Hi,
-> Hello Mary,
We're about to purchase quite a few new machines for running PTB experiments.
We usually get Mac Minis and install Linux on them.
-> I'm pleased by your choice of operating system :)
But Mac Minis haven't been updated since 2014, and being rather expensive and not at all expandable, I'm wondering if we could do better.
-> Certainly, given the bad price-performance ratio of the ancient macMini designs.
I've read your recommended specs for PTB, but I'm curious if you (Mario) or anyone else has a recommendation for the best (i.e., reliable performance and easily Linux installation) machine to buy for PTB.
-> Given that i still don't have any spare money or income, i test it on hardware that is 5-7 years old on average, getting occasional temporary access to more modern loaner machines from nice people for some quick tests, and obviously i can't 100% guarantee anything for any operating system on any hardware i haven't personally tested. But while choosing laptops for use with Linux needs some care, especially when one wants bleeding edge hardware with special gadgets, i personally haven't encountered a stationary PC in 20 years which didn't work well, or where installation was problematic. What you do need is the ability (on modern "Windows 10" compliant machines with EFI firmware) to disable secure boot in the firmware setup menu, mostly because i have not ever tested PTB's low level hardware access features with secure boot enabled - i don't know if they would work or not.
In terms of sound, the onboard Intel HDA compliant sound chips usually work perfectly, e.g., also wrt. audio timing. At least the dozen or so i tested over the time.
In terms of graphics it depends on your needs for performance, color precision, or other special features like multi-display etc.. If macMini's so far are sufficient for your needs, then any PC with modern Intel onboard graphic should work perfectly fine. Currently tested are Intel HD Ironlake (2010'ish), IvyBridge (2012'ish, e.g., in the macMini 2012), Haswell (2013/2014'ish) and i'm currently testing Skylake (late 2015/2016). For higher performance needs, or higher than 8 bpc color precision, or extensive multi-display work (e.g., dual-display stereo, or triple/quad/5/6 display setups) i would recommend AMD graphics cards due to their high quality open-source drivers.
One thing that isn't well tested yet is USB-C support. I've read quite a few technical opinion pieces about how much hit & miss it can be to get "USB-C compatible hardware" to actually work as advertised, and knowing how it works it could turn into a compatibiity nightmare. Otoh. the only machine with a USB-C connector i got my hands on, with the only USB-C to Ethernet/USB/VGA/HDMI adapter i've got my hands on, worked perfectly plug & play out of the box. That was with a modern Intel Skylake graphics chip driving the VGA and HDMI outputs under the latest Linux versions. However that machine is still under evaluation, e.g., timing not yet tested with measurement equipment.
If you have rather modest performance needs in terms of memory/cpu speed/graphics performance for running basic paradigms, and use octave instead of Matlab you could even run PTB on a RaspberryPi 2 for 40$ on Raspbian Linux now, with more reliable timing than most Apple macOS machines and builtin digital i/o support, but that depends on the types of tasks.
As always it depends on your specific needs,
-mario
Thanks in advance,
Mary