I have a new computer

Finally, I have a new computer for development instead of the broken down laptop I’ve been using for 3 1/2 years now. Well, I built most of it about a month ago. I ordered the parts via dabs, and they all arrived while I was at work. Bit of an issue there, but it worked out.

Actually putting the computer together was…somewhat frightening. This is the first computer I’ve built, so I kept expecting it to fall apart at any moment, and yet it worked – with the exception of the sound card I bought (an ASUS XONAR D-Kara, which I was planning to use for voice recording). That isn’t supported on Linux, but the chipset on which it is based is, according to this site. However, the main reason why sound wasn’t working is that I didn’t have any speakers! Now that I do, pulseaudio seems to do the trick perfectly fine.

The parts that I’m using are as follows:

  • 8 GB of RAM
  • MSI Radeon R7 graphics card, with 1GB of dedicated memory. For comparison, my laptop’s graphics card a built-in card which shares memory with the RAM, and uses between 64MB and 1GB of RAM.
  • ASUS M5A97 motherboard
  • AMD FX-6300 CPU, with 6 cores
  • D-Link DGE-528T Ethernet card. Yes, Ethernet. I didn’t get a WiFi adapter, but Ethernet is faster and more reliable.
  • HannsG monitor. This was second-hand, saving me €25. Unfortunately, it had no speakers.
  • ASUS XONAR D-Kara sound card. This does not work with Linux, so it’s redundant to me (and cost me just over €50!)
  • Corsair CX 430 power supply unit. Supplies up to 430W.
  • LiteOn IHAS124-14 CD/DVD drive.
  • Logitech keyboard, UK layout (couldn’t find an Irish one 🙁 )
  • Logitech z130 speakers
  • Linux Mint 17.2

Total cost: €727. Knowing I can build and upgrade my own machine: Priceless.

So far, it’s working fine. The Linux Editor for Unity installed and worked fine, and I have just tested Spamocalypse on it (and found some bugs). So, very soon I will start to support Linux builds. In the meantime, I’m starting to do my 3D modelling on the new machine, and keep using the version of Unity that’s on my laptop for Spamocalypse.


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