What is your processor, and how much of it do you use? How much memory?
 

I've used Linux for a few years now, and since gaming wasn't a big part of what I do, Linux has allowed me to work on older, lower powered computers, quite effectively/affordably.
My main Linux system is a dual core celeron and I have been wanting to build a more powerful Kodi system then the Raspberry PI (and leave up as the NFS/Samba system), so I have been accumulating parts, as I find good deals.
I am pretty much down to the cpu (will get memory at the same time) and have begone arguing with myself about realistically what I need, verses want. (never really had a high powered system and while I don't need it, I am thinking of doing it once) So now I am wondering about using the celeron as the Kodi system and putting possibly one of the T based processors (35 or 45 watt, so I can use an existing power suppy), for the computer. (verses just slapping in the anniversary dual core pentium)
Wanting to see what others have and uses (how much processor does it use), as there is a list of stuff I want to play with and need a push one way or another.

Thanks

Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz

SSD: 32GB drive for linux OS

HDD: 320GB for home partition

RAM: 8G DDR3 @ 1600Mhz

I don't monitor the CPU or memory usage when doing specific tasks. It's boring. I'm using linux as a desktop and I'm the only one in my household that uses linux.

If I were running a local or public server and it had more than one user, then yes, monitoring the CPU, memory, disk space and etc would be important.

Intel i3-3220 CPU 3.30GHz
HDD: 500GB
RAM: 6GB DDR3

I bought what was popular at that time.
I use Puppy linux which runs completely in RAM as my everyday use system.
It does it's job very nicely.
I only use VLC, LibreOffice, LibreCad, Firefox, Gimp etc.
And occasionally I try out some different softwares.
For general use my machine has too much power, never felt a lag.
I have tried Puppy on friend's older Pentium II, 521mb Ram, still smooth.

- Neeraj.

This won't be much use to you, but anyway:
8GiB RAM @ 1600MHz

Using full GNOME 3.14 or KDE/Plasma 5 my system idles at 0.1-0.5%

Top shows:
I probably should have bought a cheaper laptop...
:D

EDIT & Update: Had to recompile glibc for a bug report & managed to get the "load average" to just over 4.00 using `make -j4` for about half an hour -- I haven't seen my box work so hard since I installed Gentoo...

Haswell i7. 16GB RAM.

Some things that I actually need that much power for include: building software from source, running Gamecube and Wii games in Dolphin (game console emulators are CPU-bound, not GPU-bound), and transcoding video from one format to another. If I ever decide to get back into video editing, I'll need the horsepower for that too.

AMD FX8320 8-core 3.5 GHz, 16 GB DDR3. Using KDE

Yeah, outdated processor, built on an archaic architecture, but it gets the job done still.

Most of my machines are Intel Atoms 1.6GHz with 1Gb of memory, they do all I need of them; internet, music, movies, & photo manipulation.

(I did buy an Intel i3 3.2GHz with 4Gb of ram but don't use it much because it's too loud & irritating.)

Fatmac, I have a couple of them, that work fine for day to day use.
Then I have a few Raspberry PI's for electronics and learning stuff (don't screw up your main system).

Dugan, how long does it take you to compile a kernal?
One of my wants, is to build a system with something like Gentoo or Tiny Core, where I compile it, verses just an install, day to day use system. (this was one of the area's where I thought I might benefit)

Keep em coming guys, this helps.

Usually, compiling software is good to get the most of your system usually in speed and performance -- perhaps more suited in the days of dinosaur computers. However, with today's CPU's, faster memory and bus speeds the difference between a compiled program or a binary install is neglectable in my opinion.

If I were to compile software it wouldn't be for speed or performance but an educational learning experience.

> 2nd generation Core i5-540M inside a Thinkpad with 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Running Linux Mint 17-x64 as a host with 2 Slackware -current Virtualbox guest machines, the best playground for the kernel programming activities.

> Till the last month, had the powerful Haswell i5-4440 on my desktop workstation which I bought with much enthusiasm but had to sell. So as a replacement, planing to buy an ARM board to act as a torrent box plus another playground. Still confused among Cubietruck, RPi B+ and BBB Rev c.


Regards.

CPU: Core i7-2600K @ 4300MHz
RAM: 32GB @ 1600MHz
GPU: GTX 550Ti
SSD: 64GB
HDD: 2TB x 3 (striped)

I use my machine for a little bit of everything. Game emulators (GPU does help), transcoding, compiling software, VMs, etc...

CPU: AMD FX-9370 8 Core OC @ 5Ghz
RAM 32GiB @ 1833 MHZ
GPU: x2 ATI HD 7970's /w Toxic Firmware (crossfire)
SSD: Samsung 128GiB
HDD: Seagate 4TiBx 3 (RaidZ)
FFD: 5.25' 1.22MiB Floppy, 3.50' 1.44/120MiB Superdisk Floppy

I use my machine for gaming, for the most part. Dosbox, WINE, Native, other Emu

However, I also use it for 3D graphics design (blender, softimage(2003)) and coding.
I have infastructure in place at home for virtual machines and other services that should be up all the time.

For compiling, a fast processor & plenty of ram.

intel q9300 4 core overclocked to 3ghz
8 gigs of ram
1 tera hdd

edit: load average: 0.10, 0.18, 0.12

Don't forget the ODROID's.
The PI's have a big user base with lots of examples, and the beaglebones are a bit faster (plan on one for a dedicated, learn KALI system, rather then just booting from a drive, where I can't use that computer as a test platform then). But on the higher end, one ODROID I was looking at (until I got some good deals on parts, for the primary system), has a multi core processor, and USB 3. (only missing SATA IMHO)

Honestly I think Linux has made computers more of a ubiquitos appliance, rather then a large expensive machine. (picked up the case and power supply today, only have the CPU and memory left)

Mobo = Asrock Z77-Extreme

CPU = Intel i5-3550 mildly OCd to 3.5GHz
(cooled to just above ambient w/ CoolerMaster Hyper 212 stacked 120mm fans)

Ram = 8GB Corsair Vengeance LowLatency

GPU = Gigabyte nVidia GTX-760 w/ 2GB

I'm extremely pleased with this box. It looks nice in an Antec piano black case and is reasonably quiet especially for as hard as I push it. I do semi-pro audio recording and mixing/editing, compile all my kernels, some video editing, and I'm a fairly hardcore gamer but almost never boot to windows (uptimes in excess of 6 months are commonplace). I have yet to say to myself, "Gee that was disappointing. I need more power". It handles everything I throw at it with aplomb.

I use KDE quite a lot but for a few months have been quite pleased with Xfce4 with specific KDE support loaded by default. I use KWin compositing. Presently I have Firefox open with 15 tabs open and --------

CPU is at 2%, Ram at 9% load average: 0.11, 0.10, 0.13 w/ 157 default processes

If you'd like a comparison to full KDE desktop, just ask.

Pentium D 3.4 ghz - 4 gigs of ram - geforce gt 630. If i compile a kernel while watching a movie or playing a game i can sometimes max out both chips, i hardly ever use all the ram tho.

The only resource that i dont max out would probably be video memory. I have a gig on the card and even playing quake 4 i have never seen it use more than 500mb or so.

I'll get the cubietruck here(India)in way cheaper price than the Odroid U3 and will get a SATA port + VGA port. My 19' monitor doesn't have a HDMI port. On paper Cubietruck is more impressive than the Odroid U3. I have a 320GB SATA HDD lying idle, waiting to be used.

I was almost sold on RPI B+ as the kits are available cheap in here however the cause of my holding back is really outdated Armv6 and the network performance of the 10/100 Ethernet. At this moment, I'm totally torn between BBB Rev C and CT. Or may be I should wait for 2015 Q1 for more boards and versions to appear?

Regards.

Goodness



Core 2 Quad Q9550
4 GB of RAM

Sometimes I use 100% CPU time and other times it is almost 0. It depends on what I am doing

PrinceCruise.........
Personally I would go for the CT over the Beaglebone, unless your planning some electronic making project. (pretty sure the BB is comparable to the PI in networking)

Some of you mentioned gaming

The gaming aspect under Linux does raise my interest, as it has been years since I tried it. (relative kept buying me games, trying to get me to get another Windows machine, which I hadn't used at home for around 8 years or so) I finally broke down and bought one this year and am going through the learning about compatibility issues with 8.1 (not much different then when I tried to see if I could play Sacred 2 under Linux, years ago, the last software I missed Windows for). No reason to hook Windows to my normal network or make it a dual boot, IMHO. (bad weather, winter gamer only, very light and playing now ancient games for the most part) The only reason I justified a Windows machine, was my job could be changing in the next year or two, and I am enough out of Windows (and it has changed enough), I want to be able to relearn/feel competent in it.

There are still commands I haven't used under Linux but think I would find useful (never taken the time to learn). Things like Wget to download a Youtube video to watch later for example, just because. I think making a distro would keep me out of the gaming machine and teach me more useful stuff, while driving me to try to learn new commands that I have/haven't thought about. (time is ALWAYS an issue, but right now I am on mandatory overtime, which would pay for the missing computer pieces and not take money from anything else) The overtime and doing some more research, I am leaning away from an anniversary dual core pentium or I3-xxxxT, to one of the I7-47x0T processors (depending on stock when I order Lower power draw/heat). For at least five years I used an atom after my main dual boot system died, so now I want to go more the opposite way to somewhat future proof and convert my other system to the storage box.

Thank you all guys. Merry Xmas!

My rig
 

HP/Compaq DC 7700 CMT (Refurb)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 2.13GHz
4GB (4x1GB) DDR2 RAM
Besides doing the usual E-mail, Interwebbing etc., I play IL2-Sturmovik Ultimate Edition with all mods through Wine. The CPU is never stressed. Although I am thinking of "upgrading" to a Core 2 Quad.

i added load average to my first post, sorry bro, forgot it the first time.

intel core i3 3rd generation @ 3.3ghz
8gb of system ram
Mint 17 64bit, Mate Desktop

I am using intel dual core processor with 2GB ram and 500GB HDD

In my desktop I've a, now ancient, AMD FX-8120 -- I think it was the first "eight core" (I'll let you google how it is and isn't if you care) CPU for the consumer desktop and I have to say that it does seem to allow maxing out individual cores without affecting processes on other ones. I've 32GB of RAM because I originaly bought 16 but when I installed a new CPU cooler* it impinged upon the R*M in such a way as to cause memory errors so when I upgraded I decided the small extra cost would make me feel better about having to buy the RAM. I play with VMs a lot but have to admit that by the time I get to the stage of maxing out the RAM things like disk IO and processor speed are already limiting me enough to make things less than ideal.

*the processor runs far too hot, I am awaiting a new case fairly soon but not convinced it will help.

I forget what AMD called their thing. Where Intel has Hyperthreading, using two logical cores sharing a real FPU core, AMD says theirs is 2 real cores, sharing a logical FPU core. On paper, it was supposed to be a better design than Hyperthreading.

Still using a Sempron 145 since 2011 (I may build something newer soon)
Have 4 gigs ram. Under normal use (surfing, Youtube, playing DVD) never seen it get above 50% usage IIRC, average being around 9% or so.

I think Modules.

Yup that's it. This is what Wikipedia says:

"The modular architecture consists of multithreaded shared L2 cache and FlexFPU, which uses simultaneous multithreading. Each physical integer core, two per module, is single threaded, in contrast with Intel's Hyperthreading, where two virtual simultaneous threads share the resources of a single physical core."

I have to say the "cores" are great fun to watch in Conky and theprocessor seems to do the job but from my experience and having read around a little I wouldn't recommend AMD though.

I was all about AMD up until my Phenom II X4 965. When it came time to replace it, I looked into the FX series CPUs. After lots of reading, it seemed Intel was a better choice, both in performance and keeping temps down.

Precisely. I may well have a dodgy part but I have never seen any of my cores over the 3.2GHz into "turbo" territory as AMD seem to suggest in all their marketing that they will -- which puts me off AMD for a start.
Then there's the ridiculous situation of AMD not quoting a real maximum temperarture for the CPUs leaving customers trying to find out which value is the "critical" one. When I say "critical" by the way I do so as, apparently, should it rise above 55[C?] for any significant time (two minutes, six hours?) It will be damaged, probably, they think. Add to that the fact that using anything but he stock cooler invalidates the warranty and their you go...
Sorry, the above is a rant which is based upon my own experience and research and may well be wrong.

Amd, Intel, etc. to me didn't mean a lot for quite a while, because Linux worked fine on all of them. I may still end up doing something with that AMD FX processor, in the Windows box I have, just because I don't enjoy gaming like I once did. (was a different story when I was younger and my group of friends got together) There is only one piece of Windows software, that isn't a game, that I never found a Linux replacement for. (not enough Linux woodworkers)

A couple of reasons I decided to go with Intel. I can see myself wanting to play with virtual machines at some point (and the processor and chipset I was looking at, supported it). The wattage of the CPU's I wanted (lower wattage tends to run cooler and I don't expect my average pc use, to need a lot of speed. Lastly I found a motherboard (not the chipset I wanted), that I found acceptable, NIB around $25 (damaged freight resale store).
I'd love to go with the T processors (35 or 45watt), but to find the I7, is a PAIN and it isn't retail, so they tend to overprice them (higher then Intel's MSRP). I could go with the T in the I3 or I5, but I see this as a long term computer. I think I am down to the 4790S, 65 watt processor (the average estimated cost difference in power, would make it approx 8 years to payback the I7T over the S) But I will believe it when I have bought it (I may freak out on the cost verses my use and just stay with a lower I3 when I am in the checkout line).

Using Intel B960 Processor with 2GB Ram.
Uses on average doesn't go beyond 10% of my total processing power of dual core CPU and RAM usage around 1.5GB unless I open several apps with several windows.

I am running KDE 4.14 on this system.

I ended up going with AMD back in the socket-7 days. I had a Pentium 233MHz, that I could only overclock (with jumpers) to 266MHz using 3.6v. With the same mainboard, I replaced the Pentium with an AMD K6-III+ 450Mhz. Overclocked it to 550Mhz, and with only 2v. Oh, and it was cheaper than the Intel too. That machine still works today.

I have a dual processor HP Z600 with 2 x5650's 2.66 6 cores, 24GB, and GTX 750. My Lappy is a Dell Latitude E6500 T9550 C2D, 4GB, Quadro 160M

Intel i5, 16GB memory --> then disable memory swap file. No memory problems whatsoever. With heavy usage, still $free -h shows a few GB free.

Oddly, I found that I needed a proper cooler and even ended up with an FX8370 and a noctua cooler running the CPU at 4.6

I have 2 machines: one FreeBSD workstation and one FreeBSD build server. The build server used to be my workstation but due to its noise, heat and some video issues, I have retired it to a headless status and built a new box.

Workstation:
Intel i7 7700k 4 core (8 threads)
32 GB DDR4 RAM

Build server:
Intel Xeon X5550 (2 x 6 core CPUs) (24 threads)
96GB RAM

The most RAM I have used on the workstation is about 16 GB maybe, and was during a package build. I don't do that anymore and use the build server to, well, build. The most ram I use on the workstation now is maybe just over 1 or 2 GB if I have a lot of applications and documents or photos open. CPU usage I have no idea but I am pretty sure it is just twiddling its thumbs most of the time. I use fluxbox and it's very light on resources.

On the build server, the most I have used is about 50GB during a package build. That was building close to 1000 packages, to include chromium, firefox, libreoffice and several compilers: llvm, gcc, plus some heavy compile deps like rust.

When the build server is working, it is building in parallel so normally all 24 "cores" are pegged at 100% for about 2 or 3 hours. CPU temps hit 75-78 degrees Celsius.

I must add that even though both machines have very small swap partitions (500mb to 1gb), neither machine has ever hit swap.

You have swap?! Sorry, yes, at one point I did have swap set up just in the unlikely event that I missed a process leaking but, with a desktop and conky running all the time, I disabled my swap file long ago.

I don't need it, just an old habit I guess. I could reclaim some disk space I suppose but that's not an issue either because I have more than I'll ever use. So, my brain doesn't prioritize getting rid of swap and it stays out of complacency :)

@SevendogsBSB:
That is some server you got!

I have 16GB to prevent swapping, and it will make my SSD last me my whole life I hope =). Samsung SSD EVO 1TB.
About 5% used if I install and upload every music file I own so far. Yes, I do not own a lot of music. Mostly 16-24 bit flac files.
I used to hate swapping, i just like snappy and fast systems...

It's really a workstation (HP z800) and was originally used for CAD or 3d rendering. It doesn't make a practical workstation though because it is a bit loud, runs hot and has an 1100 watt power supply, making it pretty energy inefficient...

My new workstation is dead silent in comparison, which I really love. Low wattage CPU and a huge Noctua fan which for its size makes virtually no noise.

All of my music (flacs as well) is on my NAS and I NFS mount a shared directory to my PC so I can listen while I work.

I have Samsung EVO SSDs on my PC as well - great drives but mine are much smaller because i don't keep much data on the PC: all multimedia is kept on the NAS.