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Ask YC: What kind of desktop to buy?

2 points by smanek ↗ HN
So, I find myself in the market for a new desktop, and am having trouble finding anything that meets my needs. I have the rest of my setup (Kinesis keyboard, two giant monitors, etc) and just need the actual computer.

My requirements are:

-Under $1000

-At least 16GB of Ram (i.e., 8 DIMMs)

-At least 5 internal HDD bays, but I only need one fast (10K RPM+) HDD preinstalled.

-At least 4 CPU cores

-Supports Linux (Debian, ideally)

Things I don't care about include:

-How fast the CPU cores are

-What kind of video cards it has

-How big it is

-How cool it looks

Will anyone sell me a computer that matches my needs for a reasonable price? Or do I just need to buckle down and build it myself? (I've priced it out, and should be able to do it within my priced range, but I've found building computers to be more trouble than its worth)

I know the Mac Pro meets most of my requirements but it's a bit out of my price range at the moment, and OS X doesn't easily support all the software I want (I currently have an iMac, and I spend more time than I care to trying to make it behave like Linux).

5 comments

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jwilliams
I currently have an iMac, and I spend more time than I care to trying to make it behave like Linux

Really? OS X runs everything I've ever needed/stumbled across - for everything else I use a VM (e.g. I can't be bothered using a Linux 64bit cross-compiler toolchain on OSX, so I just do it in a VM).

smanek
Well, my iMac tops out at 3GB of RAM, which makes running a VM a little tough.

As an example, yesterday I was doing some work in SBCL (Lisp) that required multithreading. Due to a bug in sb-thread in the Mac implementation of SBCL I needed to use a Linux VM. However, the 2GB of memory I could afford to devote to the Linux VM was insufficient (in fact, the entire 3GB would probably have been insufficient - that being part of the reason for the upgrade).

Take me at my word when I say I need Linux and 16GB of Ram (I could probably make do with 8GB, but I'd rather be future-proof with 16GB).

jwilliams
Well, my iMac tops out at 3GB of RAM, which makes running a VM a little tough.

Shrug - Just curious really.... I run a MBP with 3Gb as well - Eclipse and 2 VMs, runs pretty well. One is the repo, the other is a build/test VM. I don't allocate nearly as much RAM to them, however. Occasionally fire up a Windows VM to check I haven't broken the Win32 build.

For larger tests I've built some Linux headless boxes. I just ssh in and co/make/run when necessary. For my needs a pretty inexpensive way of going about it.

grouchyOldGuy
I personally prefer building my own systems so that I can upgrade or repair it easily. All of the big box manufacturers use non-standard cases, motherboards, and power supplies. They will use standard components like RAM, drives, etc. but motherboards typically won't be a standard form-factor like ATX.