Steveoc64

Im going to completely buck the trend here, and say that this is a useful addition to the lineup of build options. Not every piece of hardware has to be used to play the latest Windows games on, for which (as you well know) enthusiastic consumers are slugged a hefty premium for the privilege of playing. For a machine to do actual work on ... running Linux of course, the current FX Piledrivers and even older Bulldozers are still extremely useful processors, and will remain so for several years to come. Being able to optimize compiles against the AMD architecture, and make proper use of CMT scheduling ... these FX machines fly when running Linux (or BSD even). You can actually squeeze close to i7 / Xeon performance out of them without overclocking ... if you know what you are doing. Also having access to the full un-crippled virtualization options with these FX chips puts them ahead of several "better" Intel chips. Big core count + 64bits + virtualization + cheap DDR3 == very useful for a workstation. It makes perfect sense to me to get some of these new ASUS 990 boards to build some development workstations that offer great bang for the buck, and use a solid, proven MB design with quality components and reliable voltage regulation. Absolutely perfect platform for coding, developing Android apps, hosting ChromeOS sessions under a real VM host, etc. ... of course nobody on here is likely to agree with that, if you think that the only use for a PC is to run some version of Windows.

I for one would be extremely pissed off about this ..... if it meant that ANY of my hard-earned was ending up in Microsoft's pocket. But its not, because I cant recall a time where I have ever paid a cent for any Linux OS. I pay for my OS of choice through personal contributions to code. If MS wants to use any of MY code patches in stuff they are building, then Im fine with that, and dont expect any "royalties" or other bullshit. What this story is saying is that Microsoft is extorting cash out of other corporate entities that are making cash out of Linux. How are these corporate entities making cash out of Linux ? No idea, but its probably something involving bullshit licencing schemes based on 19th Century Law, or Advertising ... or selling poisonous vaccines to young children even. No idea ! I really dont care what these people collectively waste their lives and talents on .... so if they are all going at each others throats like the ignorant savages they are ... well so be it, could we expect anything less from this crowd ? Extort away ! The so called "Money" they are fighting over is all on extremely shaky ground anyway, so they may as well be fighting over who has the best seat on the Titanic. Go for it ! There is another side to this story, and another agenda being played out ... but thats a very deep Rabbit hole.to go down, and I wont try to bore / scare you with. Most of this is (I strongly believe) part of an ongoing battle for economic survival between a declining US economy, and an emerging China / BRICS economy. Do your own research to see more.

Actually, thats brilliant. I must have one ! The ugliness factor is a non issue, as there are some sweet cases out there, or better, you could creatively steampunk this into some handmade futuristic-retro wonder of wood and polished brass that sits on your desk. Audio is a non issue as well. AudioEngine A2+, with USB input - problem fixed.

Id take the FX 8320 + Vostok Amphibia which would still cost less than a 9370

1) Your X99 build looks really sensible to me. You have years of upgradability built into that setup ... and will be able to take it places long after Z170 is obsolete. 2) Point accepted. If this were a card game between gentlemen, I would see your Trump Card, and raise you a Pauline Hanson (and yes - I think she is running again down this way) I loved the film Idiocracy, but in hindsight, its getting harder to tell whether it was meant as a satire, or a documentary ?

Build it yourself is good. Im not so sure about the Red WDs vs what you are trying to achieve ... they be NAS drives, which are optimised for NAS. In which case, you probably want ECC memory as well ? More info here on hardware selections for NAS, if you want to go the whole enterprisey hog : http://www.freenas.org/hardware-requirements/ ... it at least explains the bit about WD red vs blue drives, and how that might affect performance and stability is terms of NAS vs Desktop. Its a good read actually. TL;DR of this is that real NAS dirves + ECC Ram + ZFS for the win. Thats a pretty big step though, and probably overkill. However, if you want it primarily as a linux box to run as a web server, with a tonne of redundant storage for your photos, Id suggest this : - cheap SSD as your boot / root disk - 2 x some cheap 2TB drive, easy software raid using mdadm, and you can always add to it later. If your data is photography related, then I would super recommend this setup for a few $$$ more : - AMD FM2+ board, with 4 RAM slots - A10 78xx APU - 32GB DDR3 @2400 - 500W sounds fine - SSD + a cheap 2TB raid Put linux on it, and migrate your photo workflow over to darktable / rawtherapee The AMD APUs work great with OpenCL to run a lot of the transforms and filters on the GPU. Grab some online raw images from a medium format cameara like a Pentax 645, or some super detailed DNG samples from a Leica Monochrom, and watch how well these little APUs rip through that data under Linux. Makes for an excellent photography studio + file server + web server + SQL server + web dev environment, all in one neat little box. Not expensive. I actually prefer this setup to Mac + Lightroom. Features are similar, but the open source kit is much easier to script things together with. Another option, lets say you just really need a super reliable web server and guaranteed file storage space and uptime for your projects : - Rent a Linode or DigitalOcean server. $20 a month, and you are set. They are dirt cheap now, so you should have one anyway, just as a backup. Use your DIY setup as a dev / test machine, and then push it up to your main server for prod. That way you can experiment and muck around with your DIY server whenever you want, without disrupting your public facting sites.

Keep watching this space, we all know what its like playing vs the computer. Give it some time. I would expect that this comp would kick off with AlphaGo stringing together a number of solid wins, and look completely untouchable. The brute force computation that it can bring to bear must seem pretty overwhelming, even for a grand champ. Its a different style of play when you are up against a machine. But I would also expect that over a longer term set of games, the human grand champ would start to get a feel for AlphaGo, and slowly get on top of it. With enough practice, beating AlphaGo may even be trivial, once the human "got in the zone" so to speak. Lets see what happens. PS: Please, someone tell me that AlphaGo is actually written in Go - the Language, now that would be twice as cool

Best of both worlds. 20 cores of computing goodness, for my own everyday personal use. Its a bit of an odd setup admittedly, which I cobbled together on a tight budget, but it has done amazingly well. ... and I think Ive spent around $500 on motherboard +CPU + RAM + graphics card in total. I have all the CPU grunt and bandwidth that I am likely to need for some time. Given the total cost, and the years of use I have got out of it so far, the whole setup has paid for itself (literally) several Hundred times over. Cant complain. On top of that, I have spent way more on the important bits .... desk setup, portable air-cond, audioengine speaker set, several great keyboards, sweet mice ... and of course disks, but that is all separate, and nothing to do with AMD Fanboism. At the heart of my system : AMD FX-4170 (Zambezi) @4.3 GHz ... still a very kickass CPU, that can pump out very impressive numbers 970 motherboard, 8GB Ram @1866, Gtx-620 graphics card ! woot ! total cost around $250 This is my main development box, its way fast enough, and has never missed a beat. Recently upgraded the cooler to a 212X, Most of the time when Im flat out working, CPU temps report anything from 12-25 deg C, so heat is a non-issue. Mind you, I have a portable refridged air-cond unit that supplies air to where the boxes sit, so that always helps too. Sitting next to it, humming away quietly, and always doing something useful : Dual Opteron setup. 2 x socket-F motherboard, each socket with a 6-core opteron running @2 GHz, and 16GB slowish DDR2 ECC memory. Grabbed this from a factory refurb place in Germany, for $250, which included the CPUs, coolers, and the RAM. Bargain !!!! They still have plenty more for sale on the 'bay last I looked, Tempted to get some more, because they are genuinely awesome. There is simply no substitute for having Dual CPUs in a rig when it comes to style ...... its like having on old V-12 motor with 6 banks of weber carbs. Pointless, but still beautiful ! This machine is used primarily as a "Digital Asset Management Server" - the ECC RAM is good for that. Running BSD on this, with ZFS filesystem, so that gives me "enterprise level" data protection and endless storage / redundancy. Data is made of blood, sweat and tears ... so you gotta look after it. Sitting in a data center in Japan : Xeon E5 (4 cores / 8 threads) Not sure what the equiv CPU clock is, but its stupid fast, whatever it is. Its a VM anyway, so the numbers can be rubbery. This is a production server for a few dozen projects, sitting in a managed data centre in Tokyo (linode FTW !) Full root access via ssh, it is indistinguishable from having an extra machine under my desk. The connection bandwidth on this machine to the rest of the world is just ridiculous. The Japanese are totally ahead of us in terms of infrastructure. It would be prohibitively expensive here in Australia to get Japanese style speeds to either the USA or Europe, so that is not even worth thinking about. Cost = $20 a month, which is probably about the same as the extra power cost if I tried to add a rackmount server in my studio here. Its a no brainer purchase. Come to think of it, that rental cost is passed on to others anyway, so its basically a free machine. Very useful, and very free, and always on.

Nobody has asked the obvious yet .... What are you currently running in your rig ? Do you plan on hanging on to your current mobo / PSU / RAM / Graphics card ? ... and if so, what have you got ? What sort of gains are you expecting for the $$$ over and above what you already have ? Most of the advice in this thread assumes that you are only interested in passively playing some games in Windows. Nothing wrong with that, but computers have other uses too There are still a lot of great reasons to go with the (aging) AMD FX line of chips, especially for doing development and coding work. Access to cheap DDR3 memory, bigger core counts, and CPU virtualisation across the range are all benefits that keep the FX relevant. Even their A series APUs are most excellent in some cases. We build quite a few dedicated machines for doing digital image manipulation (Linux + OpenCL + a shit tonne of C code, and very little floating point), and the APUs are perfect for that work. Cant build an equivalent Intel based system to match that performance for anything near that price or power draw ... at least for these requirements. Heavy floating point work is another matter - Intel owns that in the PC space. AMD wont have an answer for that till 2017. People shouldnt go getting stressed out over the "age" of a chip design. Oddly enough, we still have some DEC Alphas floating around here somewhere, which we first bought around 2004 I think ... and even clocked at around 1.2 GHz, they are still more than capable of smacking down an i7 when it comes to double precision floating point number crunching. The guy that designed that amazing Alpha chip many moons ago is the same guy that AMD just hired to do the up coming Zen chip. He is also the same guy that did the original AMD-64 some 15 years ago, I have huge faith in what this genius of a chip designer can make happen ... provided the marketting, sales, and management team at AMD dont get too involved and ruin it for everyone ! So, whatever you end up doing now, you will be wanting to get a Zen after they come out. I would leave it for at least another 12 months though, or at least buy in after the XMas rush. Do you plan on doing any software development on this machine ? Want to start writing Vulkan games ? Want to go pro ? My honest advice on that - just get the bare minimum computer, and spend as much as you possibly can on an extremely high end keyboard, a great desk layout, and the most expensive chair you can get your hands on. Whatever you spend in these 3 areas, will repay themselves 100x over