Grex Oldcoop Conference

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Grex Oldcoop Item 11: Next Grex Hardware [linked]
Entered by janc on Mon Feb 17 17:16:40 UTC 2003:
1 new of 547 responses total.
#28 of 547 by steve on Fri Feb 28 00:31:29 2003:
   Here is the second cute of the list.  Sorry I'm so
late.  

             Approximate cost of a $2000 i386 Athlon box
                                         --STeve 2/27/03

   Here is the second cut of Grex's future hardware.
Quality always wins out over price.  Given the state
of the world of computers at the moment, spending
extra makes sense.  The amounts listed here are pretty
accurate, but things change.

Here is a short description of each item.

CPU - We want an Athlon over a Pentium.  There are lots
of reasons for this; the easiest is that they simply
perform better.  Given the cost differences, getting
the fastest one possible is reasonable.

Motherboard - We want two motherboards.  Why? If the
motherboard fails we'll have an exact duplicate, and
be able to get back online *knowing* that we have
the same exact motherboard.  Several times now, I have
been bitten by "small" changes in motherboards, ie
small revs on the artwork, etc that have made some
noticeable difference in the operation of the computer.
For $145 extra its an excellent investment.  The other
parts, ram, disk controller, etc aren't nearly as 
persnickety; we can get more of those on a demand
basis.

Ram - Ram is *cheap*.  Having hordes of ram means that
we won't run out, and can work on some optimizations
like keeping binaries in ram disks, etc.

Box/power supply - THIS IS IMPORTANT.  The power supply
is one of these overlooked thins which all too often
is of dismal quality.  Antec goes against the grain
and still builds good power supplies.  Spending half
this amount for a cheaper box is definitely possible
but is not reasonable.

Misc case fans - Heat is the killer of systems.  I want
to be able to get several extra fans and over-engineer
the machine.  It's cheap.

NIC - OpenBSD likes the intel nics.  I've had excellent
results with them.  This is a 100Mbit card.  If we go to
1G, we'll have to do some research on this, and spend
more money.  Good 1G cards cost a lot more than garden
variety ones do, so I'm assuming 100Mbit at this time.

SCSI card - We want SCSI over IDE for our main disks.
The card listed is a ultra 160 speed card.  We want to
try and go with an Ultra 320 system if possible.  This
is the biggest unknown for me at this time.  The card
listed is Ultra 160, not a slouch.

Floppy/CD-rom - standard items; I like Sony stuff.

SCSI disk - I like IBM disks; when kept cool they are
excellent disks.  These are Ultra 320 disks.

IDE disk - Perhaps not needed.  This would be very 
useful for file storage, such as /usr/local/src and
other things that we don't use often.

Monitor - I am really beginning to hate most of the
monitors out there.  The viewsonic is OK and not too
pricy.

Keyabord - generic keyboard, perhaps found for less.

Misc items - Those things like cable wraps, cables,
etc.

Item                 Price Source Comments
CPU - Athlon XP 2500 $180  Newegg
motherboard          $145  Newegg
motherboard          $145  Newegg
RAM  512m $89ea      $300  Crucial 3 512M, at $100ea
antec box/ps         $250  Antec
misc case fans, etc  $100  Antec
NIC Intel 100mbit    $ 33  Newegg
SCSI card adap 29160 $194  Newegg
floppy (sony)        $ 18  Newegg
CD-rom Sony, 48x     $ 51  Newegg
SCSI disk ibm 18G    $142  Newegg Ultra 160 15K rpm!
IDE disk IBM 80G     $ 98  Newegg
misc items           $150  misc

sub-total           $1948
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