Best products from r/buildalinuxpc

You may want to post this to the newly created /r/LinuxHardware, It'll likely get much more attention than this subreddit :)

As for your build and questions, lemme take a crack at it...

• While the i3 is a good processor, you may find yourself being quite limited in the near future due to it being only a dual-core CPU. An i5 would be a significant, and worthwhile investment. However I would personally recommend you hold off on purchasing the parts for this build (if possible) until January of next year, as that is when AMD will be releasing their new Zen CPUs, which look to be extremely competitive with Intel (unlike their current line-up, which is terrible). This will likely cause a significant price drop on all CPU's, meaning you will be able to get something far superior to what you currently have planned for the same price.
  
  
• If you don't foresee yourself ever needing a PCI-E slot for some other component, you may want to consider an ITX motherboard, as that would allow you to get an even smaller case, which is always nice :)
  
  
• As /u/Stealer0517 mentioned, Crossfire or SLI is virtually never worth it. It may become worthwhile if Vulkan or DX12 really catch on, and the Multi-GPU aspect is integrated into the game well, but until then, I would recommend a single card.
  
  >Will I be able to boot off a USB-drive when all my components are brand new and 'blank'?
  
  Yes, a USB drive with a distro .ISO written to it should boot straight up into a Live environment for you to install, though you may have to select the USB drive to boot from in the BIOS.
  
  >Do I safely assume here that the preloaded BIOS (or UEFI, not sure what it is nowadays) on my mobo will drive my monitor and keyboard for the pre-installation process of Linux?
  
  Absolutely. As long as the Motherboard isn't faulty, it will be able to display to your monitor either through your GPU, or the integrated GPU in your CPU, and any normal USB mouse & keyboard will be automatically detected and usable.
  
  >would I be wise to get 16GiB of RAM?
  
  More RAM is always a good thing, especially for VM's. However RAM is kinda expensive right now due to a shortage, so I would recommend getting 8GB for now, and upgrading to 16 of the same type/speed later. r/VFIO will be able to give you a better answer than I can, as I haven't dabbled with VMs much.
  
  >Do motherboards support or lack support for Linux?
  
  In general, most motherboard manufacturers support Linux pretty well, however some specific boards can have issues. You'll have to check on a case by case basis to found out if there is some incompatibility problems with Linux. (searching the model of the board + Linux in a search engine should be adequate).
  
  I've personally had bad luck with ASUS boards, not specifically with Linux, but in other ways (2 different boards made years apart that simply cannot reset without manually holding down the power button every time). But that may have just been a fluke.
  
  >Will an i3-6100 be able to handle 2-way CrossFire of a couple RX 460s "without bottlenecking"?
  
  It would largely depend on the game, but it is possible for an i3 to bottleneck in heavily threaded games. In games that don't use more than 2 cores (Skyrim), it would not bottleneck much if at all. But considering the appeal of these new API's (Vulkan & DX12) is how good they are at spreading the load across multiple threads, I would wager an i3 becoming obsolete rather quickly.
  
  >If I get an i5 can I forgo overclocking?
  
  Yes. I would actually recommend you don't get an overclockable K series CPU, as not only do these newer generation chips overclock badly and cost far more, I believe the K series do not have the required instruction sets for GPU-Passthrough in a VM.
  
  The K series simply isn't worth it. I would recommend getting the cheapest i5 possible, if waiting for Zen is not in the cards.
  
  >Would I get performance improvements from CrossFire connecting 2 entry level GPUs anyway?
  
  Yes, though crossfire currently only works in titles that explicitly support it, and even then often introduces a perceptible stutter in games, even if the FPS is high. I also believe Crossfire has much less support under Linux compared to Windows.
  
  In benchmarks, the 460 is generally 40 to 50% weaker than a stock RX 470, which would mean even in a best case scenario, crossfired 460's would get you to stock 470 levels of power. And it more than likely would be even less than that, as Crossfire tends to not scale linearly.
  
  So in conclusion, 2 460's would cost the same as a single 470, while giving less performance, and using more power :P
  
  
  
  
• Do be aware that AMD drivers on Linux still under-perform compared the Windows drivers, or Nvidia Linux drivers. AMD recently killed off their old buggy proprietary driver, and went whole hog into helping develop the open-source driver with the community. Because of this, the open-source drivers have come leaps and bounds in the last year, already surpassing the performance of the old drivers, while being very stable. They are slowly improving with every kernel update. :)
  
  Here is a recent benchmarking article comparing AMD and Nvida cards on Linux, which show the current disparity between the 2 drivers.
  
  Saying that, I personally switched from an Nvidia GTX 760 to an RX 480 due in part to Nvidia's business practices, as described in this video, as well as to support AMD's open-source efforts.
  
  
• Lastly, whichever card you end up going with, I would recommend that you buy it from Jet.com, but through the Ibotta app. The reasoning for this is to utilize multiple discounts, allowing you to pick up an RX 470 (or GTX 1060) for around the price of a single 460.
  
  How this is done: Signing up to Ibotta will give you $10 for your first rebate redemption (which you can achieve by using the 50 cents off coupon for any grocery store receipt), on top of this you will get 5% back on any purchases on Jet.com, as long as it is done via the ibotta app.
  
  On top of those, Jet.com itself gives 15% off up to $30 on your first 3 purchases. Combined with the ibotta thing, that results in roughly $52 off any card on their store. :)
  
  While this does at first look shady as all getout, I can personally attest to it being legit, as it's how I got my RX 480 for such a good deal :P
  
  And no, I'm not a payed shill, as Jet.com normally has pretty terrible prices were it not for this coupon deal, and the ibotta app is only marginally useful after using it for this. I learned of this method from r/AMD and r/BuildAPC.
  
  Anywho, hopefully that was all of some help. I wish you the best of luck in your future Linux build! :D
  
  Oh, and uh...If you do sign up to Ibotta, you can put in the referral code: cdccwpc
  
  during sign-up, which'll send $5 my way. :3

This is a cool looking ITX Case:

http://www.amazon.ca/Silverstone-Tek-Mini-ITX-Computer-RVZ01B/dp/B00I3EKXDE

Also, I would be careful with that power supply choice. It seems a little small for what you need. You'll need around at least 200w to be safe.


edit: this power supply would work better http://www.mini-box.com/M4-ATX?sc=8&category=981

Using this calculator to help me find out minimum requirements, it says around 196 w minimum. http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine