Subj : Coming back to Linux To : Accession From : hyjinx Date : Wed Sep 24 2025 22:26:54 Ac> Hey hyjinx! Heya! I went to the shop today to get advice. It was weird being a 'computer guy' and asking for help! It was great to hear your advice being somewhat similar to the dude in the computer shop. Here's the 'Bill of materials' he presented me with when all told: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 12 Core 24 Thread Max Boost 5.6GHz $792 ASUS TUF B650EM-E mATX Motherboard $299 G.Skill Flare X5 64GB DDR5 RAM Kit 2x 32GB 6000MT/S $460 SAMSUNG 990 Pro 1TB M.2 NVMe 7450MB/s Read 6900 Write $246 (x2 drives) MSI MAG 750W PSU 80 PLUS Gold $178 CORSAIR NAUTILUS Water cooling w/RS120 FANS $160 ASUS Dual NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 OC 8GB GDDR7 $642 NZXT H3 MicroTower Gaming Case GPU Support to 377mm $134 BEQUIET 120MM PWM Case Fan $57 TOTAL $3135 In USA money that's $1937 bucks. Here was the thought process: CPU & RAM: Since the speed of the VM's is going to be the main thing that's of importance, I thought it's probably where I should shove all the money in this build. If you think either of this is overkill, I'd be super grateful to hear your opinion. $3135 is a lot of money to me, but I'd rather be right than wrong. I have 32GB on my mac at the moment. It generally doesn't get filled up (but sometimes not far off), but I'm not running any VMs on that, and it generally runs web browsers and email. I have no idea whether the CPU is overkill or not, but the guys in the shop told me I should really go Ryzen 9. One said Ryzen 7 'could' be okay. :). The Ryzen 9 they specced is $792. They alternative Ryzen 7 they suggested was a 9800X3D at $644 and the top end Ryzen 9 alternative was a 9900X3D $1140. None of this makes /much/ sense to me. I understand threads and cores in principal, but not in how the operating system actually effectively uses them. When I last looked, a lot of apps still ran on 1 core, 1 thread because they were coded that way. Motherboard: I know very little about motherboards these days. It blew my mind to see that it only had one expansion slot. When I was a boy, 8 expansion slots were barely enough! But they told me that basically all I'll be plugging in is the graphics card. Everything else is USB C, M.2 (which there are 3 slots plus SATA x4). It has 1x internal USB 3.2 header, 2x Internal USB2.0, 1x internal USBC, Bluetooth, WiFi, Ethernet and a partridge and a pear tree. It's PCIe5.0 and has 4x DDR5. I can't think of any other slots I'd need something for, but then again, I'm so out of touch, I wouldn't know what I would want! Hard drive(s): I thought that buying 2x 1TB drives would be better than 1x2TB drive since I could dual boot (maybe 1 Linux, 1 Win) and access both drives from each other. I don't think partitioning loses much performance but can't hurt. These drives seem pretty zippy. I could go for slower drives at $125 a pop instead of $189. Or I could do one fast, one slow. PSU, CPU Cooling, Case & Case Fan: I deliberately told them to go light on the specs here and that I wanted a quiet fan system. He ideally wanted me to go with a >$200 air cooling CPU fan, but I was like ... >$200 for a fan.. no way! So he said 'Water cooling it is'. Water cooling is a whole new thing to me! They are RS120 Fans, whatever that means. At $137, I still consider this expensive! The case is $100.. I guess it is what it is. He said it was nice and not cheapy, it was metal with a glass window. It supports 170mm CPU coolers and 377mm GPUs. It has 4x PCI slo support, 280 mm radiator?! Front I/O w 1x USB, 1x USBC, HD & Audio. Graphics: The RTX 5060 8GB at $558 - is this overkill? They are selling a Gigabyte 3050 OC with 6GB DDR6 at $370, and as you say, your 3050 is running 'all the games'. But has 12GB, so I guess 6GB is a little low on the RAM? I don't really fully understand how VRAM above, say, 128MB really works. What is it for, apart from throwing masses of pixels at - everything on the desktop only surely needs a very small amount of RAM. As you can tell, my understanding of graphics technology is very far away from current day. Ac> > What do you think about the guest VMs though? Do you think they will ge Ac> > enough graphics grunt to do things like light gaming? Ac> Ac> All depends on how much graphics and CPU/RAM you can give them.. and what Ac> specifically mean by "light gaming". But yes, I'd imagine it's doable with Ac> right hardware and allocations to your VM. I can't imagine much in the way of gaming. I barely have time to log on to my own bloody BBS, far less play games! But I have a selection of games in Steam that I've never been able to play, none I'm sure high-end but I'd like to be able to play one some time or another. My main concern is whether the VM technology can pass the GPU over properly so that it can use it effectively. Back in the day, Virtualbox etc would give the VM's some basic-as Intel 128MB 2D style or basic 3D graphics card emulation. It wouldn't run games. So I'm wondering if I used VMWare or QEMU/KVM whether that would do the trick, or whether the VM's would still be in the swamp, despite having a good GPU and CPU on the host. Thanks so much again! Cheers, Al hyjinx // Alistair Ross Author of 'Back to the BBS' Documentary: https://bit.ly/3tRINeL (YouTube) alsgeeklab.com --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64) * Origin: bbs.alsgeeklab.com:2323 (21:1/126) .