What's Your Build?

[leeor_net]

We used to do this a lot in the past, might as well continue the trend!

What build are you running now?


AMD FX 8320 CPU -- 3.5ghz, 8 core
12GB Kignston DDR3 RAM
2x MSI GeForce GTX 550 Ti linked in SLI, factory overclocked

Built on an MSI 970 Gaming motherboard.

Pretty sure that's the important stuff... I think hard drive capacity and access speed is irrelevant these days because of the advent of SSD flash technology and because of how cheap standard HDD storage is these days (maybe $30 for a 1TiB device), but for those who must know 500GiB internal, 1TiB external.

[Hooman]

Aspire E11
Intel Celeron N2830, 2 Core, 2.16GHz (up to 2.41 GHz)
8GB DDR3L (upgraded from 2GB)
500GB HDD

[Drakmar]

Just recently finished rebuilding my primary machine from the ground up after a few months of procuring components, so I thought I'd chime in.

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 TH
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K Quad Core @ 4.0 Ghz (Turbo @ 4.2 Ghz)
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 (2 GB GDDR5) [Upgrading to a 4 GB 9xx-series in the next few weeks]
RAM: 32 GB DDR4 2400 Mhz (2 x 16 GB Modules)
HDD: 240 GB SSD (Windows Boot Drive), 480 GB SSD (macOS Boot Drive), 3 TB HDD (Shared Data Drive)

[leeor_net]

Not to judge... but why on earth gigabyte? I hear people have success with them but when I was building dozens of computers a month I had nothing but problems with them and two actually caught fire. And I'm not talking about just the mysterious blue smoke, I mean actual flames coming off the motherboard. I didn't know that was even possible.

Since then I've stuck with MSI and Asus.

As for the GPU, very nice though I would say just save up a bit more and upgrade to the 1080Ti, 'nother big step up. Kinda jealy about that but reality is I don't play a lot of high performance games anymore. -_-

Everything else looks great though! 12GB RAM I'm running is easily more than enough for what I do -- before my rebuild I'd been running on 3GB for years... seemed like enough!

[Drakmar]

Gigabyte isn't my first choice normally, and I did a lot of research before deciding on that board (I had plenty of time to do so while saving up for this monstrosity of a machine, haha). It had very good user reviews for such a new chipset, so I decided to switch from my aging ASUS one. Thus far, I am not displeased. Performance is great, and I'm loving the latest-gen Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 Type C connectors. Plus, the audio chipset on the board has an integrated led strip that pulses with my music/sound effects. How can one not enjoy that?

On a more serious note, macOS is my primary OS, and that board/chipset was the best choice for running a machine with this level of raw power on my budget. Given that I can outperform any Mac (or any other brand for that matter) under $3,500 on a machine I built for $1,100, I'm satisfied with it, even if it is a Gigabyte board.

As for the 10xx-series, they aren't yet compatible with macOS, which I prefer to Windows (unless I'm in the mood to game, naturally), and thus I have to stick with the newest one that will still load accelerated graphics.

EDIT: Added a bit more detail

[leeor_net]

Bleh, I forget that MacOS (and really Apple in general) tends to lag behind on the bleeding edge technology.

Totally digging the new Type C connectors. Kinda took a page from Apple's book on that one it seems (lightning connector).

LED pulsing on the MB was stolen from others but eh, what can you expect from these SEA MFG's?

The MSI board I'm running now is built with military grade components (high performance solid state capacitors instead of liquid electrolytic caps) and amazing audio circuitry. And it runs an AMD chipset which, while technically not as fast as Intel, gives you a hell of a bang for your buck ($189 for this CPU vs $800 for the equivalent Intel cpu).

[Drakmar]

It's not that they lag behind, it's simply that they are extremely particular in the technologies they choose to implement, often preferring to wait until they can mold it to their needs best. Usually with dramatic results (ease-of-use is a biggie on that front)

The Type C connector has me very excited, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the end of the Type A/B/mini/micro/blah blah connectors. One reversible connector to rule them all!

I actually looked into a few MSI boards as well, though I have noticed that most tend to be AMD based, and I really am more of a Intel/Nvidia guy. (I'm a brand-whore, I know). I've never been a fan of AMD/ATI, even back in the 90s. For me, Intel has always been worth the extra cost for the performance and longevity of their chips.

EDIT: Fixed a typo.

[leeor_net]

I still hate ATI/AMD GPU's and stick with nVidia all the way. I've been turned off to Intel ever since the Pentium 4 bug and now for me it's a matter of price vs. performance.

[Hooman]

I like the power efficiency of Intel chips. At least Intel chips were reputed to have better power efficiency back when I looked into it a few years ago. Not sure if that still holds true. Granted, my last tower build, which was meant to have really good power efficiency, used an AMD chip. That was largely due to price and packaging though, in that I could get that one reasonably low power chip AMD was making for cheap, and still get nice things like USB3.0 and lots of SATA connections. The box houses 5 drives, so having the SATA connections was important. At the time, I couldn't find an available low power Intel chip packaged with a motherboard with similar offerings.

[leeor_net]

Intel generally has better power efficiency but I don't really see much importance in that in a desktop build. Laptops and other mobile devices certainly make sense.

[Goof]

My PC Specs

• Proc : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
• 32nm
• 4 cores
• 8 thread (HT enabled)
• MB : Asus P8P67LE (Intel P67 rev. B3)
• Memory Size : 16384 MBytes DDR3
• 2x4096 MBytes PC3-10700 (667 MHz) Crucial Technology
• 2x4096 MBytes PC3-10700 (667 MHz) Corsair
• GPU : MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2Go GDDR5
• 28 nm
• 2GB GDDR5
• OS : Microsoft Windows 7 (6.1) Ultimate Edition 64-bit  Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

Most pieces are from May 2010
Just added after
 - 8 GB of ram around 2011/2012
 - 128 GB SSD in 2012 then 256 Gb SSD in 2014
 - Graphical card changed last year as the first one blew up (metaphorically speaking but definitively does not worked as it should)

6 years for this one
My last was a core 2 duo and still running as i gave it to my brother.

I planned to switch to a Kaby Lake (14nm) setup this fall when it will come out.
(Or a bit after to avoid first batch CPU/chipset issues)
The bad point for me is that only W10 will fully support these CPU, because W10 sucks.
Like M$ did with XP and SSD optimisation ... but XP was very old.

I know that 10 nm CPUs should out in 2017, but my MB start to have some weakness.

Goof

[Hooman]

Intel generally has better power efficiency but I don't really see much importance in that in a desktop build. Laptops and other mobile devices certainly make sense.

Power efficiency is also becoming important in server farms. There's been a lot of interest in using Atom chips in servers. In some cases, certain server farms can't be expanded simply because the building's power supply can't handle additional load, even if they have the floor space for more computers.

In my case, I just really like things like power efficiency, green energy, solar, that sort of thing. I used the weak excuse that the tower was being used as a 24/7 server, and so I wanted some power efficiency out of it. Considering the cost of the high efficiency power supply over a regular stock model, it may not turn out to be much of an investment, but based on estimations, I suspect it will about break even over the life of the machine.

I believe increased power efficiency also provides some gains for overclocking, since in many cases it is heat limited.


Edit: It seems everyone has a higher end system than mine.

[leeor_net]

Power efficiency is also becoming important in server farms.

Hadn't considered that but makes a lot of sense, actually.

I personally am not worried about the power consumption of my machine, especially after I install the solar panels on my roof. Though besides my own personal computer I have three other high end machines, similar builds (but running better GPU's) in the house so really when I think about it we're probably using as much power or more than a kitchen refrigerator...

[Goof]

I also heard about people wanting to do Raspberry Pi servers ... professional hosting.
RPI isn't a machine made to be a high end server placed in data centers.
A VPS server will mostly be more efficient than the RPI as :
 - No Sata storage on the RPI
 - Low efficiency 10/100 Mb Ethernet Adapter
 - WIFI ... useless
 - BT ... useless
 - Not manageable by lan

Meanwhile, scaleway build a kind of super high density blade server (ARM/X86) with a power near the RPI
I think that they are more efficient in power output than RPI

PS :
With a Celeron CPU, you will mostly be under the average power of desktop CPUs sold when you bought your PC.
So it's not so difficult to do better.
There's no shame, it just need some patience ;-)

[Drakmar]

Since the topic has shifted to servers, here's the server specs that NTCS sits on top of:

Motherboard: ASUS P8B75-M/CSM
CPU: Intel Core i3-3220 @ 3.30 Ghz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 210 (1 GB GDDR3)
RAM: 32 GB DDR3 1600 Mhz (4 x 8 GB Modules)
HDD: 2 TB HDD (macOS Server Boot Drive), 3 TB HDD (Server/Data Storage Drive)

[Hooman]

Though besides my own personal computer I have three other high end machines, similar builds (but running better GPU's) in the house so really when I think about it we're probably using as much power or more than a kitchen refrigerator...

And someday kitchen refrigerators might have more computing power.

RPI isn't a machine made to be a high end server placed in data centers.

A lot of what most servers do doesn't require a high end machine. It's mostly just data retrieval and storage. Not much computing required.

I don't imagine a consumer packaged Raspberry Pi would be suitable in a server environment, particularly with the points you mentioned, but a low cost, power efficient, minimal computing device, similar in spirit to the Raspberry Pi could be quite popular there. That's exactly why there was so much interest in using the Atom for server environments.

Cool blade server video. Wish they'd said more about it though.

[lordpalandus]

My Rig:

i7-5820k, 6 Core, 2 Thread ~ 3.3GHZ
256GB SSD and 2TB HD
16 GB DDR4
Titan X 12GB DDR5
Liquid Cooling Heat Sink + Two Fans
Windows 8.1

[leeor_net]

Nice.

Though you should upgrade to Windows 10.

Anybody else? C'mon, I know you're out there!