[nmglug] hardware discussion: desktops, high performance, possibly fanless

[Mark Galassi]

Dear nmglugers,

I occasionally have to purchase a computer and find myself hampered by
my lack of passion for keeping up to date on hardware details and what
they mean.

Until now I always had my employer buy the computers I used for massive
software development (emacs, gcc, tons of VMs for highly parallel
execution and release-engineering/testing -- huge memory/cpu
requirement).  I would only keep a modest computer for personal use,
since software development is almost all that I do.

I now need to get a desktop computer for some on-the-side software
development I will be doing and I have to purchase it mself, so I need
to be more careful about cost but I still want to get work done.  I also
care about things like noise.

I have seen the Shuttle fanless computers, and the Intel NUC, and they
seem very cute.  But can they be beefed up to 8 cores and 32gig of RAM?
Should I just go with the appropriate Dell?

And talking about specs, what does a core mean anyway these days?  In
the days of hyperthreading it appears that /proc/cpuinfo can give twice
as many cores as the hardware specs, but with half the gigahertz.  I'm
not asking anyone to actually explain it -- what I'm asking is if there
is a small set of numbers labeled on h/w which will give me an idea of
single-taks performance and parallel performance.

As a lesser plus can one get something with free firmware without going
down a rabbit hole of time spent sorting it out or way too much cost?

So, does anyone have suggestions on what h/w to seek on Amazon?