Need YB computer system builds.

airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
edited December 2005 in Hardware
Ok, we are going to replace the apple computers in the yb room with pc's.
I am wanting to know first what would do better, P4, or A64 or even Opteron for the cheap one.

Im not sure what the budget is, but probably $800 per pc. for the whole nine yards, case,all the inards, monitor, and os. which would be xp pro.

It is going to be used for internet based java aplications, with a lot of upload/download. no prob. Adobe photoshop, scanning. thats about it. These things need to be quick at what they are doing and not much else (like a workstation) they will also do quite a bit of word processing to make notes, but not a big deal.

So first questiong is Intel Or AMD, and then we go from their. I like AMD.

Then I need to know what size of hd would be optimal. I think a 40gig would be good. and I would like to get a NAS drive so that we could all share pictures. we cant now. it would be nice to have a central storage location and we dont have the money to build or buy a file server. and this would keep hard drive cost down.

how much memory? 512, or 1 gig. doesnt need to be overclocker lamborgini memory. just good reliable memory. I know oem manufactures (dell) dont even begin to put in top grade mem, and their systems run nice.

Should i get a vid card, or just use a m/b with onboard. It wont be doing any rendering or game playing. I may just get a 64mb geforce card, or would onboard look better? probably not.

dont really have a need for sound or speakers. but will prob just get cheap bargain bin speakers for them.

case? I just want a plain jane black case. that looks professional. I dont want the fourth of july in the yearbook room. and no windows. 120mm fans is a must as i want these things quiet as an oem rig. probably just one 120mm exhause like hp does. seems to work.

Opticals. I will just get the $40 NEC drive that has worked so well, and im very pleased with it working nonstop (after i figured out i didnt have the molex on all the way, thats the reason it wasnt working, i felt stupid)

card reader. I just need a good card reader, should i go internal or external and just have 3 external ones and use them as nescesary?

floppy. do you need one anymore? i have one, but i used it twice?

mobo/proc combo. what do you recomend. I need a good reliable mobo that aint gonna leave me hainging. It'd be nice if it had room to push out a few extra mhz for free. but stability is prime.

power supply. how big do i need. 400? if i dont have a big graphics cad, i think an antex 320 would be enough, do you?

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited December 2005
    I have a few ideas, but it's getting late so I'll pass them along tomorrow.

    One question which would be helpful: How does your school district handle payment? If your teacher/supervisor/principal has the authority to cut a check themselves you could probably save a bundle by looking for local deals and sales. If you have to go through a lot of red tape and end up purchasing parts from the manufacturer you're likely to pay top dollar.

    The other thing is, schools usually like package deals with a warranty of some sort. This not only knocks the small outfit out of the picture in many cases, it also raises the support/warranty issue.

    Our man csimon used to teach - you might invite him into this thread to provide his knowledge and experience in this area. :)
  • sfleurietsfleuriet Texas New
    edited December 2005
    just a few of my suggestions:

    For memory, I would recommend OCZ Value. 512mb at least, but 1gb if you can afford it.

    It may just be me and my paranoia of 40gb hd's, but I would go a bit higher. 80gb seems to be a good number for the average light computer user.

    Stick with onboard video. Less hassle, no need to update drivers.

    $40 NEC sounds right on the money.

    For the card readers, you would have to decide how many people would need to access a camera card at the same time. I know it gets annoying for my mom and I to always be fighting over the Kodak 12-in-1 that we have :p

    I have no experience with Opterons at all, but that might be the way to go... hah I don't know.
  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    we use purchase orders, that have to be signed by the teacher, principle and a person from the board of education. We make all of our own money through commercial ad sales to the yb.

    I wanted an opty 150, but would this be overkill? I want it to run well. I thoughti can get a mobo, proc and 1 gig of corsair mem for a little over $900. 17" acer monitor included.

    I thought that I could scratch ordering the monitor at retail and order it through our publishing company because the order the stuff at whole sale prices and sale it to us with little to no markup as a service of letting them publish our book.

    as far as waranty's go, I would draw up something that says if a piece of hardware fails within 1 year (is this standard?) then I'll replace it. but im not at fault for problems that result misuse or software caused problems (virus's).

    because if i do these im gonna be sure i use good componets that arent gonna crap out after 2 weeks.

    we have techs at school that take care of support as far as network connectivity goes. and also installing software and network services. I believe that in order for a computer to be on the schools network, you have to surrender it to the network and allow them to use network services and such.

    how do you set up a computer (XP pro) to have it login through a domain server. do i need to worry about that? or do the schools techs set that up?
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    What is "YB"? What will be the principle uses of these computers? Is the total price per unit including the operating system? How will they be networked? Is the room where they will reside air conditioned?
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Leonardo is right. You're building budget PC's so you don't have a lot of leeway here, especially if your school doesn't have a site license for your OS. I hate to say it, but you're probably better off going with an OEM for budgets <$1000.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    yearbook.

    They will be used for Adobe PhotoShop, Internet, and word-processing. They will be networked on a wired connection through a school network to a switch which connects domain servers.

    I think the networking in the room needs replaced because it is a spiderweb of 10Base (10mbps) ethernet hubs. very slow network, I'd like to replace that with just one 16 prot switch, all of our printers are networkable with ethernet. There are about 10 computers in the room and we will be replaceing around 5 of them.

    They are in an air-conditioned room.

    I think the opteron may be a bit overkill.

    target price is between $800 and $1000 including monitor and OS.
  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    im just trying to get the best computers that we can afford for her, cause it will most likely be a long while before we replace them again.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Jesus, they're yearbook computers, guys..

    512mb of Corsair value.
    An Athlon 64 2800-3200+.
    Some AGP-supporting budget model from Asus/MSI.
    100gb hard drives.
    Windows XP Home OEM
    $30 cases
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Here's some food for thought:
    Foxconn 6150K8MA-8EKRS Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $85.00
    COOLER MASTER Centurion Micro ATX 541 RC-541-SKR1 Black Computer Case - Retail - $69.99
    CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail - $72.07
    Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380011A 80GB 7200 RPM 2MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM - $56.50
    AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - Retail - $172.00
    Black IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - $44.99
    MITSUMI Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Model D359M3D/D359M3B - OEM - $8.99
    SABRENT SBT-ICR42B 42-in-1 USB 2.0 Black Internal & External Card Reader/Writer - Retail - $12.99
    AOpen F2705-12S Black 17" 12ms LCD Monitor 260 cd/m2 450:1 0.264mm Pixel Pitch - Retail - $205.99
    KeyTronic E03600QLPS2B-C Black 104 Normal Keys PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard - Retail - $23.99
    Logitech MX510 931162-0403 Blue 8 Buttons 1x Wheel USB + PS/2 Optical Mouse - Retail - $38.00
    Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2 - OEM - $146.95
    Microsoft Office Standard 2003 Student and Teacher - Retail - $132.95

    Total: $1070.41

    Notes:
    I wouldn't switch motherboards, that's the cheapest one with decent integrated graphics that's made by a manufacturer I trust with a chipset I like. You may never have heard of Foxconn, but they do ODM work for some major OEMs.
    This is the cheapest DVD burner on Newegg with Nero bundled.
    Mitsumi makes good floppy drives. Sure it's $2 more than the competition, but they last forever.
    AOpen monitor has good specs and decent price.
    For $10 more than the cost of a cheap-o mushy rubber dome board that will get stiff in a year you can get a tactile keyboard that will still keep up with your lightning hands for years. It's not a Type M, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than a new one.
    My favorite mouse is an MX510.

    I hope you have a different budget for Photoshop. It's going to cost a lot.

    -drasnor :fold:

    EDIT:// Compromise, agree with Thrax and Grayfox
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited December 2005
    Antec Solution SLK1650B Black Steel ATX Mini Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply - Retail $61.99
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129150

    Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380011A 80GB 7200 RPM 2MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM $56.50
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148015

    ASUS A8V-MX Socket 939 VIA K8M800 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $60.00
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131558

    AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - Retail $172.00
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103535

    NEC Display Solutions AS700-BK Black 17" CRT Monitor 0.27mm Dot Pitch D-Sub - Retail $115.00
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824002245

    LG Beige 52X CD-R 32X CD-RW 52X CD-ROM 2M Cache IDE CD Burner - OEM $22.99
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827136058

    CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail $72.07
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145440

    Logitech Internet Pro Desktop 967457-0403 Black 103 Normal Keys 8 Function keys Function Keys PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard Mouse Included - OEM $16.00
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16823126152

    Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2 - OEM $146.95
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16837102062

    $723.5


    This will be a rock solid system and I can't see them having any problems with it.


    edit: modifed it to have xp pro in there.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    That's pretty good, Grayfox. I think they will need better monitors. If they are doing graphics - yearbook, a 17" monitor just won't cut it, in my opinion.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    I dunno about that motherboard Grayfox. My experiences with VIA chipsets haven't been positive ones (including the K8T800). They're probably also going to want a DVD burner and a floppy drive since it's going into an educational environment where they're likely to have floppy collections. Where's Office? Card reader?

    If you already have Apple Studio or Cinema Displays I'd recommend just keeping those and not buying new monitors.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited December 2005
    drasnor wrote:
    I dunno about that motherboard Grayfox. My experiences with VIA chipsets haven't been positive ones (including the K8T800). They're probably also going to want a DVD burner and a floppy drive since it's going into an educational environment where they're likely to have floppy collections. Where's Office? Card reader?

    If you already have Apple Studio or Cinema Displays I'd recommend just keeping those and not buying new monitors.

    -drasnor :fold:
    My experence with vias chipsets has been better then the ones ive had with the nvidia nforce 3.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    There are some nice mobo with ATI chipstes and intergrated graphics.
    I'll look a few up later.

    If you can't find a deal on 19" LCDs try looking at used CRTs. azatek.com sells 21"ers for as low as $99. I have one on order with them (since Merkor seems to be out of biz).
  • Park_7677Park_7677 Missouri Member
    edited December 2005
    Personally, I wouldn't build the systems. If it's only 5 computers, the margin of difference between building and OEM is going to be small. And if you did build, would you pass the savings on to the school or actually take a slice? Is your payment just the pleasure of using them?

    If you were doing high-end systems for CAD or something, then you should do it. It's the yearbook, though. You make 1 book for the entire year, Photoshop can take a second longer to load. Also, you said you have Apple now; do you have enough PC licenses of Photoshop?

    The warranty/support is going to be hard to compete with. Here we've had several OEMs go out. They usually ship a new one/part overnight without receiving yours first. You don't want to get stuck answering stupid questions like how to open Internet Explorer either. Let the guys at Dell/HP/etc do that. Besides, they're professionals ;D
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