Budget Linux Desktop

Hello fCC community! I have decided to build a Linux Desktop for my daily programming web/dev tasks. I came up with the following PC components. I am between AMD Athlon 3000g(55 euros) and Ryzen 3 3200 g(94 euros) You think that there is going to be a big difference for linux-programming use? Your feedback will be highly appreciated!!

  • AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core OR AMD Athlon 3000G
  • ASRock A320M-HDV R4.0 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard
  • Kingston HyperX Fury RGB 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
  • Samsung 860 Evo 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
  • Thermaltake Smart 500 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply

what programming do you want to do?
my linux environment is on a 12 years old notebook…

if you need to go heavy on data elaboration, simulation and stuff, you need a good CPU - do you need it?
otherwise, if it is just web programming, almost anything that’s not too old is fine.
Most of all you need it to be confortable to use, so the right screen/keyboard/mouse setup for you.

I’d say when it comes to web dev you don’t really need that heavy of a machine compared to other types of development. However today’s stacks usually rely on a lot of tooling (like webpack, typescript) which do require some performance. Of all the components of a machine, I think the following are the most important:

  • CPU - faster processor, better computation performance. Faster rebuilds, loading, better faster tooling.
    • your current processor should be fine in terms of performance.
  • RAM - more memory means more multitasking, or at least more space for tooling. (chrome is a HUGE ram hog for example)
    • 8 GB is workable, but 16 GB is recommended so you basically won’t need to care about ram.

Now the other thing id like to bring up, is AMD chips don’t have as good of support for Linux drivers as Intel. This means you might run into more driver related issues by going AMD, which honestly could be very annoying, forcing you to build the source locally for some apps or straight up unable to install some software.
I use Linux for all of my dev work and always go Intel. The few times I had an AMD machine I got things to work 99% of the time, but some obscure software here and there won’t work, forcing you to spend time building from source.

I also used to develop on a machine with 8gb, and found myself managing my tasks to prevent reaching the RAM limit, as then the OS will start using swap space which is super slow compared to ram. As long as you are economic with what your doing you’ll be fine, but you will need to pay attention to what your running.

Past that you should be fine. More HD space is always nice, but that isn’t that big of a problem if you manage what your installing. You don’t need anything more then integrated graphics or audio, so you can be cheap there.