I am posting this on the openSuse [hardware] forum to get opinions/advice and make sure what I purchase will mesh well with openSuse OS.
It seems that there are no sites out there that address what is a good quality build for something “not gaming”. Maybe someone knows of one to direct me to?
I am NOT opposed to choosing a “Gaming” board if it fits the bill and I realize a “Gaming” board is not necessarily just for gaming, but is synonymous with power.
I chose the Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe for my last build, but that is now at least 5 years old and technology has moved ahead, so time to catch up.
I will be using some of the same parts -
Case [Thermaltake Overseer RX-I][ATX],
Sound card [Asus Xonar STX Essence], with Axiom speakers
Power Supply [Seasonic 760W Platinum],
DVD Combo [Asus 24B3ST]
Monitor LG 24" DP
Hard Drives 3 Sata drives WD 2.5 Raptors 7200 rpm [Storage]
I am mostly into music and video editing, net surfing.
I use openSuse [currently Leap 42.2] as my OS. I am never planning to dual boot on this machine.
I am looking at a Gigabyte GA-Z270X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard and a Asus TUF Z270 MARK 1 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard, both with Z270 chipset and DDR4 3000 32GB ram. **If you know of a better choice of m/board that will be a good performer for my uses, pls say.
**
Both Gigabyte and Asus say these boards would be acceptable for what I want to do, but they are selling them so I am a little reticent to take only their word for it, solely.
Price wise they are acceptable, but **I am open to suggestions.
**
Quality sound is important. My sound card will work with newer m/boards.
I want to take advantage of the new board being ‘Optane’ ready.
I want to use m.2 NVMe SSD [possibly Samsung sm961].
For the price difference, it makes sense to me to choose the i7-7700k CPU.
I am unsure what type of GPU would be best. nVidia or Raedon [AMD]. **Advice would be welcome.
**I have been to the openSuse hardware portal, but I don’t see much that is beyond openSuse 11.3. Is the portal not used anymore?
In short, I would welcome any constructive advice and suggestions in moving me forward to putting together a machine that states power, longevity and quality.
Thank You.
When I built up my own machines I always used Asus parts when ever possible. For Asus people may as well read HP.
It’s worth paying for a cpu cooler from people like artic cooling which blow through rather than down onto the processor as they remain cleaner for a long time. Some also use a larger slower fan which tends to keep the noise down.
The best case I ever used was from a Taiwanese company. Rather expensive and heavily built. The drive bay could be pulled out and was ventilated with a decent sized quiet fan via a filter which kept the dust out and was easy to clean.
For sound I use a soundblaster titanium xfi but am having problems with grunts at the beginning and end of any sound that plays. Also for no apparent reason at times. Having had some other problems I haven’t really looked around to see if there are solutions to this only mentioned it on here with no suggestions coming back. It might be my set up or a kde problem. Not sure. It wasn’t a problem on my previous version of opensuse (12.3) so seems to be down to the upgrade.
I’ve never really had any linux compatibility problems but feel that it can be wise to buy printers and scanners etc that are supported under Linux directly by the manufacturer. If not it’s best to find out exactly what the open source drivers for things like this offer. I think things have improved a lot in this area now but having used Linux for over 15 years I tend to stick with manufacture support just in case. In the past where linux isn’t supported on the latest greatest it’s sometimes take a long time for open source to catch up with what the manufacturers offer on mac and windows.
I still have windows about on a laptop - just to update firmware in certain things. That could also be done by say loading xp into a virtual machine such as virtualbox.
AMD just released their Ryzen platform, which looks VERY cool. It’s much cheaper than the current generation of Intel i7, too. Maybe you could look into Ryzen and see if it might work for you? Keep in mind that while Ryzen will likely work fine in Leap 42.2, you may be missing features the processor offers. Those features are supported in kernel 4.10, which you can get in Tumbleweed now. (And maybe Leap 43.3 when it comes out?)
Also, what is the full model name of your LG monitor? I also have a 24" LG and I had to do a very simple change in its EDID to make it work on the latest AMD video drivers.