Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[franswilco]

Hey guys,

I am planning to upgrade my ageing hardware. In the process, I want to give Linux another try. Please suggest hardware for the following:

- Perfectly compatible with Linux Debian 9 and JRiver 23/24.
- Completely fanless / silent.
- 4K, HDR, HDCP2.2 (to play nicely with our LG55C7)

I was thinking about building a system around the Gigabyte Z370N-WIFI, but there's a lot of positive talk about the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 system (Gigabyte GA-AB350-Gaming 3 AM4?) as well. Can you give me some pointers, please?

[Awesome Donkey]

- 4K, HDR, HDCP2.2 (to play nicely with our LG55C7)

Not even sure if HDR is possible on Linux, along with HDCP2.2. You'd probably be stuck with Windows, unless I'm mistaken.

[franswilco]

For arguments sake, what is in your opinion awesome fanless hardware for a purpose build linux system? It would be nice if it could play 4K, but recently we're basically on Netflix most of the time anyway.

[Awesome Donkey]

Fanless? Likely won't work out well, and I'm unaware of actual "fanless" hardware like GPUs and CPU heatsinks/AIO water coolers and honestly, I wouldn't recommend trying it either. However, there's lots of "quiet" hardware these days (including power supply that don't run their fan(s) until they're under load at certain amount, GPUs which fans will stop spinning at idle, etc.) and there's other measures you can take to minimize sound, e.g. soundproofing foam inside a case. Even my new PC I built several months ago is rather quiet - I can't hear it running at all.

It would be nice if it could play 4K, but recently we're basically on Netflix most of the time anyway.

It's worth noting that if you're planning on doing 4K HDR Netflix streaming with the PC, only Microsoft Edge (and likely the Netflix app) on Windows 10 is capable of 4K HDR playback on a PC, as far as I know. Sadly, I don't even have the internet speed to handle 720p streaming, much less 4K, so I can't test that one out myself.