problems?

Video Card - Thinking Nvidia 7000 series, but need some advice on what is a good value for the money.

Monitor - flat panel. I want to get rid of the crt's I have now. I game fps's and strategy games. I have no clue where to start on looking for information on displays. Please Help!!!


Here's the setup I want to run. I want to have a multi-monitor setup. I would like to set up one of the 3d desktops Beryl/Enlightenment/(others???) on one monitor and in the other have a virtual install of win2k/xp for games and other programs that I can't make work in wine (I know I know windows sux....but I still want to use things I haven't figured out how to make work in wine!!)

Any Suggestions for this? (how-to's, man pages, tutorials, programs, etc would be appreciated.)

I hope you think of this thread as sort of a place to list newer hardware that works well with Gnu/Linux from people's experiences. I want to upgrade, and it seemed that seeking help was the best route to go. Thanks all for your time and input.

~Consatin

well, Consatin, this is just my 2 cents, but here goes...

CPU
AMD Athlon64 Socket 939. <-- this is pretty good. 64 bit, 2GHz. I have really no need for dual core. Well, yet...

Motherboard
I chose:
Abit NF95. Socket 939, nVidia chipset, onboard SATA, EIDE / PATA.
I've had no problems with it (*touch wood*) and it's doing well.

Monitor(s)
I stuck with the charm of CRT for my PC. They are, IMHO, better for gaming. (higher refresh rate, and I can't see the individual pixels. Yes, I spend that long on my PC i can see the pixels on LCD...)

Also, a final note, make sure you get some decent cooling, because heat is one of the major killers of computer hardware. (well, heat and Windows. :P)

If you're in the UK the best places (in my opinion) to go for hardware are Maplin and Scan.

http://www.maplin.co.uk
http://www.scan.co.uk

Scan is a fair bit cheaper but chances are, if they don't have it, Maplin will.

Consatin

I think if you price the cpu you will see that AM2 will be cheaper than 939. The Am2 motherboards will be slightly higher but the combined price will be cheaper. Also be aware that a lot of the cpus are now offered in multiple wattage versions. I think the current low wattage cpu are 65W (but check). The AM2 based boards also leave you with greater options for the future.

Chipsets are also something to consider. I see a lot of people with ATI/VIA chipsets having a very hard time. Some intel chipsets have also had issues. While Nvidia chipsets have had issues there are so many people running them that they are usually cleared up in a hurry.



I guess I would run 1 lcd monitor and 1 crt. Even the best lcd monitors do not refresh fast enough. If you already have a decent crt I would just use that. This last year was a huge step forward in lcd tech. This year I think I heard somebody came out with a 100 inch lcd. The tech to make that work will probably trickle down to the desktop (if you can refresh 100 inches fast enough to watch tv then you should be able to refresh 20 inches fast enough to play games).

The multi monitors is usually called dual head. It has become common enough that it should not be a problem. If you do wind up using two lcd make sure your video card has dual DVI outputs. DVI makes a huge difference on how a LCD looks.

A good resource for any computer part is www.newegg.com. Even if you do not buy from them, they have customer reviews for almost all products. Read through them though because a lot of the reviewers do not know what they are doing. A example I remember of this was a guy who rated a motherboard a 0 (very low). He had bought a dual cpu motherboard (not dual core) and was mad that it would not work with only one cpu (which was clearly noted in the description of the motherboard).

Have Fun

Lazlow

Well lets see.

The points I see are these:

Monitors - Lcd's suck for gaming. Is that what the consensus is? Hmm, I usually use my computer for surfing, CAD, and games.
I am more looking for the thinness tho. Its not like I need to have the best looking games, but is it such that gaming on an lcd isn't possible? I would like to hear of people's opinions about this.


Cpu's - well the amd 939 pin seems to be all I have gotten. Is this a pinout that has some legs to it? I mean, will it be around and in use for a while? ( I haven't looked at sockets since the old Athlon ) I could use some help!! So is the AM2 or the 939 socket better? Tat is the big question I have, as well as if there are many troubles with either sockets/or 64 bit computing in general.

Motherboard - The nf95 isn't a bad motherboard, but the 2 gb of memory seems like a bit of a bottleneck. (it almost seems necessary now-a-days) (*almost*) I was considering having something around 2 Gb of memory in the board, and upgrading from that wouldn't be good. I do think that the price might be useful for other applications besides gaming! Thanks for the suggestion hacker supreme. Anyone have any others that work well?

Video card - well I am still bumpkis with this. Guess I will have to see what I can find out there. Anyone have experience with the geforces I listed?

Location - I am in the us, so newegg is someplace I keep looking at. I was more hoping to find out peoples experiences with some types of hardware. I do understand the necessity of common sense shopping. I liked the example that you gave lazlow. It is all too common these days.

Thanks for the opinions guys, any other people want to join in on the conversation here?

~Consatin

Went to newegg and found the following parts. While it may not be good for me, I think I know a few people who could use them for a decent upgrade.

Cpu: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Manchester 2.2GHz 939 Socket
$88.00 Retail (with heatsink)

Mobo: ABIT NF-95 Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6100
(video, sound, network on board)
$40.00

Memory: Kingston ValueRAM 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400
$45.00 x 2 = $90.00

Total: about $235 with the shipping costs.

Anyone know of any big problems with Linux using these parts?