Perfect Hardware Setups for an All-Purpose FreeBSD Workstation (Ongoing?)

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Hello I am looking to make individual hardware purchases (including printer, mouse and even keyboard) to make the perfect FreeBSD desktop for multimedia, Internet, gaming, office work, etc. To save time for all who are interested, I would like to know what hardware you all used that worked and meets these criteria:

1) Put together from scratch, including the case you used to hold the hardware
a. Something that was purchased from a company may count, and by all means share, but please do verify that everything worked.

2) Has the absolute least (in your experience) configuration required from powering the system to installation. In other words, GENERIC should cover it all.
a. Modules included are encouraged, but nothing that would be considered too hard or "tinkering," please.

Please provide the verified branch and version of FreeBSD you used this with.
 
Antec 300 cases are nice. Watch for sales, sometimes the Illusion version with blue-LED fans is cheaper than the plain version. The LEDs can be manually disabled... A 12V extension cable might be needed to reach from the power supply at the bottom.

Seasonic power supplies are good. The X-series are great if you can afford them; sometimes they are on sale at nearly half off. Don't buy too big a supply, try to get one that will run at 50%-80% of capacity for efficiency. Otherwise, you're just paying more for heat.

Corsair makes some Vengeance DDR3 RAM that runs at 1.35V instead of of 1.5V or higher. This can save power and reduce heat.

CPUs are a religious matter. AMDs APUs are interesting but the video isn't supported (yet) by the radeon driver on FreeBSD. I think the knee of the price/performance curve is still the Core i5 2500K. (If anyone knows a site that actually plots that curve graphically, please post.) FreeBSD's powerd supports the i5, and buildworlds actually go faster with powerd running than without, because of Turbo mode.

I used to like MSI motherboards, but current Gigabytes seem better, and I've switched to them. None include onboard Intel Ethernet, they all have a Realtek 8111. It's not bad, just not as good as the Intel.

The Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus is a gigantic CPU fan that is inexpensive and decently made. Simple bolts hold it to the motherboard instead of those terrible plastic clips from Intel. The only downside is the 120mm fan has a sleeve bearing. I think there is a version with a ball bearing fan, which I would prefer. This fan is huge, too tall for some cases, and can block RAM slots. Particularly if the RAM has those silly heat spreaders. ("Those are speed holes, they make the car go faster").

If you play 3D games, Nvidia cards are probably the most practical choice right now. Currently I use a Radeon 4650 which is adequate to my needs and runs cool.

Western Digital Caviar Black hard drives still seem the best and have a five-year warranty.

I've had good experiences with SSDs from Intel (three- and five-year warranties) and Plextor (five-year warranty).

There's not much reason to use any release of FreeBSD before 9.0. Actually, there are good reasons to use 9-stable, which has had a lot of fixes that were not ready in time for 9.0-RELEASE but will be part of 9.1-RELEASE.
 
How about keyboards without the Windows key?

I'll also plug IX Systems BSD workstations here, but they are too expensive for me.
 
I would especially like to know the motherboard that you all used with FreeBSD. My questions are for anyone who can answer them.
 
AvidBSD said:
How about keyboards without the Windows key?
Click to expand...

Years ago, I found a deal on Compaq business keyboards. PS2, no big space-wasting margins, barely larger than the keys themselves, with a heavy metal plate to give them some weight. I still use these. They have Windows keys but those can be remapped with xmodmap(1).
 
AvidBSD said:
I would especially like to know the motherboard that you all used with FreeBSD. My questions are for anyone who can answer them.
Click to expand...

Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3. The only difficulty I've found is that it is sensitive to which PCIE slot is used for the video card and the previously-mentioned Intel network card. Those had to be in the "top" slots for their sizes. Don't know why that is, but it works perfectly with them there, so good enough. After an intial install of 9.0-RELEASE with SUJ, I had some glitches. With just soft updates, it's rock solid. I plan on switching back to SUJ after it's been debugged.
 
AvidBSD said:
I would especially like to know the motherboard that you all used with FreeBSD. My questions are for anyone who can answer them.
Click to expand...

Intel DP35DP
Intel DQ35JO (current)

Those are older generation (P35/Q35) motherboards. I didn't use integrated graphics, on DP35 it was nVidia 8600GT, on current system it's nVidia 9500GT.

I'd suggest going for nVidia graphics because of the support. Even if you don't need advanced 3D graphics, a $50 nVidia will perform better than any supported integrated option today. Plus once KMS starts being production technology, noveau will be ported as well.
 
This white Compaq PS2 keyboard is part number 269513. There are modern HP keyboards that are very similar. The HP USB version is part number 352751.
 
I was looking at new Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs, then I spotted this.

It's Intel Xeon dual-core with 17W TDP. That looks really nice for someone trying to buy a low-powered solution and also wants to run AESNI for encryption and ECC memory.

What do you think?
 
Regarding keyboards, trite as this may sound, I prefer the key not to be there. It will just remind me of the Windows key.
 
I have a soft spot for the old model M keyboard with mechanical switches. The wiki indicates that they "just don't break".

They are pricey but still available
Unicomp
The question now is PS/2 vs USB. Some of the newer motherboards are phasing out PS/2 connectors. There is a Rosewill mechanical keyboard that deals with the PS/2 vs USB issue by supplying 2 separate cords
Rosewill mechanical keyboard. I can't vouch for the durability of the Rosewill keyboard but I have 2 Unicomp's that had heavy use - one is over 10 years old
 
Hi,

These are referred to generically as "Buckling Spring Keyboards".

They are very nice to use, hard to find new at reasonable prices, and exceptionally noisy!

Cheers,

--
Phil
 
I have a happy hacking keyboard. It's a bit pricy. I also have a sun unix layout keyboard. Not clicky but has the control key and esc keys in the proper place.

Initially before I owned these I had ordered a Unicomp custom. It had serious problems and was poorly built.
 
Hi again all,

Can some people post their exact custom built setups that I and others can copy so the time and knowledge (experience) of hardware can be surpassed? This is for people like me who just want to enjoy FreeBSD and maybe use it practically.
 
I can, but it would do you no good. I have tried a lot of hardware setups over the years, most of it has worked without trouble, but sometimes there are snags.
Snags can be related to hardware, or they can be related to specific software versions (FreeBSD os, installer or drivers). Most software snags can be worked around, and that is done by investing a bit of time in debugging, providing information here or on the relevant mailing lists, and trying out the suggestions you get.

Some hardware snags are not so easy to workaround; today (and for me) laptops are a major pain they always seem to contain a mix of bad / unsupported things, fro example: bad or broken ACPI implementations, unsupported graphics card (newer Intel, and the "Optimus" combos) and more.

If you still want to see what hardware I have tried over the years, and my success rate (or not), much of it is documented here: http://sites.google.com/site/tingox/
but don't forget that I warned you. :-D
 
AvidBSD said:
Hi again all,

Can some people post their exact custom built setups that I and others can copy so the time and knowledge (experience) of hardware can be surpassed? This is for people like me who just want to enjoy FreeBSD and maybe use it practically.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Wblock's original post to this thread is worth reading. I originally figured that there was no point in adding to it. However a few observations:

  • the price/performance rate of change for SSDs is astonishing;
  • it's hard to beat the Antec Three Hundred case for value, but the last case I bought was an Antec NSK4000B-II;
  • Corsair HX power supplies are good (but the last one I bought was a 620 W Seasonic M12 II);
  • the last cooler I wanted to buy was a Cooler Master Hyper 212;
I used to buy Samsung Spinpoint F3 (SATA II) disks at $50 for a 1TB, but now they are no longer available (I have several, and they are good). I would endorse the WD Caviar Black (SATA III) hard drives (I have several of these too, and they are also good). [By "good" I mean reliable and perform well at the price point.] Prices have gone up since the Thailand floods!

I too like Gigabyte motherboards. My perspective is that they are generally reliable, and offer a good price/performance/feature value. Some might call that bias (and they might be right!).

I don't upgrade my hardware all that often, and try to be on the leading edge, rather than trailing, when I do. So these days USB3 and SATA III would be mandatory.

For my TV servers I bought AMD quad core CPUs because they were fit for that purpose. i.e. I could render video with one core, and have three spare for transcoding and other work.

For a general purpose FreeBSD system (which I use a lot), I would lean to an Intel CPU, just because it's faster and thus more adaptible to my current and longer term needs.

If you have substantial storage needs, I would use an SSD to cache a ZFS file system. Though I would not rely on it from day one (allow time to familiarise with ZFS and sort block size gremlins).

As wblock said, you should take the time to match your PSU to the load, with some headroom. Check the specs, but a rough guide for peak load is:

  • a quad core CPU is about 125 W;
  • a mid range motherboard is about 50 W (35 W without graphics);
  • RAM is about 5 W per module;
  • hard drives are about 10 W per drive;
  • SSDs are about 5 W per drive;
  • DVDs are about 10 W per drive;
  • fans are about 2 W each;
  • add-in cards range from 2 to 8 W;
  • graphics cards are the killers, ranging from 35 to 400 W!
If you want to spec a system, get over to Tom's Hardware and do some research. Then post your shopping list here for critique.

Cheers,

--
Phil
 
I have Asus-p5k3-Deluxe Wifi edition and everything works. Sound, my 2 gigabit cards (both of them onboard), wifi. I think that's a motherboard that is really very good and with full compatibility. It is 3-4 years old but with 2 external sata onboard too, firewire (that is BSD-compatible too) and I have 16 GB RAM on 4 slots and a quad core processor (Intel Q6600). I use it as a desktop for everything. Listening to music, watching movies, reading PDFs, surfing the internet, playing flightgear and supertuxkart, learning programming, downloading movies via torrent, hacking with kismet, aircrack, hydra, editing movies with kdenlive and photos with gimp, chating on skype, burning DVDs with xfburn and using mysql with workbench :D
 
I recently bought a Logitech Illuminated USB keyboard that I really like. It's great in a dim room and easy on the eyes. Just the letters/numbers are illuminated, the keys are black. It has a thin profile, low key height and short keystroke that is nice too. No USB ports on it but that's not a big deal to me.

I just bought a Razer DeathAdder USB gaming mouse today that is supersensitive after slinging my old Microsoft Intellimouse around for the past 10 years. It's got softwear I can't use for profiles and a ton of features but runs fine out of the box without it. If I hadn't already bought the Logitech I might have invested in a Razer keyboard too, they're both priced about the same, but am happy with what I've got.

I got a good deal on an Acer 20" LED monitor for under $100 at BestBuy a few weeks ago that's given me a new interest in gaming. I get full screen 1600x900 resolution for OpenArena and a vibrant picture with bright colors that is great for watching videos.

My Altec Lansing sound system is about 7 years old but has great sound through shielded metal speakers, subwoofer and if I remember correctly is rated at 50 watts. I live in an apartment and can't turn it up like I used to when I had my own house but have a pair of Bose earbuds I listen to music through.

The rest is nothing special. My desktop is an old Dell with a 2.8GHz P4, 3GB RAM, 80GB HD, and GeForce3 running FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE I pieced together. It will take 4GB RAM but I just found out today needs a 64bit OS to utilize more than 3GB, so that's my weekend project. :P

My laptop is a 5 year old Sony Vaio w/ 1.6GHz Duo Core, 2GB RAM, and 120GB HD I breathed new life into by installing FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE and hope to get another 5 years out of. It has an Atheros WiFi that runs out of the box and will go into monitor mode with a command.

The PC and laptop both run great out of the box with no grief. I've never had anything but Intel CPU's and don't think I'd buy anything but. I rarely play computer games and both are more than adequate for everyday home use.
 
shepper said:
I have a soft spot for the old model M keyboard with mechanical switches. The wiki indicates that they "just don't break".

They are pricey but still available
Unicomp
The question now is PS/2 vs USB. Some of the newer motherboards are phasing out PS/2 connectors. There is a Rosewill mechanical keyboard that deals with the PS/2 vs USB issue by supplying 2 separate cords
Rosewill mechanical keyboard. I can't vouch for the durability of the Rosewill keyboard but I have 2 Unicomp's that had heavy use - one is over 10 years old
Click to expand...

YES! The Model-M is old-skool IBM at its best. I'm using one to type this. Sounds like a machine gun and is heavy enough to brain any unwitting assailants. :h Warning though - in my experience they draw too much current to run off a passive PS/2-USB converter. Luckily my desktop machine still has a Personal System 2 socket. (obviously this isn't a problem if you get one of the modern USB ones).

sim
 
Keyboard-wise I'm using an old SGI Granite keyboard. I even have an extra one for back up if anything ever goes wrong with it. I'd recommend it as a second to the model M.

My workstation is custom built, but everything is 6 years old, except the video card which is an Nvidia Quadro FX1700 - which is still a few years old, so not sure anything about it would help anyone.
 
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