[TriLUG] New computer...finally!

[Steven Pinkham]

Paul G. Szabady wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I've been looking at new computers and see a number of them that offer
> raided SATA SDD disks.  Does anyone have experience with on linux?  Is
> it worth the extra $$$?

Most of these use "fakeraid". md is much better then fakeraid IMHO.  If
you pay a lot you can get decent hardware raid, but fakeraid leaves you
tied to specific hardware that is hard to change out, with basically no
beneift(unless you dual boot Windows).

I wouldn't worry about raid one way or the other when building/buying
the system, just get two(or more) disks and use md.

> How about differences between Intel and AMD?  I don't want to start a
> religious war, but do people have a preference nowadays or are the
> issues of the past history?

Up until recently fairly matched, but in the latest generation Intel is
definitely on the rise.  AMD has traditionally been a better deal at the
lower end of the spectrum, but recently Intel is competitive there, as
well as being faster at the high end.

The other side of the coin is Intel motherboards tend to be more
expensive, and often times AMD still makes sense on the low end.

Still, we're talking a few percentage points here, and it's not a killer
difference.  Any modern CPU is probably faster then you need, and much
faster than what you are used to. ;-)

For a laptop I'd go Intel for power reasons, but on a desktop, it's just
not a big deal these days.

> Lastly, a lot of the systems I see have fairly small power supplies.
> Have they really made that much progress with technology that that a
> 300-350W is sufficient for a "modest" computer with 8 cores, 8-12GB Mem,
> single DVD/Blu-ray, HD video card, etc.  It's a fairly small jump
> ~$50-75 to go to 600W which would leave room future for add-ons.

These days, power is only really necessary for high end graphics cards.
 Unless you're like me and tend to put 6-10 HDs in a system, then that
can end up using some power also. ;-)

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