Building a Custom Workstation
I have only a work laptop which of course only should be used for work. Personal projects or open source stuff strictly a no no. So I’d decided to build a machine for work… and a bit of gaming. Let’s see what kind things that need to be considered into building a workstation. IE: Ubuntu vs Mac, amount of ram, processors.
Work-Play Hardware?
This machine suppose to enable me to code comfortable (open source stuff, runs docker, java and technology other stacks) and game at 60 fps in 1080p. Running docker and JVM (I’m predominantly a Java software engineer :P) push me to get 32gb 3200mhz ram while the gaming part push me to get a 1660 gtx super. 3200mhz ram speed does impact AMD’s system more than Intel. With Intel you can just stick with 2666mhz ( I have Intel machine, but that’s another story).
Ryzen 5 3600 is a natural choice given the performance / price ratio which I can afford. As for the motherboard… well, it’s the cheapest I can get. It’s a bonus I was able to i find a motherboard (mobo) with an over-voltage feature (A320m-k prime by Asus) as I intended to reuse my old PSU (10 years old+), CoolerMaster Real Power 550w, bronze as you can see on the left. Could say my first move to Red team since 20+ years ago (AMD 133mhz).
In the storage department I opt to use my 10+ years HDD, 500gb and get an m.2 by Adata… for development purposes :D.
The operating system (OS) ?
Currently I’m using Windows for gaming, MacOS for work (software development) and Linux for servers. MacOS has been good but the hardware price is somewhat at a premium hence the move to Linux.
The biggest pet peeves for me about Macbooks is extensibility. After retina was released they started soldered everything on board. Ram and later iteration, storage were also soldered on board. The one time you can upgrade this is during purchase, which then requires you to add like 2x the cost than what you can get after market. My Macbook , which is mid 2015 , has a removable SSD but, it’s using proprietary connector, therefore not up-gradable.
So for this machine, I’m planning to dual boot with Windows and Ubuntu 20.x LTS. Ubuntu was chosen due to the fact there’re a lot of features that’re already proven to work (it’s for beginner anyways and the OS itself is designed for ease of use for easy adoption).
Next
We will see next what kind of hiccup we’re going to encounter while assembling the machine and setting up the OSes for development.
