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  3. Its time to buy a new development machine

Its time to buy a new development machine

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  • C Chris Maunder

    "Quiet" is an important word here, especially when paired with "lots of power". You don't mention the OS you need. I would love a Mac Pro. Sleek, fast, and good looking if geeky furniture. Otherwise grab a box with huge fans (bigger the quieter obviously) and stick to SSD (not all SSDs are created equally) and fast RAM. You'll probably also want to think about ensuring you get a USB-C port (or 4) given you want this for the long run. Why don't we all get together and go shopping for you?

    cheers Chris Maunder

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    Dan Neely
    wrote on last edited by
    #22

    Chris Maunder wrote:

    You'll probably also want to think about ensuring you get a USB-C port (or 4) given you want this for the long run.

    Is anyone selling a quad C port board yet? Looking at what's been showing up on Anandtech's review/previews lately the current default seems to be a pair (or occasionally 4) USB3.1g2 ports but only one in the C form factor; the remainder are still A like all the 2.0/3.0 ports on the back.

    Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt

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    • A Andrew Torrance

      If I spend £1666 I dont get a penny back . If I spend £2000 I get £332 back .Since a lot of good machines are £1200 and upwards I thought I would say £2000 to see what corkers came out of the woodwork.

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      ColinBurnell
      wrote on last edited by
      #23

      Unless you need fancy graphics or something more esoteric, even £1200 sounds excessive. You can get a pretty decent workstation for 700 to 800 quid, add a decent SSD and call it £900 to £1000; forget the VAT and save yourself 600 to 700 notes.

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      • A Andrew Torrance

        So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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        Brad Stiles
        wrote on last edited by
        #24

        Andrew Torrance wrote:

        Probably up to £2000

        For that price, you can get a really good gaming machine, with monitor, never mind a dev one. :) You won't have any problems whatsoever spending that much, and can get a decent one for half that.

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        • A Andrew Torrance

          So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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          ClockMeister
          wrote on last edited by
          #25

          You don't need to spend that. Dell puts out a fine product, the XPS Series. I have a 4-year-old XPS 8300 that I've built up with 1.5TB of SSD and 16GB of main. Seriously powerful. These aren't that expensive, either.

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          • A Andrew Torrance

            So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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            Roger165
            wrote on last edited by
            #26

            Hope this helps MB ASUS Sabertooth990FX R2.0 VGA ASUS R3760-OC-2GD5-V2 R7 360 Graphics card can run 4 monitors AMD 8-CORE FX-8350 4.0 SSD 512 G Samsung MEM 8GX2 GSKIL = 32 Gigs memory DVD Brn MS Windows 10 Pro Liguid Cool Corsair H80I V2 R Soprano Case HUB Vantec UGT-AH1000U3 10 port USB 3.0 hub total worth it $1100 american This is a whisper quite machine

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            • A Andrew Torrance

              So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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              mjbempower
              wrote on last edited by
              #27

              ASUS Q534U - Intel 6500U - 512GB SATA3 SSD - 2TB HDD 5400 - 16GB DDR4 RAM - WLAN/CB 802.11AC-WW + BT - 15.6 UHD (4K) Nvidia GTX950M w/2GB VRAM - 3-USB 3.0, 1-USB 3.1 WIN 10 (not pro). 2-IN-1 with a special hinge that enables the screen to be set at just about any angle, including 180 degrees for tablet mode. Touch screen; backlit keyboard; HDMI output; DVD/CD drive not included. $1,500 US.

              mjb

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              • A Andrew Torrance

                So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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                DanW52
                wrote on last edited by
                #28

                Honestly I think it would be difficult to spend even close to 2000 for a development machine. You should build your own desktop. I did 8 years ago and it's been great. As time went on and components got better, I upgraded. Currently I could upgrade again, but the improvement would be minimal for the price. One of the best things I did was buy some quiet case fans. This is a link to a review of case fans that's pretty comprehensive: Conclusion: Who's King of the Hill? - 120mm Radiator Fan Roundup Part 2: Fan Harder[^] I did get the Nocuta fans when I first bought the case and I need to listen carefully in my quiet home office to even begin to hear them. Good Luck!

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                • C ClockMeister

                  You don't need to spend that. Dell puts out a fine product, the XPS Series. I have a 4-year-old XPS 8300 that I've built up with 1.5TB of SSD and 16GB of main. Seriously powerful. These aren't that expensive, either.

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                  Richard Meadows
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #29

                  I bought a Dell XPS 3 years ago. On sale for about $1,000 U.S. Has i7 8 GB ram, 1 TB Hard drive. I use the machine on site for contract work. You don't want a laptop. The CPUs in them have about 1/2 the power. When my coworkers noticed, they all demanded that their agencies supply them with desktop computers. I have since upgraded the memory to 16 G bytes. Needed that to run VMs. The machine used up about 75% of the memory with VMs running. And ran noticably slower. Also added a 2nd 1 T Byte hard drive. Just to keep code on different drive than OS. Going to replace the HDD with 525 G Byte SSD that I found on NewEgg for little over $100 U.S. If I were to replace it today and need it fast, would be hard to beat Dell XPS. I been thinking about a new build. Considering a Skylake i7. But Brodwell i7 or i7 Extream I think would be better suited. Reviews of CPUs for compiling code is hard to come by.

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                  • A Andrew Torrance

                    So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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                    Richard Meadows
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #30

                    If I had 2,000 pounds to spend. I would go build a machine with i-7 Broadwell Extream CPU, 32 G Bytes Ram. For the hard dive, I would get 2 Intel 750 SSDs and put them in a RAID configuration

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                    • R Richard Meadows

                      I bought a Dell XPS 3 years ago. On sale for about $1,000 U.S. Has i7 8 GB ram, 1 TB Hard drive. I use the machine on site for contract work. You don't want a laptop. The CPUs in them have about 1/2 the power. When my coworkers noticed, they all demanded that their agencies supply them with desktop computers. I have since upgraded the memory to 16 G bytes. Needed that to run VMs. The machine used up about 75% of the memory with VMs running. And ran noticably slower. Also added a 2nd 1 T Byte hard drive. Just to keep code on different drive than OS. Going to replace the HDD with 525 G Byte SSD that I found on NewEgg for little over $100 U.S. If I were to replace it today and need it fast, would be hard to beat Dell XPS. I been thinking about a new build. Considering a Skylake i7. But Brodwell i7 or i7 Extream I think would be better suited. Reviews of CPUs for compiling code is hard to come by.

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                      ClockMeister
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #31

                      Sounds like you have, basically, the same thing I have. This 8300 originally came with 8GB and a 1TB drive and it has always been uber reliable and very fast. (i7/2600, I think). I put one of the 512GB SSD units and one 1TB one in there and the machine just plain flies. Also upgraded it to 16GB main so I can run VM's also. I have it backed up to a 2TB Toshiba, a big 24" monitor, etc. Running Win7 Pro and all my development goodies. I doubt I'll upgrade it before I retire unless something just physically breaks - great machine. :-)

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                      • A Andrew Torrance

                        So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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                        Stuart Dootson
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #32

                        We got HP Z420s for that price in 2013 - 3.2GHz 6 core Xeons, 32GB RAM, 250GB SSD, 1TB HDD and a (superfluous for you) 24" monitor. Oh, and a pricey Nvidia Quadro graphics card, which was overkill really. They've not been the most reliable, but mines been fine, very fast, and runs multiple VMs without any fuss.

                        Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p

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                        • A Andrew Torrance

                          So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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                          hpcoder2
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #33

                          I faced this dilemma about six months ago. For me the answer was an Intel NUC running 3GHz i7, fully tricked up with 500GB SSD and 16GB memory. Translated into GPB, it'll probably set you back about 700 pounds. It's a fantastic dev box, and is portable to boot (I permanently leave an ssh server running on its built in ethernet port so that I can get access from my laptop if no monitor is handy). Otherwise you can take an HDMI cable and a small wireless keyboard, making use of available TV sets for a monitor.

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                          • C ColinBurnell

                            Unless you need fancy graphics or something more esoteric, even £1200 sounds excessive. You can get a pretty decent workstation for 700 to 800 quid, add a decent SSD and call it £900 to £1000; forget the VAT and save yourself 600 to 700 notes.

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                            Lost User
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #34

                            Buy 3 at 700 each, call it a private cloud - 3X the fun and can claim. You say for dev, go desktop: if you want descent multi mon (multi 4k?) better CPU/GPU (lappies either cut down C/GPU or they run hotter then a toaster), less native USB & and lousy multi SSD support. Or 2 X desktop, 1 X lap as a "cloud"

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                            • A Andrew Torrance

                              So I dont spend my own money that often on development machines . But its that time again. Every time I end up trawling through lots of sites comparing who has the best machines at the moment . I have no preference for laptop or desktop but want lots of power , a fair size SSD and a quiet machine . My budget I hear you ask ? Probably up to £2000 but maybe a bit more . No monitor needed . Does anyone have any current recommendations ?

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                              Gates VP
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #35

                              If you want to spend that much money, you're in a weird space because you are bordering on the price of an actual server. At that level, you can do a few things: * Get a "second-from the top" CPU. Typically in the USD$750 range. * Get two video cards to power a pair of big monitors at full resolution. * Get top-notch SSDs and put them in RAID 1. Ensure that you have the enough throughput on motherboard, many mobos can't handle that type of throughput. My biggest struggle with recent development machines has really centered around lack of CPU power, lack of screen real estate and lack of drive speed. If you spend your day doing things like compiling your code and running unit tests, then your computer is mostly dependent on CPU + IO. Doing things like git checkout and branch can cause lots of data to cycle through memory while you sit on those two things. Using a tool like Resharper can also suck up your CPU as it's doing real-time compilation over and over again. Likewise, I have yet to stare a at computer and go "too much screen real estate". I know people who work on a pair of 30" monitors. It seems ridiculous until you realize that you actually have stuff to fill out those screens. Getting a pair of dedicated video cards is the best way to power those two devices.

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