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Welcome to IWETHEY!

New Ordered.
All the parts (from Amazon and 3 other external vendors) are supposed to be here by the 22nd, so I may have it together by Memorial Day.

The only change I made was to replace the Crucial M4 SSD kit with a bare M4 and a $19 Apricorn ASW-USB-25 to save around $20.

The grand total was $1877.86 The price often jumped around $10+/hour while the parts were inside or saved outside my cart. :-/

Let me know if there are any benchmarks you'd like to see run on it, and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for the comments. We'll see how it goes.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Assembled today. What's the recommended Linux these days?
It took me roughly 3 hours to put it together. I just put it all together at once - all 16 GB, the FX-8150 with the aftermarket cooler, all the drives and all the fans. I figured it was likely to work so I just crossed my fingers that there wouldn't be any issues and was rewarded. No major issues, I wasn't rushing - it just took a while. The case is pretty nice, though there would be some interference between the modular power supply and some of the cable sockets if you wanted to use all of them and use the 2.5" HD bay that is right behind it. I only needed to use 2 of the modular cable outlets.

I had to remove the push/pull fans from the CPU cooler to install the RAM, and even then there was a little interference in putting one of the sticks in its socket. But it just took a little persuasion. RAM with taller heat sinks would require modification of the fins to install with this CPU cooler.

I gave Win7Pro 200 GB on the M4 SSD, leaving the rest for a future Linux install. Nothing is on the 2x2 GB Seagate drives yet. After installing the OS, I installed the network driver, then did the latest BIOS update, then installed SBS&D and Symantec Endpoint Protection, and then did Winders Update.

Around 480 MB of Winders updates after the initial install. It's taken about 3 hours so far with the software installation, configuration, updates, etc.

The fans move a lot of air. There's some fan noise, but it's not annoying in this office. I assume it's mostly the 2 fans on the graphics card. The power supply has a default mode where the fan doesn't run until its temperature reaches 72 C. The red LEDs on the case fans and on the case aren't obtrusive. The case is nice, but deep and probably not a good choice for small spaces.

This thing is fast. Installing an addon to Firefox (e.g. Adblock Plus, Flashblock, Tab Mix Plus) is very quick, and restarting FF is instantaneous. I'm going to be spoiled going back to my non-SSD PCs. :-/

I've got Bionc running now, set up to use all 8 cores. CPUID CPU-Z says its running at 3.6 - 3.9 GHz (200MHz x 18 to 19.5). Boinc can also use the GPU, but I know this one isn't terribly fast (though it may be faster than the Bulldozer for this work), and I'm mainly interested in the CPU speed. The Asus utility says the idle CPU temperature is ~ 30 C, and it's at 44 C now crunching away on all cores flat out. I don't know whether that's real (my i5 on the laptop gets up above 85 C...), but CPUID Hardware Monitor says the same thing. Given all of the horror stories about how bad the power management is on AMD chips and how much more efficient Intel chips are, I'm very pleasantly surprised by the temperatures. Maybe it's that big honking heat sink though. ;-) I haven't tweaked the BIOS CPU power options (I think it's "balanced" or some such as default) nor done any overclocking.

So far, so good. I can't imagine "needing" anything faster than this, at least for what I do...

What's the recommended "consumer" Linux distribution these days? I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 on my T61 occasionally, and 9.11 (I think) on my old Fujitsu P7120D. I've heard bad things about Unity, but haven't tried it myself. Linux Mint was getting lots of good press a while ago, but seems to have fallen off my radar.

Other than Debian, ;-), what would you folks recommend for a new machine like this?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Linux Mint.
Good Luck.
New Thanks. Cinnamon or MATE?
SJVN likes Cinnamon - http://www.zdnet.com...nux-mint-13/11110 , but I've read about teething problems with it (heat, CPU fan running continuously, etc., etc.). http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=190

I understand that Cinnamon is based on GNOME 3.x while MATE is a fork of 2.x. It looks like all of the versions of Ubuntu I've used are based on GNOME 2.x so I'd probably go with MATE unless there is something I've missed.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Your choice.
Cinnamon I think is the better way to go in the long run... but MATE may work better.

If I ever get sick of XFCE, (which I probably won't) I'll probably try both and see what tickles me.
     Close to pulling the trigger on a new AMD PC build for home. - (Another Scott) - (10)
         doesnt the mb have a video built in? I wouldnt pay that much -NT - (boxley) - (4)
             Not this one. - (Another Scott) - (3)
                 I recall when this was fun.. - (Ashton) - (2)
                     Thank God for FreeDos... - (static) - (1)
                         Terminate and Stay Resident, er.. - (Ashton)
         Ordered. - (Another Scott) - (4)
             Assembled today. What's the recommended Linux these days? - (Another Scott) - (3)
                 Linux Mint. - (folkert) - (2)
                     Thanks. Cinnamon or MATE? - (Another Scott) - (1)
                         Your choice. - (folkert)

*SHUN*
57 ms