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Development PC

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  • W Offline
    W Offline
    Wastedtalent
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    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?

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    • W Wastedtalent

      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?

      J Offline
      J Offline
      Jacquers
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      AMD CPU ;P

      W E 2 Replies Last reply
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      • J Jacquers

        AMD CPU ;P

        W Offline
        W Offline
        Wastedtalent
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        A10?

        Kornfeld Eliyahu PeterK 1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • W Wastedtalent

          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?

          V Offline
          V Offline
          V 0
          wrote on last edited by
          #4

          intel i7 16 GB or more SSD for OS and programs and an additional 1 TB or more for your data A reasonable graphics card, sufficient for at least 2 screens on a high resolution blazingly fast internet sufficient USB ports Something like that :)

          V.

          (MQOTD rules and previous solutions)

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          • V V 0

            intel i7 16 GB or more SSD for OS and programs and an additional 1 TB or more for your data A reasonable graphics card, sufficient for at least 2 screens on a high resolution blazingly fast internet sufficient USB ports Something like that :)

            V.

            (MQOTD rules and previous solutions)

            W Offline
            W Offline
            Wastedtalent
            wrote on last edited by
            #5

            Sounds expensive :(

            D V 2 Replies Last reply
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            • W Wastedtalent

              A10?

              Kornfeld Eliyahu PeterK Offline
              Kornfeld Eliyahu PeterK Offline
              Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter
              wrote on last edited by
              #6

              FX 9000

              Skipper: We'll fix it. Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this? Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.

              "It never ceases to amaze me that a spacecraft launched in 1977 can be fixed remotely from Earth." ― Brian Cox

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              • V V 0

                intel i7 16 GB or more SSD for OS and programs and an additional 1 TB or more for your data A reasonable graphics card, sufficient for at least 2 screens on a high resolution blazingly fast internet sufficient USB ports Something like that :)

                V.

                (MQOTD rules and previous solutions)

                L Offline
                L Offline
                Lost User
                wrote on last edited by
                #7

                1TB/512MB SSD's cheap enough now, and worth way way more than the i7 (vs say an i5) spinners are dying tech, and actually less resilient (as well as mile slower) than SSD these days.

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                • W Wastedtalent

                  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?

                  C Offline
                  C Offline
                  CodeWraith
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #8

                  Yes, one that will cut your hardware requirements down: Get rid of that resource hog named Visual Studio and use SharpDevelop instead. Suddently your computer's hardware is not as important anymore.

                  I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.

                  M 1 Reply Last reply
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                  • W Wastedtalent

                    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?

                    L Offline
                    L Offline
                    Lost User
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #9

                    Might want to wait till the intel issue is sorted (and watch out for cut price old stock with the problem still there.) Absolutely SSD: with the huge size of VS (or pretty much any dev platform) you're better going SSD even if it means cutting back budget on the CPU - most tasks are disk IO bound (loading different stages of the dev env, compiler etc.) I'm happy ith an i5 and SSD, outperforms the wifes i7/spinner by miles (and she's not doing dev.) Edit: keep an eye out for USB 3.1 (backwards compatible to prev versions) too. Unless doing high itensity graphics you can actually do well without a graphics card, most MOBI's have the intel graphics built in and can run 3 displays high res

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                    • C CodeWraith

                      Yes, one that will cut your hardware requirements down: Get rid of that resource hog named Visual Studio and use SharpDevelop instead. Suddently your computer's hardware is not as important anymore.

                      I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.

                      M Offline
                      M Offline
                      megaadam
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #10

                      Personally I would vote Linux, whenever possible. And I wonder: How good is SharpDevelop support for C++?

                      ... such stuff as dreams are made on

                      C 1 Reply Last reply
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                      • M megaadam

                        Personally I would vote Linux, whenever possible. And I wonder: How good is SharpDevelop support for C++?

                        ... such stuff as dreams are made on

                        C Offline
                        C Offline
                        CodeWraith
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #11

                        megaadam wrote:

                        Personally I would vote Linux, whenever possible.

                        Good choice.

                        megaadam wrote:

                        How good is SharpDevelop support for C++?

                        I have not even looked for C++ support in SharpDevelop and I think it's for .Net only. So the most I would expect is the old managed C++.

                        I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.

                        1 Reply Last reply
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                        • W Wastedtalent

                          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?

                          R Offline
                          R Offline
                          Rage
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #12

                          Why a desktop ?

                          Do not escape reality : improve reality !

                          W A 2 Replies Last reply
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                          • W Wastedtalent

                            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?

                            M Offline
                            M Offline
                            Munchies_Matt
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #13

                            i7 quad CPU motherboard with a shit load of SSD, 32 gigs or ram, and a terrabyte of disk will be about as fast as you can get.

                            1 Reply Last reply
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                            • W Wastedtalent

                              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?

                              N Offline
                              N Offline
                              Nathan Minier
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #14

                              My suggestion would be to evaluate your use case. If you're likely to develop applications that require a range of virtual machines or containers to test against, you might want to run a Xeon with 64+ GB. If you're doing web development, pretty much anything will do. Then there's everything in between :)

                              "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." - Benjamin Disraeli

                              1 Reply Last reply
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                              • W Wastedtalent

                                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?

                                P Offline
                                P Offline
                                PeejayAdams
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #15

                                Depending on what you're working on, I think there's often a good argument for using pretty average (or even sub-average) machines for development. Something that flies along on a dream machine might well be rather sluggish on your typical user's five year-old $300 laptop.

                                98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.

                                D 1 Reply Last reply
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                                • P PeejayAdams

                                  Depending on what you're working on, I think there's often a good argument for using pretty average (or even sub-average) machines for development. Something that flies along on a dream machine might well be rather sluggish on your typical user's five year-old $300 laptop.

                                  98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.

                                  D Offline
                                  D Offline
                                  Daniel Pfeffer
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #16

                                  Your time is money, so development should be done on the fastest machine that you can afford. However, you should periodically test your code on a "typical" machine, so as to identify ant problems the "typical" user might encounter.

                                  If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack. --Winston Churchill

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                                  • W Wastedtalent

                                    Sounds expensive :(

                                    D Offline
                                    D Offline
                                    dandy72
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #17

                                    Sounds like under $1K to me. You, as a developer, are expensive. Don't make yourself wait after your dev box.

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • L Lost User

                                      Might want to wait till the intel issue is sorted (and watch out for cut price old stock with the problem still there.) Absolutely SSD: with the huge size of VS (or pretty much any dev platform) you're better going SSD even if it means cutting back budget on the CPU - most tasks are disk IO bound (loading different stages of the dev env, compiler etc.) I'm happy ith an i5 and SSD, outperforms the wifes i7/spinner by miles (and she's not doing dev.) Edit: keep an eye out for USB 3.1 (backwards compatible to prev versions) too. Unless doing high itensity graphics you can actually do well without a graphics card, most MOBI's have the intel graphics built in and can run 3 displays high res

                                      D Offline
                                      D Offline
                                      Dan Neely
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #18

                                      lopati: roaming wrote:

                                      Might want to wait till the intel issue is sorted (and watch out for cut price old stock with the problem still there.)

                                      New hardware with the Meltdown fix (and any hardware changes that might be made to mitigate Spectre) isn't expected before 2019 at the earliest; hardware changes are slow... Short term DRAM and NAND flash markets have been tight over the last year or so pushing prices upward, no good ETA on when/if prices will recover. For NAND it's been equal parts continued growth in demand combined with the ongoing conversion to 3D flash meaning that a larger share of production is out of service. DRAM's suffered from higher than expected demand from Mobile, Cloud, and Crypto customers. The manufacturers seem to've finally learned from the past boom/bust cycles in the DRAM market and aren't throwing massive amounts of money at new capacity this time around that has lead to the inevitable busts. The worst part of the current HW market, if not really a major concern for Wasted Talent, is GPU availability; driven by the surge in cryptocurrencies that aren't suitable to ASIC mining. That's not likely to change short of the current round of price deflation going a lot lower; and because if/when that happens the current mining cards will flood the used market destroying new sales and inflicting another round of major losses on AMD/Nvidia, neither are eager to try and address the current shortage by increasing production.

                                      Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing 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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                                      • W Wastedtalent

                                        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?

                                        D Offline
                                        D Offline
                                        David Crow
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #19

                                        Wastedtalent wrote:

                                        ...other than that I have no idea.

                                        Seriously? Buy what you can afford. I've never understood why folks get so hung up on things like whether to get a 500GB or 1TB drive, a 20" or 24" display, a wired or wireless mouse, a keyboard with our without back lights, 16GB or 32GB of RAM, etc. Buy the most of what you can afford. As to a potential "But I want others' opinion as to whether or not this ??? video card is any good" response, I think it has been shown hundreds of times that for each positive review you find on a particular item, you'll find just as many negative reviews. Since they cancel each other out, it boils down to what you can afford and what you are comfortable with.

                                        "One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

                                        "Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

                                        "You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles

                                        W 1 Reply Last reply
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                                        • W Wastedtalent

                                          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?

                                          R Offline
                                          R Offline
                                          realJSOP
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #20

                                          For dev work, it's all about *your* productivity. Period. End of story. That means you should buy the fastest box you can afford in terms of processor, memory, and disk speed. If you use dual/triple monitors, you may have to buy an add-on video card that supports multiple monitors. Fortunately, a reasonably capable card shouldn't cost more than $50 nowadays. Hard drive *speed* is not part of the equation where testing is concerned. All you need to worry about is how much disk space is required. If you're writing desktop apps and you want to test on "lesser" machines, you should probably buy a separate box with minimal hardware (2gb RAM and a slow cpu). It's cheaper than you might think. You could even buy a used older box off craigs list, or even an older laptop (if you really want to go slow). You should avoid using your dev box for environmental testing. Afterall, you have to make sure the installer/uninstaller works, as well as your app, and that means machines that don't necessarily have any dev tools on it. I personally run a 6-core I5 with 32gb RAM at home. All of my hard drives are spinners, but the system is snappy enough for my needs.

                                          ".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
                                          -----
                                          You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
                                          -----
                                          When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013

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