Re: seeking desktop hardware recommendation

[pouya+lists.netbsd%nohup.io@localhost]

Greg Troxel writes:
> I'm looking for a mini to mid tower, with:
>
>   - fairly beefy CPU for package and base system builds
>   - metal case for RF noise mitigation
>   - UL listed power supply
>   - quiet when not compiling, but doesn't have to be silent
>
>   - 64G of RAM, preferably expandable to 128G, even more preferably by
>     adding later and not discarding
>
>   - GbE
>
>   - basic sound
>
>   - graphics sufficient to run X on a single biggish monitor, say
>     2560x1440, so that I can run firefox, gimp, qgis, and xterm.
>
>   - perhaps CDRW/DVDRW, but if that's USB external and works with netbsd
>     that's ok
>     
>   - space for at least 3 2.5" SSDs.  no need for spinning disks.
>     smaller/faster SSD slots a bonus
>
>   - works well with NetBSD 10 (am running 9, but about to upgrade
>     anyway)
>
>   - no need to deal with binary blobs

Not a recommendation, rather an FYI datapoint if anything, but FWIW
I recently converted one of my last non-NetBSD systems to NetBSD
(previously a holdout as I had plans to use it for number crunching
with CUDA, which doesn't work natively under NetBSD and likely
can't be passed through to Xen guests either--not that I'm even
running Xen--but I digress).

It's an antiquated HP Z820 that nevertheless seems to check a lot
of the above boxes with 2x Xeon CPU modules (upgraded from 1) and
22 cores and 128GB of registered RAM (increased from 64GB), 2x GbE,
a case I really like with 7 (!) bays (combo of 5.25" external and
3.5" internal ones), and IIRC an NVIDIA Quadro K4000 GPU (to which
I added another more powerful one for number crunching that I'm
not using ATM); although it's not exactly quiet.

I must admit I haven't done much with it since setting it up, as
I rarely need that kind of power, but I could boot it up and get
you a dmesg if helpful.