Game dev programming PC build (need tips)

[MC Morrado]

Budget: just saving up for good parts as I go along.

Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Wifi 2 (price: $180)

Case: full-sized ATX Malestrom case from the late 2000's (price $70)

Keyboard: some old black Dell keyboard bought from a thrift store ($3)

Monitor: some old LCD Dell monitor I salvaged for free from an e-waste pile

RAM: 2 x 32GB DDR4 (64GB total) / (price $137)

 

Stuff needed: power supply, M.2 SSD's, graphics card, AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, CPU air cooling tower.

What are the best parts you guys can recommend for a reasonable price? I want to have a graphics card that works without trouble in Linux without having to spend all week figuring out how to install drivers. This is a pure performance build without any RGB. Having a proper game development PC will be a massive upgrade from trying to mess around on VS Code with a 2011 MacBook Pro that cannot play any modern games with only 384 megabytes of VRAM.

[Likwid]

Well, the best tip should have gotten is to buy everything when you have money.

A good cheap am5 b650 motherboard costs 120 dollars, ram more expensive than ddr4 but not by a lot.

Good luck with the build.

[podkall]

56 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

Budget: just saving up for good parts as I go along.

get more and buy better budget parts,

 

56 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

Case: full-sized ATX Malestrom case from the late 2000's (price $70)

depending where you live, you could have just had a cheaper Mid Tower, even a brand new one

 

 

[Tetras]

I don't know about Linux, but you could buy a 5600G or 5700G, which from the Mac you were previously using is probably more than sufficient to play your games and would not need a graphics card. They are slower than the non-G equivalent CPUs: 5600, 5600X or 5700X, so I'd only recommend that option if you're NOT buying a graphics card.

 

You could also look for a used 3700X or 3900/3900X, since if the price is right they're still plenty powerful enough for a development PC.

 

Cooler: peerless assassin or phantom spirit, unless you happen to buy a used CPU that comes with the wraith prism. For AM4, the 5700X doesn't come with a cooler, but the 5600 and 5600X do (though it is the worst one AMD offer).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, MC.Morrado said:

 I want to have a graphics card that works without trouble in Linux without having to spend all week figuring out how to install drivers.

Anything from AMD. AMD and Intel are the only fully supported cards across Linux and should work ootb*, assuming the distro you choose has a new enough Kernel and Mesa build.

At the same time CUDA (NVIDIA) is going to be much better than anything AMD offers for rendering.

 

*For Rocm/HIP Support you need the AMDGPU-PRO Driver/Stack, it can be used alongside the more well supported AMDGPU Driver/Stack.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Vulkan#Switching_between_AMD_drivers

https://www.amd.com/en/support/linux-drivers

 

Arch Specific

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU_PRO

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GPGPU

 

Spoiler

On 5/27/2024 at 2:05 PM, Nayr438 said:

It's complicated. NVIDIA Supports Workstation/Server and has a history of neglecting the Linux Desktop and Linux Developers only tend to target mesa ( Intel and AMD ).
For some examples of the state of NVIDIA Support

• Waydroid only targets mesa, nvidia unsupported
• Sway NVIIDIA proprietary driver is unsupported
• Hyprland if it works it works, if it doesn't then idk
• NVIDIA adding EGLStreams Support for Plasma since the KDE Team refused to
• GNOME Proposal to Drop the X Session, NVIDIA not considered a blocker if problematic
• Cyberpunk 2077 Launch, no nvidia support due to proprietary driver ( Of course most people also were not running mesa-git, but it highlights one of the issues )
• Steam has a history of breaking Bigscreen on NVIDIA since the Launch of the Steam Deck.

With that said, NVIDIA has been working on a new Open Source Driver, they recently hired the Nouveau dev, and they have been getting more involved in the desktop space, so this could change in the near future.

 

I'm also not going to say AMD is perfect either, there is a divide in support between Workstation/Server and Desktop with the Open Source and Proprietary driver, but for most people the open source driver is more than fine and we technically have a toggle to switch between them. I imagine this would be the same for NVIDIA in the future if they continue on the open-source path.

 

Also the open source stack is very dependent on the kernel and mesa version which varies between distros while proprietary drivers usually don't. So in this situation a GPU can be supported on say Arch but not Ubuntu. Same with feature support, bugs, stability, etc...

 

1 hour ago, MC.Morrado said:

Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Wifi 2 (price: $180)

The MediaTek WiFi (MT7921K) card on this board may be problematic. The onboard Intel Ethernet card however should be well supported ootb.

 

1 hour ago, MC.Morrado said:

M.2 SSD's, graphics card

I'm going to recommend the Samsung 970 Evo Plus or the Samsung 980 Pro. These are solid drives imo.

[podkall]

1 hour ago, MC.Morrado said:

Stuff needed: power supply, M.2 SSD's, graphics card, AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, CPU air cooling tower.

5600/5600x/5700x

 

depending if you're buying used, the selection of things you are able to get will be different,

 

entry level GPU on used, for budget reasons, something like a GTX 1050ti or better, perhaps RTX 2060 Super,

 

1 minute ago, Nayr438 said:

Anything from AMD. AMD and Intel are the only fully supported cards across Linux and should work ootb*, assuming the distro you choose has a new enough Kernel and Mesa build.

At the same time CUDA (NVIDIA) is going to be much better than anything AMD offers for rendering.

good point, means something like RX 5700 (XT) and better,

 

maybe like an RX 580 on the cheaper spectrum.

 

single tower coolers can cool up to 5700x3D since it's still technically a 65W TDP CPU, which are wide selection to choose from,

 

and 5600 can manage to stay decently cool even with the Box cooler it usually comes with,

 

the M.2 choice depends on the requirement of sequential reading, meaning the importance of reading big big files, above 50GB,

 

since for gaming any brand new dirt NVME will work pretty nicely,

 

as for PSU, used ones can be fine, what you'd want to look for if you're buying used in PSU is high quality unit, since high quality units even when they fail are much lower frying and fire hazard than a low quality ones, or a decent cheap low W high quality brand new PSU

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, podkall said:

good point, means something like RX 5700 (XT) and better,

I am going to throw this out there, we have two 5700XT cards, one from AMD and one from MSI. Both of these cards have memory issues and we have had to gradually down clock the memory on them to keep them somewhat stable under extended heavy loads.

[podkall]

27 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

I am going to throw this out there, we have two 5700XT cards, one from AMD and one from MSI. Both of these cards have memory issues and we have had to gradually down clock the memory on them to keep them somewhat stable under extended heavy loads.

could be unlucky, all used cards can potentially go bye bye sooner than a new card would

[Guest]

1 minute ago, podkall said:

could be unlucky, all used cards can potentially go bye bye sooner than a new card would

These were both purchased new, however this isn't something that happened ootb, it's something that gradually started happening and getting worse over time.

I personally think they just pushed the memory to the edge of what they considered stable and it degraded over time.
Ive met several others who have had the same issue, but I have also met several others who haven't, ymmv.

[MC Morrado]

For part of my game development process. Arcade style mini-games will be 640 x 480. Might as well experiment by running TempleOS in a virtual machine on my programming PC once it's functional to make some music and possibly import a few songs into the final game.

[thedood2k]

The 64gb ram should suffice, but keep in the back of your mind that you may want additional ram if you branch out into higher complex/high fidelity games. But your mobo appears to have 4 slots so just cross that bridge if/when it comes.

 

Most of the dev tools I've used have been very ram hungry and running games in a debug build often times requires available ram.

 

This is why the console dev kits sport increased ram vs. their consumer counterparts.

 

The m2 ssds are nice for sure but if you're on a budget I'd go with a normal ssd. It's still going to be way faster than an HDD and you'll pay a premium for the m2 where you'll see money better spent elsewhere in your build.