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.
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.
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.
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.
Some build advice:
- Be safe - don’t wear socks, stand on a hard floor if possible, ground yourself if you have a wrist strap for that, and discharge any static by touching metal and/or the case before touching any components. And no matter what, DO NOT open the power supply, and definitely don’t touch anything in it!
- The huge motherboard connector probably requires more force than comfortable.
- Watch through at least one build guide before starting. That way you know the process.
Hope that helps, and don’t let it scare you away - it’s really fun to do and if you’re careful, chances are nothing major will go wrong.
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+
You only mention your laptop is running out of space so you need to get a new computer? does your laptop have a soldered SSD? If that’s not the case, I think the reflex should first be to see what storage you can get your laptop so that you can keep using it rather than discarding it :(
I am applying for university soon so I will still be using it, I also just want more power for running blender and such, but thanks for the information.
Can someone chime on who has used Blender with both and AMD GPUs vs Nvidia? Everything I could find out (which is surprisingly little) is that AMD is much slower (no real Cuda/Optix equivalent?) but I have no idea if that is true.
Mh, taking another looks at Blender benchmarks ( https://opendata.blender.org ), highest Nvidia median score is 12k (4090), the one I have atm (4070) has a score of 7.2k, had a laptop with a mobile 4080 before (5.7k). I haven’t really noticed any difference between them, tbh, so take this next bit with a giant bit of salt: Highest Amd score is 3.9k for a AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (I know nothing about Amd GPUs, most reviews are from 2022/23), not really sure what to make of this but it doesn’t look too good for Amd?
I’ve used Logical Increments in the past and found it very useful to meet a budget. Now I aim for “price to performance” sweet spots (since GPU prices have been crazy I’m now well overdue for a new GPU).
Both CPU manufactures are changing their naming schemes (to make it difficult to know what it is, I wish this was hyperbole). GPU manufactures also make some weird choice on naming GPUs (same-name GPU with different VRAM). Reading/watching reviews of specific parts will likely be the best way to know what you aught to buy.
If you’re confident in your technical knowledge or want to then narrow down your choices then I would recommend watching videos from:
- (GPU, CPU, Case) Gamers Nexus
- (GPU, CPU, Case, Monitor) Hardware Unboxed and Monitors Unboxed.
For a casual overview of CPUs/GPUs video review I’d recommend something like Linus Tech Tips (even with the prior controversy).
