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Old 05-30-2011, 05:47 AM   #7 (permalink)
TheProf
Crazy
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hotmnkyluv View Post
The first thing you need to do is ditch that processor.
A 2nd gen i7 (code named Sandy Bridge and differentiated by a 4 digit model number as opposed to 3) would be cheaper, faster, cooler, and draw less power.
Hello,

Sorry I was away and didn't see your message.

From what I have seen, the second generation i7 chips (the Sandy Bridge) only come with 4 cores and have 8 MB L3 cache. The older i7 has 6 cores and 12 MB L3 cache so it's performance is far better. You are correct of course that it would run cooler and draw less power, but it's ability would be a bottleneck in comparison.

---------- Post added at 09:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:40 AM ----------

Hello,

Quote:
Originally Posted by telekinetic View Post
What sort of bargain-basement ram are you shoehorning into that budget? The cheapest 4gb DDR3 I see is $70 a pair, and the names I've heard of are $100, so that's:

You are probably correct that the RAM is going to be a place where they will save cost. I usually memtest the new rig prior to deployment so I think as long as the memory meets the motherboard/CPU specifications it should work right?

Quote:
Originally Posted by telekinetic View Post
$210-300 in RAM
$600 in processor
$260 in mobo (cheapest mobo on newegg with six ram slots, LGA1366, and dual gigabit--there are only 4 that aren't refurbs)
$85 SSD
$80 pair of cheapo 500gb drives

That's $1235-1500 with just the components you listed. You haven't mentioned power supply, case, cables, etc. It also seems like you're seriously skimping on the data drives vs the rest of the build.
To get the pricing I send the model numbers / specific requests to the shop I deal with and they send back the pricing. However you have raised some questions so I will ask for a specific breakdown of the components.

With regards to refurbished items I don't mind them at all as long as there is a good warranty and I run my own stress-test/burn in.


Quote:
Originally Posted by telekinetic View Post
I assume this is for edubuntu or similar, why so much ram?
You are correct -- it's for Edubuntu but for the LTSP version. One massive server and then 60 thin clients connecting to it. The LTSP server runs on it each login instance and streams back the video/audio to the thin clients and receives from them the keyboard/mouse inputs. So it's doing the work of 60 computers. Granted it's not that straightforward (since the server can share RAM space for identical programs, etc.) but you need a very beefy machine to run LTSP.

I appreciate your feedback.
TheProf is offline  
 

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