Re: BSD hacking new personal computer tower configuration ?

[Andy Ruhl <acruhl%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2025 at 11:51 PM sylvain%saboua.me@localhost <sylvain%saboua.me@localhost> wrote:
>
> I'm thinking of purchasing parts to an all-purpose *BSD personal computer.
> My budget is ~€3000 (+1k). Ideally I would like it not too noisy while
> staying as cool as possible (I live in a studio), and dual screen monitor
> (I'm thinking of one HD screen to also watch movies on and one square
> screen on the left for the console).
>
> First thing is the motherboard, processor, and RAM. Here also lies the
> bottleneck : is there a motherboard/processor combo that can host
> all four BSD's and derivatives ? If I'm not mistaken, I think the blowfish
> does not maximally exploit multi-core processor, so a quad core (for instance)
> is enough. It'd also be great to have it without MINIX's IME/PSP,
> but I know this is asking too much ! Or is it ?
>
> Note that I live in Europe (SouthWestern France) so the stores of choice
> would be LDLC, then Boulanger and FNAC. Unless I forget options.
>
> There's a long time since I haven't proerly hacked and built my own tower,
> I don't remember all particular caveats of the best optimisation. Suffice to
> say the computer hacking's main use would be to compile, fetch
> various things from the network (no brainer, right ?), as well as,
> more touchy, embedded / RISC-V development (hence connectics).
>
> Then I would also browse the web and use Word.
>
> Haha. Just kidding. But I'd like to watch a movie at times and have a good
> HD screen and 5.1/7.1 speakers for that (the latter can come later).
>
> In terms of ergonomics, I already have an all-black basic keyboard, as well
> as a small bépo one, and am thinking particularly of the mechanical and
> TypeMatrix keyboards. Someone advised an incurved monitor as well as
> blue light filter. I don't know much about mices, but I have short hands (I'm 5"3).
>
> That's it. Any advice/feedback fom what you guys use ?
> I dream of those towers with just one big fan on the right.
> Ideally, the whole thing would not consume much. It also needs
> not to be one of those huge gamer towers while still fairly powerful.
>
> Thank you

Kinda disappointing at the lack of responses.

I've been using real i386 and amd64 hardware for a long time that runs
all of it pretty well. But I'm not doing much with mine, it's just
servers sitting in the corner.

Andy