what is the scope of this project ?
Are you a guy at home learning ? Part of business ? college?
Would the pc need to perform any other function beyond programming ? IE samba server render station?
How warm is the environment ?
What is the budget ?
Is linux ok ?
We need more info
I heard that some chips are better for overclocking. It varies from chip to chip.
Someone even said to me: “if you buy tray CPU - that’s most certainly from a customer who tries to overclock and returned the not-so-good ones to the shop”.
Don’t know if that’s true.
I never overclock because I once lost a self-made computer after only two years of overclocking the AMD chip. Seems like the hardware burns out if you are not constantly doing maintenance and really know what you’re doing. The rest of the PC was intact - only the CPU went garbage.
But you could also buy an overclocked gaming PC - that would be the simplest way to get strong dev hardware. Not the cheapest and not the most do-it-yourself way, but a way.
And that’s what I think too. It’s not really worth all the trouble.
Yes, that too. Almost every RAM chip will fit. Only the right specs will run at optimum.
It’s quite easy to look up what you need on the internet.
A good chair and a good desk. The rest is more akin to tuning cars. Maybe with the exception of the screen size and maybe ssd if you’ll target android. A somewhat crappy 5 years old computer is all you need to program with jme. The rest is e-peen and consumerism. As for overclocking… work on your game instead ^^.
It’s not about “need”. The title says “like”.
And a developer’s life is definitely better when compile times are shorter.
Yeah, some people seem to say the gain isn’t worth it for the lifespan of the parts. I’m not looking to overclock, just wanted to make sure about things like overclocked ram, since I hear DDR3 1600 is really the highest non-oc memory, and DDR4 2400mhz is the highest DDR4 non-oc, so that’s why I ask, but It seems people have mixed opinions on this “Compiling could have errors with overclocked gear” discussion and “if we should get ECC memory” for the same reason…???
Buy quality RAM. Brand name. Corsair, Kensington, etc… And make sure to buy the right RAM for the system specs. You will have a hundred almost superstitious level stability issues if you don’t.
How exactly do we find the “right ram” for our specs? From what I’ve seen people just say to get whatever the MB will support. I’ve heard of “level,” “rank,” and “channel” interleaved, but not too sure what that’s all about.
Also, don’t skimp on the PSU. It’s the one thing that can slowly eat all of your other components. <–from experience.
Yeah, bad PSU’s could really mess stuff up. I’m looking at an EVGA G2, I hear they are great?
I’m building it myself, yes… Can’t trust anyone else to put together anything, you should see the horrors of the laptop’s of seen from companies like Dell… I saw a laptop once where the HD was supposed to be put into the slot in the MB, and then screwed in… The computer had an error “no HD found” or something about C: drive, so I opened it up and found that the drive was barely attached to the slot, and the screw was danging in the slot, barely screwed in… Disgusting…
I was looking up a review on the FX 9590 or w/e 8-core AMD, and it was benching okay vs Intel i7’s for games, but I’m curious how what we are doing would differ in uses? If we are loading up a game, like Mythruna,that uses 3 cores, then wouldn’t it use most likely more computational power when we are compiling/running?
Thanks!
what is the scope of this project ?
Scope of this project meaning my JME project, or…?
I have multiple coding projects that I work on, or will be working on. JME, JavaEE with Netbeans, I’ve been looking at the “Play! Framework” for web work now. Been meaning to setup an OpenCV project soon as well with image recognition and such.
My JME project essentially allows users to design their own levels and import their own textures to place where they need to. I use a lot of custom meshes, but I’m going to see if I could just import them as assets, and stick them to quads to create cubes, instead of custom meshing up a cube like I’m doing now. I wouldn’t exactly call it a “block world” since not everything is “blocks.” 3D Models will also be present, so it’s a mix.
Would the pc need to perform any other function beyond programming ?
It’s going to be my personal computer, so I essentially do programming, web browsing, music listening, and on the “rare” occasion Photoshop, and maybe some video editing with Premiere Pro.
I rarely game, if anything it’s just emulator games on the snes or similar.
How warm is the environment ?
hmm… I guess like any place depends what time of year it is, but it’s mid 70’s probably. I could do some tests if you wanted, but I would need to buy an air temp testing device. I like it cool myself, but sometimes it can get warm.
What is the budget ?
I’m looking to spend about 1000$ on this, but I could spend more if need be, just not looking to spend too much, especially if I’m going to upgrade within the next few years ago.
Is linux ok ?
I don’t use linux, I already have a copy of win 7 I should be able to use…
Anything else you need let me know, thanks 
Thanks. Well, I’m using a 5 year old laptop now, and compiling takes some time sometimes, and running the application can also have issues (less now that I upgraded ram), but would be nice to run on a really fast machine.
I guess I’m confusing people, but I’m not looking to overclock anything, just asking about it, since RAM seems to be overclocked with XMP or PnP or whatnot, so if I buy 4000 mhz DDR4 ram, it doesn’t sound like it’s a good idea. But some people claim that the overclocking and messing up your compiling is a myth, or shouldn’t happen under normal uses, but just want to make sure.
Also that’s why I ask about ECC ram, since that seems to be something that workstations/servers use, but not sure what people here like…
I have an SSD for the new system, and currently my 24" monitor is on it’s side in portrait mode , sooo many lines of code .
I’m not about e-peen, though I do want some cool LEd lights, and have a project I want to setup with a microprocessor to control the lights, but I might just leave that for awhile. I’ve been interesting in tools like RPi and Ardruino for awhile, so I figured this is a good project to have some fun with them .
Thanks!
Well, every dev should have an old clunker around (if not many devices), to test the goods, but as you said, we should have the slowest compilation and other task times.
creating should be done on the best system you can, since the faster we can work, the more we can get done, and who wants to wait minutes for something to compile, just to get a big ol “NullPointerException…” LOL…
Overall we should have a lot of different “test subjects” to make sure our application runs on multiple different platforms, and with multiple different hardware. Granted I’m not sure what “could happen” in certain cases, but for gaming/3d applications, the GPU is important, and I believe you mentioned that there should be shader problems and all sorts of stuff if the GPU isn’t designed properly to support whatever…
Just so it’s clear, don’t take it as a judgement on you (or anybody else), it really isn’t; we all have our obsessions and stuff.
Take it more for what it is… a rant :D. And a pointer towards the fact jme requires… well, a computer lol.
5 years old laptop… kind of depends of the laptop… but yah, could be a little slow sometimes.
Just to explain myself, a couple friends started a little company years ago (nothing to do with computers)… and started by buying a powerful computer… at that point I kinda knew they weren’t all serious (at least one was though).
Yah, I probably read the “need” part wrong.
I use a 6 years old computer that was middle range with a weak videocard when I bought the peaces. Compile time is instantaneous and the game starts in one second. I don’t see the use in pouring cash down the drain to gain nanoseconds.
Ok, when targeting android it takes a little longer, and that is why I pointed towards ssd in such a case.
I wasn’t taking it as judgement towards myself at all.
Well, if your business has nothing to do with computers, and buying an expensive computer, well unless it helps them with something, probably doesn’t matter. For us, our lives are the computer. some of us spend crazy amounts of hours looking at this screen, so to be able to do that efficiently requires a good system.
It depends what your “6 year old computer” has. People still use Sandy bridge processors and claim they are still as good as the 6th gen stuff that was just released (when ocing and that good stuff). It also depends what parts you have.
My laptop takes a bit to start running things. Especially for something like waiting for “Glassfish” to start up can take minutes, which is annoying. After it’s up it’s okay, but still takes awhile to run things sometimes.
It’s just I’ve been getting so many mixed comments, and reading so many mixed things it’s hard to know what to do…
One person says overclocking any part of your hardware can lead to compilation errors, someone here says that’s not true if you do it correctly.
One member says get an AMD, another person says get a Xeon processor. Another says i7…
Then you’re saying it doesn’t matter what I get as long as it works…
… 
Oh, if starting glassfish takes minits, then you definitively are up for an upgrade. I did say that a 5 years old laptop might be slow.
I don’t think there’s a risk of bad compilation due to overclocking if done like some people said here. But mostly, you have kept a laptop for 5 years… I kind of see that as a reason to not overclock early on.
I meant: any nowadays desktop will do just fine for jme. But as pspeed pointed out, and omg I did it answering to him too, your initial post wasn’t focused on jme… and so I kinda answered out of the question, I’m afraid.
Sorry for that.
I recently switched to “let them build it” for my last two PCs. They made a good job putting it all together in a good way. I just don’t like spending so much time doing this basic stuff anymore. The times of case modding and installing custom water coolers and actually putting all parts together with the risk of doing something wrong are over…
Just see it that way: Those hardware guys are building several PCs each day and they just know how to do things right - it’s their job and their live.
Yeah, I’ve wanted to get another build going, but just been busy with a lot of things and just haven’t gotten around to it, so this laptop has served it’s purpose 
.
I asked on here, because I wanted to know what the JME developers here use for JME, since I would assume JME would probably be the most cpu intensive thng I’ll be doing, but who knows…
I initially was looking at getting something like an i5 6600 and a build around that. I was looking at some higher speed ram, so I guess I’ll just get something like ddr4 2400 or 2133.
But as i said I saw people recommending Xeon E3/E5, and then the AMD recommendations here by PSPeed… Maybe I should just get whatever, and let it be, but I just wanted to make sure that issues wouldn’t arise randomly and my code not working due to something odd happening at the machine/binary level.
Depends what you go with, but there’s a lot of crap out there, using crap parts, especially PSUs. Besides paying a premium for an hour or so of work to put a computer together.
I’ve seen the way dell handles their customers, and how their “computer team” builds things. You can say it’s their job, and that they do this every day, but it doesn’t mean they are doing a good job, just because “it’s their job.”
They put together computers that barely work, with sub-quality parts. This might just be dell, but this is my experience with 3 different laptops that had to go to “depot” probably 2-3 dozen times,half of which was because they didn’t do what they were supposed to the first time.
As for case modding, and DIY, that’s the fun of it. If you think that something is going to go wrong, then you can leave it to people who “do it every day,” but it’s not hard to find parts that work together, and build a system.
My other, 6 years old, computer had an ATI / AMD graphics card that produced strong visual artifacts with jME shadows. This was one of the reasons why I returned to NIVIDA + Intel for my 2 year old computer.
One of my former bosses proudly said to me: “I’ve bought NVIDIA + Intel for your office desk - so I think you will enjoy the work here.” I guess it still is like buying a Mercedes instead of a Moskvitch. :chimpanzee_closedlaugh:
Sometimes it’s their job like the guy who flips burgers at McDonald’s… you just never know. At any rate, to stay in business they have to charger more or cut corners. When we can essentially source all of the components from the same places there are few other places for them to make money. Anything they buy ‘in bulk’ they will take a loss on so margins are not very high there either.
Given all the parts, it takes me about 45 minutes to put a machine together and then I know exactly what’s in it. And with Amazon, getting and researching the parts is really easy… and with Amazon Prime, sometimes I even get them the same day. 
pspeed has that drone delivery
Yeah, exactly as you said, that’s the issue. You also mentioned PSU’s, which I’ve heard that these premades don’t have the best…
You also can save TONS of money, especially on “gaming rigs.” I read one post where a guy went to a site, priced out a 2800$ prebuilt, sourced the parts for 1700$. For an hour or 5, 1100 is definitely worth it to save :). Granted, as you said, for those who know what they are doing, they can get everything setup within an hour.
I used a website where I could configure what exactly they should put into the PC. The tools like CPUZ showed that it’s exactly what I ordered and the empty boxes had the right logo on them. They even managed to get the wiring in a very organized way.
When building something myself I might do mistakes like putting too much or not enough heat transfer paste. Don’t get me wrong - I have strange “McGuyver skills” and am not so bad with crafting. I just want to relax and focus on the software part. But you are definitely right that DIY has its advantages.
AMD CPUs require no paste. I’m a big fan. (pun intended) They are prepasted with a little pad and they tend to run cooler anyway.
If you buy from a web site then you have to check every component… often the PSU is the first thing they skimp on.
Even when you buy cases, it’s better to get one without the PSU and buy your own Antec or other brand name.
Yes, it’s possible to screw it up if you do it yourself… but you can easily minimize that just by buying good parts.
Not to be a dick but you are wrong. Amd consumes more power, many modern day amd cpus have a TDP 25+ over intel. Take the [amd][1] fx 8350 has a tdp of 125w. the current intel i-7(also 8core) skylake has a tdp of 65w.[Skylake][2] wiki Thats about 48% difference of how much heat they can put out. [TDP][3] wiki. One of the best things you can do for a computer is get a good heatsink. You don’t need a 100$ one but anything over stock is preferred.
I choose amd over intel but lets not be missinformed
I do make the assumption of he would get a non unlocked intel as he said overclocking is ont something his is comfortable with. If you want to argue he would not get a 8 core amd or he would get the 8130 or something with a smaller tpd its still 95w which is about 32%
[1]: List of AMD FX processors - Wikipedia
[2]: Skylake (microarchitecture) - Wikipedia
[3]: Thermal design power - Wikipedia
Yeah, the issue is that a lot of HSFs come preinstalled with their own thermal paste, but that’s usually poo stuff, unless you get a high end HSF that comes with a good set of thermal paste.
From what I read about AMD is that they run HOT, and require a lot more power over Intel’s chips. So essentially you’ll need better thermal paste, and a better HSF setup
I was looking at a 6600k, but I think that from what I’ve read overclocking takes a ton of time, and stress tests, and all sorts of crap, and I rather not mess with that right not. It’s not that I couldn’t, but the time you have to invest doesn’t seem to be good. I also read that OCing can take a heavy toll on parts. Some claim if you do it “properly” they should last, and I would assume as long as it’s getting great heat it should be okay, but if you’re stressing parts, they will probably go sooner.
I’m not really sure what I should go with, it’s still up in the air. People here seem to recommend AMD processors which is surprising, but if that’s how it is, I cannot argue it. Curious I haven’t seen anyone using a Xeon.