Hi,

I'm building my first pc after about 15 years of using laptops and also switching back to Linux after 12 years of using OSX in macbooks. Lot's of new things for me, so I thought I ask for build advice for my new desktop re Linux compatibility and component choice in general:

ASUS TUF Gaming B550M-PLUS (Wi-Fi), AMD B550 (Ryzen AM4) Micro ATX Motherboard (PCIe 4.0, Dual M.2, 10 DrMOS, DDR4 4400, Wi-Fi 6, 2.5 Gb Ethernet, HDMI, DP, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and C, Aura Sync)

AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Processor (16C/32T, 72 MB Cache, 4.7 GHz Max Boost)

Corsair Venegence LPX 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18

Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX550 4 GB 128-Bit GDDR5

Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Corsair RM750x 750 W Power Supply

Noctua NH-U9S, Premium CPU Cooler with NF-A9 92mm Fan (Brown)

Fractal Design Define Mini C - Mini Tower Computer Case - mATX

I'm trying to get a mATX form factor PC that should hopefully be as quiet as reasonably possible and should have wifi working. I'd use it primarily for software development which will also involve running minikube with a bunch of containers.

I'd appreciate your feedback on component choice and any potential issues to watch out on linux compatiblity.

Thanks!

I have something similar, without wifi and works perfectly. but I guess wifi should work too.

nobitabre82,

That looks like a decent setup apart from the graphics card which seems a bit conservative bearing in mind the powerful CPU you have chosen.
However if the RX550 does the job you need it to do, then why pay more.

I do appreciate that you are prioritising sound reduction ahead of cooling and that a more powerful graphics card might be noisier.

Several alternative cards here:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3106...ing.html#toc-3

All those Fractal cases are very well designed. I have recently built two PCs using the Fractal Design Meshify C case.

I also used the be quiet! Shadow Wings 2 PWM case fans (two 140mm in the front and a 120mm in the rear):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Comp...rs&sr=1-4&th=1

Enjoy your build.

I would seriously ask 'do you really need a 3950X'? That's a very expensive (and hot/power hungry) chip, especially for the motherboard and heatsink you have chosen. For the vast majority of applications, you will probably also notice zero difference between the $700+ 3950X and the $200-ish 3700X. Ditto on the RAM (capacity wise) - my main workstation has 32GB and I'm hard pressed to use all of that, even when I've played around with some pretty aggressive VMs and applications - you mention development so you probably have a good idea of your specific memory/compute needs, but if this is just a case of 'I want the best' I would either get a better motherboard or scale back a bit to keep the power/cooling/etc sane.

RX550 is probably fine, but I would also suggest at least looking at the newer 5500XT - it will have a bit more 'go' (from what I've read it will be more similar to the RX 580) and (more importantly) newer compute/codec features over the relatively dated Polaris architecture (but like beachboy2 says, if RX 550 is 'more than enough' for your actual needs, it's not a bad choice at all). Both should be new enough to use AMDGPU and support Vulkan, but the newer Navi-based cards should handle HEVC and whatnot better.

The "Noctua NH-U9S" is a tower cooler. It doesn't cool your RAM modules. Think about a top-down-cooler. I'm using a "be quiet! Shadow Rock TF 2" on an "AMD Ryzen 7 5800X" that's running on an "Asus TUF Gaming B550-Pro" with 64 GiB RAM = 2× 32 GiB DDR4 PC-3200.

Think about speed of memory modules. Memory speed is limited to PC-3200 with two modules and without OC. "64 GiB RAM = 2× 32 GiB + 2 free RAM slots for future upgrades" is a good chioce for a current high performance system.

The "AMD Radeon RX550" provides PCIe 3.0 only. It may be suitable for your applications but CPU & mainboard can drive a PCIe 4.0 graphics card. I've run an "AMD Radeon RX550" on my "Asus TUF Gaming B550-Pro" for a time. Meanwhile it has been replaced with an "AMD Radeon RX6600". Both cards work with amdgpu kernel driver.

The "Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB PCIe NVMe M.2" may slow down this system because it's limited to PCIe 3.0. First onboard M.2 slot provides PCIe 4.0 in combination with "AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Processor". Therfore choose a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, e.g. Crucial CT500P5PSSD8.