My laptop is running out of storage space and I don’t have anything I can remove anymore to increase it by much, so I’m thinking about building a pc. I’d also like to find a better gpu for doing video editing.
It will be the first one I’ve built, so I don’t really know what I need. Also, does it matter for compatibility for Linux whether I go with AMD or Intel?
The high end of what I want to use it for is video editing with Kdenlive or Davinci Resolve, some modeling and animation in Blender, and some light gaming, like Minecraft or TUNIC.
I figure one of these guides might be useful, but I don’t really know which.
Is there anything else I should know for setting up a PC to run Linux?
Edit: Maybe these guides from Logical Increments can help actually.
you are getting advice that will make a good gaming pc but not a good workstation for what you said you’re gonna do.
do the opposite of what most everyone in this thread is saying:
intel over amd (this could actually go either way depending on the price point), nvidia over amd, start at 32gb of ram and go up from there. prioritize cores over threads, sneak a rotational hard disk in, spend more on your power supply than you planned to.
plan on not using wayland.
Why should I plan on not using wayland? Is it because of the Nvidia support? I use Fedora normally so I’d have to install x11 after installation as Fedora recently dropped x11 support.
You mainly want to be able to do 3d and video editing right?
Those two, specifically with davinci resolve and blender, work best with nvenc and libcuda(?), the software libraries that let you take advantage of your nvidia cards encoders and cuda cores.
So if you were building for that workload, you’d have an nvidia card and many problems people encounter in Wayland come from using it with an nvidia card.
So yeah it’s the nvidia support. Most people will say “fuck nvidia, just don’t buy their hardware” but it’s the best choice for you and would be a huge help, so choosing between Wayland and nvidia is a no brainer.
It is a bummer that you’ll need to install x specially, but I’d be really surprised if there isn’t decent support for that.
There’s always the hope that Wayland will get better over time and you’ll be able to use it in a few years.
E: a word on encoding: both amd and intel CPU’s have video encode and decode support, but the intel qsv is more widely supported and tends to be faster most of the time. When people suggest intels arc gpus they’re saying it because those gpus use qsv and for a video editing workstation they’d be a good choice.
Part of the reason I put intel and amd cpus on an even footing for you is because any cost savings you get from going amd would likely be offset by the performance decrease. Theres some good breakdowns of cpu encoder performance out there if you want to really dive in, it remember that you’re also in a good place to buy intel because of the crazy deals from sky is falling people.
That kinda ties into the cores over threads thing too. If your computers workload is a bunch of little stuff then you can really make hay of using a scheduler that is always switching stuff around. One of the things that makes amds 3d processors so good at that stuff is that they have a very big cache so they’re able to extend the benefit of multi threading schedulers up to larger processes. You’re looking at sending your computer a big ol’ chunk of work though, so you’re not usually gonna be multithreading with that powerful scheduler and instead just letting cores crunch away.
Part of the reason I didn’t suggest intels arc stuff is that you’re also doing 3d work and being able to take advantage of the very mature cuda toolchain is more important.
Plus nvidia encoding is also great and if you were to pair it with an intel cpu you could have the best of both worlds.
You’re really looking to build something different than most people and that’s why my advice was so against the grain. Hope you end up with a badass workstation.
I am not going to fight you on if x is better than Wayland.
The ops use case involves operations, software and hardware that function best with x.
The op should avoid Wayland.
I mean there is no harm in trying Wayland and switching to X11 if it doesn’t work.
This is such a weird comment. Why would you want Nvidia on Linux? It is a pain and more expensive. Also Wayland works well on AMD and I hear it works well on Nvidia now
I’ve heard from many commenters in this thread that Blender and Davinci Resolve play nicer with Nvidia than with AMD when it comes to Linux.
Whatever you do, do not get an Nvidia GPU. I’ve only ever had problems with Nvidia drivers on Linux. Meanwhile, the AMD drivers (both the ones baked into the kernel and proprietary) work nearly flawlessly.
Intel’s most recent generation of CPUs were also frying themselves and Intel (at least last I checked) were not accepting RMAs from affected customers. Something to consider for your CPU at least.
I only ever had Nvidia GPUs (for Blender 3d work) and while it can be kind of a hassle still it has gotten soooo much better, I ran Bazzite for a hot minute (not anymore since my graphic tablet doesn’t work with it) and it just worked ootb. On Kinoite now which was the usual “install these 500 packages via commandline” (but this time via rpm-ostree) but it still works fine.
For some reason my drawing tablet (Huion Kamvas 13) isn’t recognised by Ublue/Bazzite but works ootb on Kinoite. Some very helpful people on Ublue-Discord did some investigation and there’s a Github issue but it’s unresolved, there was speculation that it might be something to do with Surface tablet settings missing or overriding something, can’t quite remember.
My partner’s computer was running bazzite on a 2080 super and it gave her nothing but problems, especially with Wayland. Switching to AMD immediately fixed the Wayland issues, and also completely stabilized her system. It could be that it was a problematic GPU, I suppose. I admit that I haven’t personally used an Nvidia GPU since ~2020, however I did see the issues she had for sure.
cpu wise both amd and intel are decent.
gpu wise stick with amd.
Just don’t bother with a 13th/14th gen intel right now. Either go 12th gen intel, or straight up AMD which is what I’d recommend.
Uh… are you not aware of the catastrophically bad lithography issues Intel has had lately across both the 13th and 14th gen, and the subsequent ass-tier fashion in which they handled it?
Do not buy a 13th or 14th gen Intel CPU.
Not to mention, iirc you should get a bit of a perf bump for the GPU due to AMD’s Infinity Cache, so long as you roll with (iirc) Zen2+ and RDNA2+
As you have in your post, Logical Increments is a good place to start.
As others have said, AMD is your best bet currently, mostly because of raw performance compared to recent Intel offerings. If you have no limited budget or power requirements, here are my recommendations:
If you have the paid version of Davinci Resolve, AMD does not have the best selection of hardware encode/decode options, but people have reported that Intel Arc GPUs work, so I would get and Intel A310 as a secondary GPU if that is something that you need.
If you want the best of the best GPU, without going Nvidia, the AMD RX 7900XTX is it. Also, AMD has stated publicly that they are moving away from high-end GPUs, so there probably won’t be a better one coming out anytime soon.
If you want to plan for more gaming than you stated in your post, the Ryzen 7800X3D is the best gaming CPU on the market, so I would get that. If you plan to focus on video editing, the 9950X is the best, but probably not worth the cost compared to cheaper 9000 or 7000 chips.
If you go with a Ryzen 7000 or 9000 CPU, get DDR5-6000 CL30 memory.
If you’re getting an air cooler for your CPU, don’t pay more than $50. There are a ton of great, cheap options these days.
Get either the new Antec Flux Pro case (when it’s available, probably this month) or the Fractal Torrent if you care about best thermals and quiet operation. Everything else is a compromise.
If you need HDMI 2.1, you’ll need a DP -> HDMI adapter on an AMD GPU because of a licensing squabble.
Those are things I could think of off the top of my head. I don’t think I missed anything big.
Blender and DaVinci Resolve work better on Nvidia. AMD might work, but it will be a hassle and you’ll likely need the proprietary AMD drivers anyway.
With Nvidia supporting Wayland and the open-source NVK continuing to get better, you could even switch to open source drivers for gaming at some point, if you prefer.
Edit: I’ve had enough issues with AMD GPU’s clocking down while gaming, leading to micro stuttering. So don’t buy AMD just because everyone tells you they work flawlessly.
For CPU and mainboard, everything works well — just don’t buy a random unknown SSD from Amazon, then you’re asking for data loss and random issues.
