What should I be focusing on when building a development PC? [closed]

Question

I've beeen given a budget for building a desktop PC for app and game development.

What components should I consider to be a priority when selecting parts for the computer, and which should I ignore or pay less attention to?

Additional Information:

• Budget: $900

• Wish to use by two users at the same time, via two monitors and keyboard/mice

Answer 1

With $900 you could get a pretty good system.
Some key things to look for:

• Processor speed: More is better. If you're doing 3D game dev than you'll want at least a quad-core with 2.5+ GHz, if possible 3 or more GHz would be ideal
• Memory: Again, more is better. I would reccommend at least 4GB, 8 or more would be good.
• Graphics card: For just regular development this is the least important part, but if you're doing 3D games you definitely need a good one. The best would be an nVidia GeForce GTX series, but if you don't have that much money left, just something that supports a dual-monitor setup (for the 2 user thing)

Also, what does your dad mean by '2 seperate users on the computer at the same time'?
If he means that both users can each work seperately, that's impossible, unless you get a really complicated setup with a virtual machine. You can use a splitter for 2 keyboards and mice, but you will not be able to have 2 seperate cursors onscreen at the same time using just one OS.
(I'm assuming you will be using Windows?)

If you get a reasonably good graphics card you will be able to have a dual-monitor setup but as far as I know (correct me if i'm wrong) it is impossible to have 2 applications being used at the same time on 1 box.

Hope that helps!

BTW, for a pre-built system with those specs look at newegg. they have great prices on computers and parts

Answer 2

For programming, your two core pieces of hardware are going to be your processor and your RAM. IDEs are quite typically RAM hogs, and you want the fastest compile times. These two parts play the most critical role, although if you are really into it, and have the cash, a solid state drive is also nice. If you are doing heavy duty graphics, you will need a fast graphics card, however it is highly unlikely you will need anything above a run of the mill card.

As for the place to buy, Newegg is pretty much my defacto site for buying computer parts.

As for two people being able to use the computer at once? You could run a second operating system inside of a virtual machine, but that will obviously hog memory and processing ability. The only problem with this is having a second mouse and keyboard. I do not know of a way to do this, but technically you could do this if you were to write your own drivers and have the input passed onto the VM in some way.

Answer 3

Pick out the best monitor you can get, then spend what's left of the budget on the computer.

I see that this just got downvoted, so I'll expand. Every inch of monitor space and every pixel of resolution is going to translate to better productivity. You'll be able to see the code better, and see more "information" simultaneously. By contrast, CPU, RAM and hard disk space give you diminishing returns after they reach the point where they're good enough, and this point is well before what you'll get by buying the top of the line.

Answer 4

Memory speed (from processor cache all the way down to disk speeds- the whole hierarchy) is important to look at since most compiler operations are memory or IO bound. For example, compilers do a lot of file-reading (source and intermediate object files) and writing (object files and intermediate libraries). Raw RAM count will be useful as well depending on the size of your project and tools.