pc building help

[fes_786]

ok guys a friend wants me to build 4 computers

but he wants the cost of each pc to be no more than £200 inc screen ,etc

he wants them for his shop bit like internet cafe

now need ur advise on best value for money

i heard u can run a server with clients were u have only a monitor, keyboard and mouse and everything else is running of a server

anyone know about this as it would be much better than 4 individual pc

they need to be reasonably fast, aroung 30-60gb hd and 1gb of ram

need ur help guys as i have been out of the building scene for a while...lol

cheers

 

[oneman]

£200 quid is tight but achievable for general office use. Of course this will not include and software so that is up to you.

The thin client solution you talk about (running desktop remotely) can be achieved using either citrix/terminal services or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). It would involve a product like Cirtix, VMWare or MS Virtual PC (I prefer the VDI with VMWare). You will still need to boot the clients with an O/S and RDP client but this can be done via a USB key that you can put inside the case to stop it getting stolen. The box serving the clients will need to be quite powerful (quad core with 4 GB of RAM would be a good start). Of course this box could be one of your four clients.

Cost wise, I think building 4 separate PC would be best and support wise definitely as you don't introduce a whole separate level of complexity.

Say you don't include a optical drive (good idea for public located PC)

CPU AMD XP3000 - 14
M/B Asus integrated - 25
1GB DDRII RAM - 10
80GB HDD - 20
Case inc PSU - 16
Kbd/mouse/speaker - 6
17" TFT - 82

Subtotal - 173
x4 - 692

Add portable DVD/RW for loading O/S and delivery - 739

VAT (assuming he can claim this back if it is a business) - 130

You could upgrade CPU to x2 3800 and total without VAT would be £787

 

[fes_786]

i have seen a guy running clients were he got a little box which he plugs monitor and keyboard in and thats it

 

[oneman]

i have seen a guy running clients were he got a little box which he plugs monitor and keyboard in and thats it

That is either thin client (around £200 per client) with a citrix or VDI server backend.

or

remote KVM over cat5 (£65) but there is a PC at the other end.

http://www.aandcaudio.co.uk/index.p...uct_id=1448&utm_source=google&utm_medium=base

 

[fes_786]

ok m8

so could i use 1 of those core 2 duo processors that u can overclock like hell?

i cant remeber the name of it but read some were that u can achieve nearly 90% overclock and still run on stock cooling and stable

the processor itself was £40 - £50 i think

i would prefer building the systems and then over clocking them to get a bit of extra juice out of them

what can i say he is on a very tight budget

cheers

 

[oneman]

Nope, the AMD chips do not O/C as much as the Intel ones, especially on stock cooler (remember we are trying to save money so no crazy coolers). Maybe around 20% or so. Intel chips should O/C 40% to 50% on stock cooler.

If you want to switch to Intel then the cheapest ones are E21xx however they one have 1mb cache and thou they overclock well I have read the performance boost is not great because of the cache.

There is another option, look on flea bay any pick up some E6300, it will add £20 to the price of each PC but they O/C well and you will have more then enough horsepower for what you want.

Which brings me round to the question of why you want such quick machines, from what I read of your original spec if they are like internet cafe / general office use (web browsing, e-mail, office, etc) then the X2 3800 will be plenty fast enough.

At work I have a 2.8GHz celeron and that is quick enough for general office use.

 

[fes_786]

Nope, the AMD chips do not O/C as much as the Intel ones, especially on stock cooler (remember we are trying to save money so no crazy coolers). Maybe around 20% or so. Intel chips should O/C 40% to 50% on stock cooler.

If you want to switch to Intel then the cheapest ones are E21xx however they one have 1mb cache and thou they overclock well I have read the performance boost is not great because of the cache.

There is another option, look on flea bay any pick up some E6300, it will add £20 to the price of each PC but they O/C well and you will have more then enough horsepower for what you want.

Which brings me round to the question of why you want such quick machines, from what I read of your original spec if they are like internet cafe / general office use (web browsing, e-mail, office, etc) then the X2 3800 will be plenty fast enough.

At work I have a 2.8GHz celeron and that is quick enough for general office use.

the reasons is that i have seen pc's in internet cafe's trust me the customers openup like 20 instances of ie explorer and then complain its running slow

plus they gona be running special software which time limits the pc to what time the customer paid 4

plus any good cheap sites for me to look at ?

 

[oneman]

I have 20 windows open at work. I still think the X2 3800 will be quick enough and unless your timer program was badly written then I can't see it being much of an overhead. I have written a VB 2005 service which monitors application usage, it runs fine on 4 year old machines with celeron 2GHz 256MB of RAM.

If you really think horsepower is going to be a problem then tell your mate to stump up the cash and get Intel core2 based system.

As for cheap sites, there are plenty already. Aria are cheap but can be shit to deal with if things go wrong (30mins plus waiting on the phone). Scan are a bit more pricy but service is much better. Both of these companies are based around manchester and you can buy off the street as well.

A lot of people seem to use ebuyer but personally I have never used them.

 

[fes_786]

ok this is what i have came up with:

Mother board: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=661332#ProductFeatures

Cpu: amd 64 4400+ dual core
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=632503

Ram: 2x 1gb corsair twinx xms2
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=255300

Hard drive: sata 80gb Seagate barracuda
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=631206

Case inc 400w psu
http://www.xcase.co.uk/p/290658/x-galaxy-bubble-light-gaming-case-with-400-watt-psu.html

he got 4x tft monitors of his bro and family.etc for free so all i need to do is build tower.

Total for 4pc’s £770 thats all in.

plus whatever i will be charging him to setup .etc

what u think??

 

[stevemac40]

Why waste your time building. Believe me Internet browsing doesn't require heavy duty machines, the last thing you want to do is create unstable systems by overclocking when its being used for business (good to squeeze that extra from your PC at home, but pointless in a commercial situation).

Why dont you have a look at these refurbed Dells, could save your mate a lot of money and yourself a lot of hassle:

http://www.mcscom.co.uk/section.php?xSec=68

 

[oneman]

The spec looks fine. Are you going for a DVD drive in each machine or a external USB one ?

The reburbished Dells are an option, I have bought several myself for other people. I am surprised at the prices this place charges, it seems too cheap.

 

[fes_786]

cheers 4 ur input

i talked to my m8 and he wants dvd writers in each pc so going for the pioneer 115D writer

i dont really like dells prefer to build a pc that way can upgrade it.etc

 

[oneman]

Avoid the pioneer, there have been a few posts with people have problems with that model and I have had problems with pioneer myself. Stick to LiteOn or LG and you will be fine.

By upgrade, you mean faster, more memory, disk, gfx card ? You can do all these with the dell, the only thing would be a M/B upgrade.