Desktop Success Story

G

GROND

Hey guys, I just built a new desktop/workstation system, and I'm having the best experience with FreeBSD as a desktop that I've ever had. I wanted to share my hardware config in the hopes that it will help others trying to decide on hardware for a similar system. I'm tracking 10-STABLE with all-ZFS storage, and using a combination of Mate and i3. All told, under $1200 dollars through (mostly) Newegg.

CPU: AMD FX-8320: 3.5GHz 8-core Vishera
MOB: GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3
RAM: AMD Radeon RP1866 (2x 8G)
SSD: AMD Radeon R7 120G
HDD: 4x WD Red 2TB WD20EFRX
GPU: GIGABYTE GV-R927XOC-2GD

Other:
PSU: Seasonic SS-520FL2 520W
CASE: Corsair Vengence C70 Black

Like I said, I did some research and built this machine specifically to run a FreeBSD 10x workstation/desktop, and I have never been happier with a system. I can buildworld in about 25 minutes, and buildkernel in about 3 minutes. Incredibly stable, both in terms of the system and applications. With the recent graphics improvements and vt, any who say that FreeBSD cannot match Linux in terms of graphic desktops (I haven't tried gnome-shell or any other newfangled 3D desktops, as I don't see a reason to) should give FreeBSD another try. And any who are having trouble determining what kind of hardware to purchase, I would recommend this build as a starting point, as I am incredibly happy with how it turned out.
 
This sounds fine. But can you explain "combination of Mate and i3"?

I am using i3 alone and its quite good. For what reason do you use Mate?
Regards
Markus
 
I really love i3, and I use it about 95% of the time.

When I want to startx into Mate, I just flip out my ~/.xinitrc. While i3 does have floating-windows support, sometimes I just need to get simple floating windows without tiling - for instance, I've had some game emulators freak out when i3 causes massive and sudden window size changes - or I just want to use a standard-paradigm desktop sometimes. I'm also using mate-terminal as the the default terminal emulator for i3, which is cool and provides some better features than an xterm.
 
Where did you get the motherboards?
I have two different machines with two different Gigabyte boards from different companies and have had nothing but grief.
 
I got mine through Newegg. It's a standard 990FXA-UD3, came in the manufacturer packaging. No issues booting (this has been the major area for me in the past), no issues with disks, no issues with the onboard NIC, no issues anywhere really. So much so, that I was compelled to actually post about it.

I should mention that this is my first AMD build; I had always had Intel-based systems. You can see in the specs that just about everything is not only AMD based, but actually AMD branded. I had not set out to build an AMD fanboy machine, but after reading reviews and spec sheets and so forth I ended up getting the AMD stuff. Perhaps this is a component of the stability of the machine, that its not a mismatch between vendors for the most part.
 
It's nice to see someone else happy using FreeBSD with AMD hardware. Most of my hardware is also AMD based and I couldn't be happier with the performance and price as compared to Intel. I am curious however how well your graphics card works under FreeBSD. AFAIK, that graphics card isn't supported under FreeBSD at all and has some issues even under Linux yet. I'd be quite happy to be proven incorrect on this however. :)
 
I am now convinced that I should buy all branded parts and build it myself. Almost all of the knock parts like the HDD and the WIFI card have failed. I am almost tempted to pull
off the CPU fan and see if the my CPU is a knock off also. I am really leery of the dual bios setup and the TPM for the Gigabyte motherboard.(All windows components, of course.)
 
The Gigabyte dual BIOS is a nice idea. The only time it causes problems is when the case has a sticky power button. That makes the BIOS revert to the previous version.

I've had less trouble with Gigabyte motherboards and Intel processors than the other combinations.
 
Code: 
CPU: AMD FX-8320: 3.5GHz 8-core Vishera
MOB: GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3
RAM: AMD Radeon RP1866 (2x 8G)
SSD: AMD Radeon R7 120G
HDD: 4x WD Red 2TB WD20EFRX
GPU: GIGABYTE GV-R927XOC-2GD

For me this is not a desktop but a server, a high-end server :) I still happily run Arch+Openbox on my old home computers, one of which has 2GB of RAM only (!?)
 
No it's not, EOD.
The only "major" issues you'll run into is some new revision of Realtek 8111 that isn't supported or some obscure/closed source network controller such as "Killer NIC" and of course the sparse video support.
In some rare cases poor ACPI implementations can cause some "fun" issues.
//Danne
 
Just to chime in on running Gigabyte motherboards and AMD CPU's I currently run on an office system:

Gigabyte 970A-UD3
Phenom II X2 545
4 Gb G.skill ram
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT 1GB

The video card is kinda old but the rest of the system is modern enough. I run this system as a desktop using FreeBSD 10.1-release and Xfce and i3 as well. The only issue I have is that due to the Nvidia graphic card, I can’t resume. The monitor will never turn back on after a suspend/resume cycle. Also, When FreeBSD 10.0 came out, the on board Realtek 8111E network card quit working, although in all releases of FreeBSD-9 it ran perfectly, but FreeBSD 10.1-release apparently fixed the driver again. Other than these issues, this system runs flawlessly.
 
I was thinking about starting a thread of my own similar to the OP.

A couple of previous attempts to install FreeBSD on my laptop were unsuccessful and disappointing because it seemed close, but not quite close enough.

As of last week, I've finally found the magic combination. I have a 1-year-old Thinkpad T530, Intel HD 4000 graphics only, and stock everything else except an Intel 6205 Taylor Peak wireless card to replace the abysmal (on all operating systems) Realtek 8192.

Interestingly, the best method ended up being to install the UEFI image. No problems with a blank screen when switching from X back to text console, flawless suspend / resume (from text). It shares a disk with Windows 7 and a Debian install that I doubt I will use much now. I've got everything I need, working extremely well.

:)

P.S. - I've got to hand it to the FreeBSD devs. They have put together the most versatile system I've seen, by far. The desktop took some work to set up, and that's a good thing. The biggest mistake FreeBSD could make is to switch primary focus to turnkey desktops with software centers.
 
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