PC building preliminaries
Before we begin, some observations on PCs, LEGO and electrostatics.
Building PCs is more like building with LEGO than it’s ever been. And the increasing price and complexity of today’s LEGO sets makes this similitude ever the nicer. Making your own rig is a satisfying project. It’s something that can be tweaked to your requirements and, more importantly, will impress your friends. Of course, putting the bits together is just the beginning. We need an operating system worthy of your labours, tweaked to be good at your workload, hobbies and gaming interests. That OS? Why, Linux of course!
We’re not here to tell you exactly the components to pick, whether to go AMD or Intel, or even AMD or Nvidia. All that depends on your purposes, preferences and prejudices. Fortunately, the same general recipe applies to building any desktop machine, whether it’s a budget-friendly workhorse (like our young friend Zak built in LXF219) or a 16-core powerhouse with multiple graphics cards (useful for mining altcoins, gaming and heating up the room at the same time).
New vs second hand
You may have some spare components that you want to incorporate into the build, or you may be tempted to pick up some second hand. This is usually fine, but components do fail, and it would be terrible if your dusty old power supply gives up the ghost and takes with it a selection of your newly purchased components. Caveat emptor applies: if you buy used components online and they don’t work, then the seller is unlikely to offer a refund. Buying new from a reputable retailer will get you a warranty, which brings peace of mind.
If in doubt, the ( https://uk.pcpartpicker.com) PC partpicker website will tell you what fits together. And if you’re worried about Linux compatibility, then just typing a particular component’s model number combined with “Linux” into Google should provide some insight. Generally speaking, you should never have to download a driver from the manufacturer’s website (a terrible Windows ritual), since most hardware is supported by the kernel. There are always (damn you Wi-Fi adaptors!–Ed) exceptions, however.
We’ll talk you through choosing parts, putting them all together (in a handy step-by-step fashion across the bottom of the next four pages), then installing Mint. Don’t feel you have to recreate everything as we’ve done it here, but use it as a guide and inspiration. Fedora 27 (on our disc) is also an excellent OS (as are many distros not on our disc). We chose Mint because its more accessible. We’ll cover setting up LVM
“Buying new from a reputable retailer will get you a warranty, which brings peace of mind”
for easy partition management. Then, we’ll set up a RAID array using two large hard drives for storage peace of mind. Then we’ll delve into some more advanced storage features, setting up bcache to use a fast SSD as a cache for a slower drive (or the aforementioned RAID array) and snapshotting a btrfs filesystem. Finally, we’ll go where angels fear to tread, with some sagely words about setting up graphics drivers. It goes without saying that we’re ardent fans of FOSS, but hardcore gaming on Nvidia, or hardcore mining on AMD will require you to dabble in the dark (proprietary) side. It’s an exciting journey, so without further ado, clear up a nice space to work with and let’s get started!