Building PC for coding and other programming stuff

[reon-iwnl]

Hi there, I'm planning to build a PC for my programming software and normal browsing. My budget is around 850 USD. Prolly gonna run 2 monitors@1080p at most and maybe run Ubuntu and/or Windows 10. I am not sure how good a PC I need or what are the minimum requirements for a smooth user experience.

[bleedblue]

Programming as in enterprise-level apps? Or just small personal stuff, cuz you can do that on like an i3 and run the igpu.

[iLostMyXbox21]

ryzen 5 2600

gtx 1060 3gb

2x4 ddr4 3000mhz

 

[schwellmo92]

Are you going to be doing any gaming? If not get a CPU with an iGPU (Ryzen 2400G/Intel i5) and you can save a but load of money. Otherwise yeah you could get a Ryzen 2600 and a very very cheap GPU (whatever the cheapest you can find on the retailers site, something like a GT 710, usually $30-40).

[iLostMyXbox21]

1 minute ago, schwellmo92 said:

Are you going to be doing any gaming? If not get a CPU with an iGPU (Ryzen 2400G/Intel i5) and you can save a but load of money. Otherwise yeah you could get a Ryzen 2600 and a very very cheap GPU (whatever the cheapest you can find on the retailers site, something like a GT 710, usually $30-40).

i would say a gt 1030 at least.. a 710 is utter doodoo

[schwellmo92]

3 minutes ago, iLostMyXbox21 said:

i would say a gt 1030 at least.. a 710 is utter doodoo

He hasn't said he needs to play any games, a cheap-ass 710 is fine.

[iLostMyXbox21]

Just now, schwellmo92 said:

He hasn't said he needs to play any games, a cheap-ass 710 is fine.

ik but for literally less than $50 more he can get a gt 1030 and considering the budget is $850 im sure he can throw an extra $50 at a much better gpu

[reniat]

18 minutes ago, reon-iwnl said:

I am not sure how good a PC I need or what are the minimum requirements for a smooth user experience

For JUST programming (no gaming or anything), then honestly there really isn't much for requirements. I'm a software engineer who works at a huge enterprise software company, and I just use a laptop for all my development.

 

There are things in engineering that can benefit from a beefy system, like compiling a huge codebase, but:

1. They aren't usually something a new programmer would have to even think about
2. They are almost always done on remote build systems, with only small pieces actually needing to be worked with locally

If this gives you any indication, lots of people actually develop in VMs. A typical example might be you have a windows system, and have to work on a rails server app. Since ruby doesn't run natively in windows, you'd boot up a linux VM to developer/troubleshoot your rails server. That fact that you can program through a VM running in a medium grade laptop hopefully illustrates the idea that power isn't really a super important thing in coding. Save your money and don't overbuild a PC if ALL you want is a programming environment.

[Cereal5]

1 minute ago, iLostMyXbox21 said:

ik but for literally less than $50 more he can get a gt 1030 and considering the budget is $850 im sure he can throw an extra $50 at a much better gpu

Or a 750 Ti or any other actually decent gaming card instead of a 1030

[reniat]

16 minutes ago, iLostMyXbox21 said:

ik but for literally less than $50 more he can get a gt 1030 and considering the budget is $850 im sure he can throw an extra $50 at a much better gpu

Except if all he is doing is programming, he might not actually even need a GPU at all so that $50 might be literally wasted. I don't know of any programming environments off the top of my head that use GPU acceleration, outside of video game development.

 

EDIT: If the programming environment is "data science" then maybe a gpu would be a huge help, BUT if that's the field we're talking about than that's usually going to be actually computed off-machine. "Data scientist who has no remote crunching resources" is a pretty specific case imo.

[Firewrath9]

just get a nice laptop, (500$) and buy 2 screens 

[schwellmo92]

2 minutes ago, iLostMyXbox21 said:

ik but for literally less than $50 more he can get a gt 1030 and considering the budget is $850 im sure he can throw an extra $50 at a much better gpu

And for $50 more he could get a GTX 1050 which is also much better than the GT 1030, it's a never ending thing. If you don't need the horsepower then no need to go for a 1030, if the time comes when you need a good GPU you could buy something like a 1060+ and he has saved that $50 between the 710 and 1030 (because lets face it - the 1030 isn't exactly stellar either).

[reon-iwnl]

11 hours ago, schwellmo92 said:

Are you going to be doing any gaming? If not get a CPU with an iGPU (Ryzen 2400G/Intel i5) and you can save a but load of money. Otherwise yeah you could get a Ryzen 2600 and a very very cheap GPU (whatever the cheapest you can find on the retailers site, something like a GT 710, usually $30-40).

I won't be doing any gaming on this. Mostly small scale coding and youtube.

[brob]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($157.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: ASRock - B450 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($74.99 @ Newegg Business) 
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($114.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($127.98 @ Amazon) 
Case: NZXT - H500 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($64.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM (2015) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($49.99 @ Newegg) 
Total: $590.93
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-28 12:05 EST-0500

[schwellmo92]

7 hours ago, brob said:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($157.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: ASRock - B450 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($74.99 @ Newegg Business) 
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($114.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($127.98 @ Amazon) 
Case: NZXT - H500 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($64.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM (2015) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($49.99 @ Newegg) 
Total: $590.93
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-28 12:05 EST-0500

This is a good build for you

 

If you plan on running many VMs like more than 2 (depending on your dev work), you could add more RAM, swap the CPU for a 2600/2700 and get a very cheap GPU (GT 710).