Development PC
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I'm thinking about buying a new development PC as I tend to do a little at home on my laptop but thinking about doing more work from home so need a more powerful machine. It's been years since I bought a desktop and I have no idea where to start or what is good value these days, or what specs to go for. I am thinking 16GB RAM is a must but other than that I have no idea. Any suggestions?
Make sure your PC is quiet by getting fans designed to be quiet. I only hear my PC when I turn it off and I can hear the change. Just do a little research to find quiet fans (New Egg?, Tom's Hardware) Also you can get software to monitor the temps of the motherboard and CPU. With that you can unplug fans one by one to eliminate the noise altogether and keep everything cool under whatever load you are creating. If you get a CPU cooler - with pipes containing liquid and radiator fins - it's much easier to keep the CPU cool anyway so you don't need as much airflow. Less noise means better programming!
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I'm thinking about buying a new development PC as I tend to do a little at home on my laptop but thinking about doing more work from home so need a more powerful machine. It's been years since I bought a desktop and I have no idea where to start or what is good value these days, or what specs to go for. I am thinking 16GB RAM is a must but other than that I have no idea. Any suggestions?
My recommendations: CPU: Intel i5 or i7 RAM: 16 GB RAM or More (if 16 GB ram, buy only one chip, so later you can upgrade to 32 GB RAM) HD Hybrid: drive 1 - SSD 128GB or more for OS drive 2 - 1TB or more for data In Portugal ~ 800 € and you have a computer for at least 6 to 8 years. Don't buy the top on the market.
NKS
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Why a desktop ?
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I've been building my own PCs since the mid-90's. In fact I have the same exact PC I started with in 1996! :) I admit that I have changed some components over the years, like replacing my HD every 2 to 3 years. [Get an SSD, I just did, it's FAST!] The motherboard, CPU, and RAM have been swapped out every 4 to 5 years. DVD burners and video cards too. Back in the days of floppy drives and multi-card readers -- had to replace them, but not as often. And the case and power supply, had to replace them a few times. So ... if you ignore that I replaced every single component numerous times, I have that same PC I started with! I build PCs because I can shop around and get what I want. I do NOT buy top end. The new stuff is highly priced, and last year's model is sufficient to get 5 years out of it. The initial build is the most expensive, as you're buying everything at once. Since then I don't think I've spent more than $400 USD in a year -- I watch sales and buy when the price is right for me.
Yeah, I have been building my own development PCs for a few years now. For me the 'sweet spot' seems to be a CPU that is 1 or 2 below the current best, and more memory than you ever expect to use. Also, one drive for OS and installed programs, and a another for development, etc.
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I'm thinking about buying a new development PC as I tend to do a little at home on my laptop but thinking about doing more work from home so need a more powerful machine. It's been years since I bought a desktop and I have no idea where to start or what is good value these days, or what specs to go for. I am thinking 16GB RAM is a must but other than that I have no idea. Any suggestions?
Get a MB that supports PCIe x4 M.w2 ssd, like the Intel H270 chipset or better. The fastest hard drive i/f available for a reasonably priced desktop. Build your own machine. Use pcpartspicker to check that it all works together. Like others have said, get the 2nd or 3rd “best” mb and cpu. The latest and greatest aren’t generally worth the premium you’ll pay. You can build something blazing fast for around $1000 plus or minus depending on how many buzzes and whistles you want to add.
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I'm thinking about buying a new development PC as I tend to do a little at home on my laptop but thinking about doing more work from home so need a more powerful machine. It's been years since I bought a desktop and I have no idea where to start or what is good value these days, or what specs to go for. I am thinking 16GB RAM is a must but other than that I have no idea. Any suggestions?
Support for up to 3 HDMI monitors. USB 2.0 ports, in addition to 3.0. DVD drive (yes; they're optional now). 5.1 Soundbar, bluetooth woofer with rear speakers. Comfy chair.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then". ― Blaise Pascal
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I'm thinking about buying a new development PC as I tend to do a little at home on my laptop but thinking about doing more work from home so need a more powerful machine. It's been years since I bought a desktop and I have no idea where to start or what is good value these days, or what specs to go for. I am thinking 16GB RAM is a must but other than that I have no idea. Any suggestions?
What sort of "development"? If it's just running an IDE and you're just compiling stuff, then you really don't need the absolute top of the range. Though debugging may require a slight bit more than just running your programs. What if you're making web backends? Do you wish to install a web server onto your machine? This may need a bit more oomph than your run-of-the-mill desktop. Same goes for any ancillary stuff like database. And then what if you wish to run things like VMs to properly test programs / apps / servlets / etc.? I.e. there simply isn't a one-answer-fits-all idea. As example, I do lots of addons for a 3d modelling program. The developing itself could have run on even an entry-level laptop, never mind a desktop. But the 3d modeller has minimum requirements, and using it on anything more complex than a cube just escalates those. To the point where my presentation laptop (the one I use to show the addons for discussion in meetings) is just about good enough - and that's a near-the-top-end gaming laptop (GTX 960, 32GB RAM, i7, 512 NVMe SSD, 1TB HDD) - the laptop cost me around $2500 about 2 years ago. My actual production workstation is a lot higher on the food chain that that, this thing is now 3 years old and cost the company around $3000. But that's because of the 3d element. And thus would definitely not be necessary for most people.
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Something like this is a good start I reckon PCPartPicker made by Marklahn The Ryzen processors do not have integrated GPUs. I added a geforce 1030 as it's the lowest-end 1000 series card, so it has all the newest connections for monitors. If you want to be able to game, you should upgrade that to a minimum of a 1060.
I saw the price un USD and thought comverting that to GBP would make it very reaosnable, except it's more in GBP, ouch!
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My old box was 7 or 8 years old. It's a matter of some irony that where I work software developers often have the oldest and slowest machines in the building. We're a hardware company managed by hardware engineers. If one of the mechanical guys needs a $50,000 pair of pliers, it's delivered to his desk by the Swedish Bikini Team the next morning along with a complimentary floor show. The only reason my old box was replaced was because it was BSOD'ing more than once a day due to an unidentifiable hardware failure.
Software Zen:
delete this;lol, I think you work in the same building as me, but I don't think we've met :) The guy that sits on the other side of my cubicle wall has a machine pushing 7 years. I cannot even tolerate how long it takes him to show me something. But, a new supervisor joined the team in December. First task was to upgrade everyone's machine. Haven't seen anything new yet.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Virtual machines suck up RAM if you are keeping VMs in parallel on a consistent processing load and have 8 GByte RAM. But you can't keep 4 VMs busy! (unless your desktop is also the build server for a few other machines, and that doesn't belong on your desktop!) VMs do NOT suck up 16 GByte working set! Flash: You do not stash your old projects at your laptop (and nowhere else). You keep an offline, off site backup (and then maybe an onside copy on a USB store for easy access). You can spend a few seconds - even a few minutes - pulling in an archived projects across a USB3; your productivity is not determined by the file copying time for picking up an old project! You may of course use a flash backup, but again: That doesn't affect your productivity as a developer. Graphics cards: Running multiple monitors is a far more valid argument than graphic performance. (There are good arguments for two displays; 3+ I dare question!) But when people start arguing about a shortage of that class of cards being used to mine bitcoins, we are not talking about $100 cards, but cards with a few thousand CUDA cores. I'd guess that nine out of ten CUDA capable cards never ran any CUDA code at all, but the owner thought it required to get enough performance. Fiber: Yes, I pointed that out, it is the standard nowadays. But a number of my friends insist on 1 Gbps fiber. I am curious about when 50 Mbps is a bottleneck in SW development work!
Oh righteous one :) yes, yes, I know about backups. lol fiber - oh, the 50Mbps just makes my kids whine.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I'm thinking about buying a new development PC as I tend to do a little at home on my laptop but thinking about doing more work from home so need a more powerful machine. It's been years since I bought a desktop and I have no idea where to start or what is good value these days, or what specs to go for. I am thinking 16GB RAM is a must but other than that I have no idea. Any suggestions?
I'll buy a nice refurbished Core i7 XPS desktop from Dell Outlet for around $600, then add an SSD for the OS and use the HDD for data. I might also add RAM (16 GB min) and upgrade the video card. $1,000 total cost, and blazing fast. Where money is no object for me is the monitor. Dell 34" ultra-wide display for my tired old eyes!