Very cheap hardware recommendations for good FreeBSD desktops

T

taiwan740

Could a machine be purchased and set-up that fulfils the below reasonable requirements from a desktop PC, for less than the cost of the Raspberry Pi 5 (US$75 where I'm from), and without the pre-order shipping delay, and without some of the current technical issues running FreeBSD 14?

Requirements:-
- YouTube and Spotify playback (working sound and no screen-tearing)
- Wireless must work and be easy to configure
- Perform well enough to not be agonisingly painful to use
- Support some software development frameworks and IDEs
- General desktop usage
- No painful and hacky workarounds to get around BIOS/EFI limitations

Optional:-
- Play some games

It's a surprisingly easy yes!

Picked up an Apple iMac 12,1 (2011) a while ago, for very cheap. Used on ebay, anything from $10 to $50, garage or boot sales even cheaper. Intel Core i5 2nd generation. People hate these things as they are considered clunky by today's standards, and Chrome has recently stopped supporting their latest Apple operating system, and they are abundant. Full HD 1080p screen. No expensive cabling requirements. Atheros Wifi chip supported out of the box. This is the era where Apple fell out with NVIDIA so all of the graphics cards in these models are AMD Radeons and have very good driver support in FreeBSD through drm-510-kmod.

Keyboard and mouse required. $30 all in. Money left over for RAM capacity upgrades - this model takes Laptop DDR3 - up to 32GB.

Expansion to second screen possible with a Mini-Displayport to DVI adapter (if necessary) but the cost of this and the DVI cable probably outstrips the cost of the machine itself, if one is on a serious budget.

Other all-in-one desktop machines may be available, but not sure about the abundance, and the chipsets may vary.

Alternative suggestions welcome!
 
unixurd said:
Hi taiwan740 ,

Get some insights from https://bsd-hardware.info/?d=FreeBSD

There is more alternative Single Board Computers.
https://hackerboards.com/
Click to expand...
SBCs certainly have their place! I have a few, my favourite currently being a build and test environment for a web server on a Pi Zero that hangs out the back of the TV.

My intention for this thread is to highlight the (in my opinion, at least) very good desktop experiences that a user can have for very little money outlay. I'm thinking young folks, students, or survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

With an SBC or even a cheap desktop, you still have to buy a monitor, for example, and some of the cabling and necessary accessories can add up in the costs, and then after all that, performance needs to be taken at a grain of salt, especially if you are expecting to be able to watch 1080p YouTube videos.
 
I would recommend a Lenovo ThinkCentre M7xx or M9xx. Very compact yet powerful with nvme storage. I got the M715q with a Radeon 2400GE, but they come with various Intel chips as well. I slapped another 16GB in mine for dual channel 32GB.
WiFi is M.2, Intel, so not ideal as it's stuck at 802.11n but the good thing is you can replace it easily with one that is even better supported.
 
Depending on how cheap 'cheap' is, I'd recommend refurbished computers. Have a very good Lenovo ThinkCentre or ThinkPad for €200 here in NL. The TinkCentre runs FreeBSD out of the box (with Ethernet, don't use WiFi).

Must note that I don't use heavy graphics for games or image processing. For my regular texting, scaling photo's and internet the boxes have abundant power. I deliberately looked for hardware with no Nvidia graphics card because of too many trouble in the past. Intel graphics is just fine.

Cheapest was an almost 20 year old HP laptop (XP-era) that ran FreeBSD out of the box and was at good speed with a light WM (x11/lumina-core. I only use light WM, didn't test KDE or Gnome for ages).
 
Yep, everyone has different definitions of 'cheap' - I'm thinking e-waste cheap, stuff that would otherwise be in landfill, but other comments are valid, of course.

Currently trying to get FreeBSD working well on an iMac 5,1 - the 2006 model. Bought for $15. It's an interesting challenge until I get fed up and stick OpenBSD on it.
 
I'm currently using a thinkcentre M91p with 16GB RAM, a quick search on ebay I just found one with 4GB ram for 35 UKP (uk pounds), perhaps about $40. Very nice system, and of course can be upgraded later. The thermal design on these is nice, completely silent running. Another option if you want small size is an M73 which are around the same price, usually with a bit more RAM.

Of course these are all corporate disposals, the hardware is good quality. It's not just lenovo, have a look at similar systems from Dell as well. OR, if you want a screen and wifi as well, then get an older thinkpad. A quick search of ebay again this morning I found an X260 with 8GB RAM for 59 UKP. You have to search for the cheap ones and check the description and photos carefully. There are some real bargains to be had.

Any of these is going to be much better than something like a new Pi for a general purpose desktop PC, much higher performance and better hardware all round. Freebsd runs fine on all of them, at least on all the thinkcentres and thinkpads I've tried over the years, never had a problem.

Another thing worth trying is find out if you have an e-waste charity shop in your area. Some charities collect corporate disposals and sell some of the systems locally, to support their work. For example in the UK there is "jamies computer club" at jamies.org.uk. Usually the prices are very cheap, all kinds of kit turns up.

I guess there is one other thing to consider, which is the cost of the power to run the machine. In that case anything ARM based will win over intel. If this is going to be used as an always-on server, say a cheap webserver, it might be worth taking the running cost into consideration. At these kind of prices the running cost for a year might end up being more than the cost of the hardware, which is pretty crazy!
 
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