Workstation for a software developer [closed]

"I would reccomend an HP. Their systems are reliable, and they also offer servers, so your minimum reqs shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I prefer HPs over Dell's simply because HP's Technical Support wins heavily over Dell's 2 hour call-time average, and 3-4 year product lifetime. We currently uses HP laptops and desktops for virtually all of our non-linux/solaris machines."

"I've been using a XPC Shuttle with an add in $100 video card. I've got my loaded with 4GB of RAM and a large SATA hard disk. It's running 64-bit Kubuntu and I can also run Windows side by side with Linux using virtualbox should you need it.

Sounds like you'll want to get the highest end shuttle you can afford to fit your quad core processor and extra RAM. If you really need RAID you may need an add-in card for that."

"My team has a bunch of dual quad-core T5400s which we we've been very happy with, and we've recently added some T5500s which are very nice too. If you think you might ever want to plug in multiple Tesla cards for scientific number crunching (or a Tesla plus a top-end graphics card), then it might be worth considering the T7500 variant (much the same spec as a T5500 but in a big chassis with a monstrous PSU). They all seem pretty quiet to me but a lot depends on how noisy your workplace is. If you're not running any 3D graphics, just get the most basic card Dell offer now (probably one of the fanless Nvidia ""Quadro NVS"" cards) and upgrade it if you ever need to.

If we were an HP shop instead, I'd be wanting Z800s."

Other than the alternatives already mentioned, I suggest you take a look at the Dell Vostro 4XX series (info from the Swedish page, I couldnt navigate on the Finnish page). I am using one such machine for the past year and I have to say I am very very happy with it running OpenSuse.