[ale] Place to buy desktop in Atlanta

[DJ-Pfulio]

On 02/26/16 16:17, damon at damtek.com wrote:
> My new system is AMD fx.8370 with a amd radeon r9 380. Why? Bang for
> your buck.
> 
> 8 cores running at 4g.  You can get Intel that does specific jobs
> better, but not for $149. Good for games and the vms I will run.

$149?!!!  Very nice for almost 9000 passmarks!
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-8370+Eight-Core
Little high on the power use, but power isn't THAT expensive here.

Saw an i7-3770 with similar performance (9300 passmark) (4 cores) and
77W, but for $100 more.  At that price, Intel Core i5-4590S (7000
passmark) and i5-4590 (7200 passmark) (non-S)

Thought that fewer cores was better for gaming and that games don't
"speak" hyperthreading. Is that still true?  The i7 cores are almost 50%
faster (core-to-core).

I much prefer the onboard IGPs - no need to add more heat + cost to a
case with a GPU. ;) But that's me ... suspect more people prefer a
separate GPU.  OTOH, without the IGP, people who want to use VGA
passthru to a Windows VM for gaming need to get 2 GPUs, since HW
passthru can only be for 1 OS at a time and the hostOS needs a GPU too.

For VMs - there's no question that more cores is nice.

Sometimes I compare CPUs using CPUBoss and CPU-World.com -
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4590-vs-AMD-FX-8370
Sometimes they have the wrong specs, so look for big mistakes for things
you think are important. I'd rate these as very similar overall, just
with different strengths.  Looks like a good choice - plus the AMD
supports ECC RAM, so get down with ZFS!

And don't forget that newer systems may require DDR4 RAM (not the AMD
above), which is a premium cost these days. For me, I'd avoid that,
since there is spare DDR3 RAM around here.  I avoided DDR3 and SATA for
about 3-4 yrs too. ;)