Building 24 Computers.
 

A friend and I had proposed to set up a Cybercafe or LAN place where people go to play games and stuff. I wanted to ask, what computers are most suitable for a cybercafe, which would support most of the new games, are relatively cheap, require little to no maintanence and don't drain humungus amouts ofpower

With a budget of roughly $AUS 25k for computers, we can't really go crazy on the parts, what would you suggest for a setup?

A few questions:
1: Would Gigabit Lan make any significant difference over 10/100?
2: CRT's or LCD's, ATI's or Nvidia's?

1. No
2a. You will not be able to afford high performance LCD, so CRT could do better and allow larger sizes. (cheap LCD can be too slow for some games/gamers)
2b. Which brand is better is usually only descided on who has the fastest top model. You can't afford the top models so you will have to set a price and then see who has the best card at that price. But a mid-range card from the last (or two) generations should be better than a top card from years ago. Read some tests.

2b. And another thought, make sure you don't pay for features you don't need. Like TV in/out and stuff.

CRTs or TFTs: CRTs are cheaper and safer (but eat more energy). TFTs are more expensive, and easier to damage (unless you put some glass window in front).

The videocard you get is always going to be outdated, so don't go out buying the latest, fastest models. Get a mid-range card capable of playing the type of game you'd be running on the computer, and expect to replace them every one or two years.

AUS 25K = 17k USD ( with a .68 conversion rate, google tells me it is right around there) 17K split 24 ways is 700 dollars per computer.

ABit NF7-S Socket-A - 87
Athlon Barton 2500+ - 94
Antec Mid Tower w/ 300W PS - 52
Lite On CD/RW - 29
Western Digital 80GB SATA - 69
Sapphire R9800 - 165
Viewsonic 17' CRT - 110
....

Yeah, I about stopped right there, when I was adding the cost of monitor shipping to newegg's original price. I realized that Newegg probably doesn't
ship to Australia, and if they do the shipping will push your costs over budget.

Athlon XP Motherboard, 400 MHz FSB, 400 MHz DDR - $50
Athlon XP 2500+ - $80
Maxtor 80 GB 7200 RPM - $65
Enermax 350w PSU - $50
CD-RW - $30
Floppy - $10
768 MB PC2700 RAM - ~$125
Case - $25
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB 256-bit - $200
17" CRT Monitor - $100

That brings ya right up to $735 each USD. You could put in a GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB when they come out instead of the 9800 Pro if ya wanted...it'd actually be a much better deal. Either card will kick ass for $200, though.

-Lasereth

The important thing to remember with so little money for computers is that you need to build the computers cheap and identical. You also need to purchase software licenses, because if you're setting up a legitimate business, you don't want to be using pirated copies of software.

Cybercafes especially are questioned for software legitimacy, because it's so easy to pirate stuff there. You're also going to want to buy licenses for Symantec Ghost (or something similar) to image the computers nightly back to a fresh state, to undo any damage users may have done to the operating systems, viruses, etc.

You'll want to be sure to buy AV software for them if you let the users browse the web, check e-mail, and so on. You will probably want to - with so many computers - set them up in a domain environment to make management easy as well, but that might not be that big of a deal if you're strict about reimaging them.

Plus, you need to buy all of the games for all of the computers.

Those things will probably add a lot to your costs, so you're going to want to make sure you make every penny count.

Remember to look for open-source solutions to any software you are thinking about. Many products out there have free alternatives that are almost always as good as the actual product.

Yeah thanks for your input guys.
I was thinking that it wasn't really neccessary to get CD and Floppy drives for ALL the computers, but just for a few. And there's no way we can get them shipped from newegg, so we'll buy the products here. The prices over here, aren't that high.

I have set up many internet cafes here in Greece and I could say that with prices being the same here in Greece and Australia that $25K isn't enough since you have to buy legitimate copies of M$ Windows, as well as some games for each computer. However, since you have a budget:
Don't spend much on CPU (buy an Athlon Barton one the cheaper available), a motherboard with NForce 2 (Gigabyte is best I believe but Elite is cheap) that also has a Sound Card and Lan Card, have 512 MB of RAM (Doom III NEEDS that ram in order to tun), a 40 GB HDD (since you can't afford to buy lots of games), a decent CRT 17'' monitor, an cheap NVIDIA chipset Video card and hope that you don't go over budget.

Good luck!

Don't forget the type of games you want to install will play a big part of your budget. "Technically" you will need a copy for each PC, typically that's about $30~$50. You will also need to purchase different types of games to attract different clients. Some games have very high hardware requirements, such as Doom 3.

It may take a very long time before you can reach breakeven point due to the rather high start up costs.

dell small business maybe

Please make sure you have your licenses straight too. I would hate for your new company to have an audit by a major software company and be forced to pay license fees and whatnot that could have been avoided.

Your better off buying that many computers from Dell like Xepidemic suggested.. You can get your cost per computer down to around 500. Also you can get a 2 year warranty on them for small potatoes. www.gotapex.com usually has some good dell deals listed.

yeah man, dell sb has awesome deals. this is expired but as an example

Final price is $398 - $100 rebate = $298 + tax w/ free shipping.

Specs:

* Intel® Pentium®4 processor, 2.8GHz, 512KB Cache, 800MHz FSB
* Free Upgrade to 512MB DDR (333Mhz, 2x256MB) for the price of 256MB!
* 3.5 in, 1.44MB, Floppy Drive
* 48X CD-ROM
* Standard Windows Keyboard,Gray
* Logitec System Mouse, Gray
* 1Yr,Parts + Onsite Labor (Next Business Day)
* 40GB 7.2K RPM IDE Hard Drive
* ATI Rage XL PCI graphic card
* Onboard 1000Mbps NIC
* 6 x USB 2.0, 1 parallel, 2 serial, 2 PS/2
* 8x AGP, 4 PCI slots (1 used by video card)
* Serial ATA
* Integrated Audio

it has 512ram, integrated audio, and a gigabit nic.. perfect for an internet cafe. all you would have to upgrade is the vid card and a display.