I am in the process of choosing a new desktop for Christmas.

I am looking at this...
Can I get some knowledgeable recommendations?

My concerns are the Video, a GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 and the "onboard LAN" which seems to be the an Atheros card/chip according to a cursory google search.

I am not above buying another component or two if something isn't "quite right" about the system. My Boss says I should have 16G of RAM and I am not going to argue.

I use Slackware14 but don't let that scare you.

Thank you for your time.

Looks nice to me, what are your concerns, exactly with the on-board LAN and video card? I assume you're playing games (online of course) and are worried about adequate performance? From what I've read of reviews of hardware, it should do fine, but I have no hands-on experience with anything quite so...modern.

mlh:

No games for me.
I don't have any recent hardware experience (haven't built any systems in about a decade).

I guess I worry overly much sometimes.

My concern is Slackware and Drivers, of course...

Edit0: The GeForce GTX 660 driver I found here... but it says it supports the "GTX 660 Ti" whatever Ti stands for.com

Thanks.

Nvidia support is really pretty good, and a recent survey here showed most people using the binary blob from nvidia... so no worries there. I couldn't swear abou the onboard LAN, but Gigabyte mobos are well established and I'd be really really surprised if it didn't work out of the box with any linux kernel. Worst case scenario is that you'd disable it and buy a network card.

Haven't built a system in a while either, but I've been doing a lot of research in the last few months in anticipation of a buying spree..

1 members found this post helpful.

mostlyharmless:

Thanks.

You don't need extra powerful hardware to do general usage stuff, much less even medium level to heavy gaming. My old Athlon X2 5000, 4GB RAM, GeForce 9800GT 1GB, and 500GB drive can effectively push many modern games using Valve's Source engine which is rather intensive for PCs. If mine works fine, this PC I'll showing you will work fine also.

At best, this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883227384

is more to about what you might need for at least the next 5+ years at best. Normally I look at units that can be upgraded, but often don't require much to upgrade them over a 5+ year period, and don't need upgrades unless absolutely necessary.

The CPU is very good, the RAM is more than adequate for anything really, you have plenty of storage space, and the GPU is powerful enough for anything. The only thing I would maybe recommend is buying a new power supply unit with at least 750 Watts or better like:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153136

and that's it.

16GB of RAM is overkill by any standard. It's nice to have if your a tech junkie, but realistically even Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (which requires a good bit of power to operate) will run perfectly fine with 4~8GB or RAM. For Slackware 14.0, it'll be perfect. Nvidia might not have the most fanfare favorite for Linux, but they do support their products far better than AMD/ATI does. The GT520 1GB is good for anything really.

1 members found this post helpful.

ReaperX7:

I went ahead and made the leap.

Thanks for the recommendation on the Power Supply.

This thing may seem overkill for my daily SysAdmin duties now, but you know how that goes...

JJ of c9

Thanks Gurus!

Much welcome. You'll find Thermaltake after a while has some of the better power supplies out there. Good luck with your purchase.