Need Recommendation--University Lab Computers

[NihmRodd]

Hey all,

I manage a 30-seat university computer lab, and have been given the job of researching specs for our latest round of workstation replacements. As such, I've done a lot of research but have come to no conclusions. So, I'd appreciate anyone's helpful suggestions on what we should look to get. Here's the deal:

Usage: general office/school-type work (MS Office, statistics program), some web design, multimedia presentations, basic DV video editing (Pinnacle Studio)...mostly pretty basic stuff.

Budget: unknown, but likely fairly conservative.

Current: AMD AthlonXP 1700+, 256 ram, 40GB & 120GB ATA, generic 32MB ATI video cards, onboard sound, add-on 1394 card, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, front panel w/ audio in/out, 1394, and 2 USB2 ports.

Need: something as solid as can be, again on a fairly conservative budget. Need to think of what will still be usable & decent for the next 3 years until replacement time again. Am open to AMD, Intel, 64bit, Opteron, Xeon--whatever. 1.) it has to be solid, and 2.) it has to be inot too expensive (not cheap, but not pricy).

Considerations: our IS department seems to prefer systems they can build themselves, so Dell, IBM, etc are unfortunately out of the picture. I need specific, individual parts recommendations.

Preferences: I'd like to go with 2 SATA drives (w/ on-board controller), DVD+-RW, 1GB RAM minimum. MUST HAVE FireWire and USB2.0, and needs to have these and audio in/out in front (or enough room for add-on front panel).

Again, any and all help is greatly appreciated!

---
NihmRodd

 

[barnett25]

I can't help much, but for CPU I would go AMD Athlon64 unless you have a good reason not to. They run cooler, and are cheaper than P4s.

 

[ribbon13]

What all does it have to include? Windows license? KB/MS/Monitor?

 

[NihmRodd]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
What all does it have to include? Windows license? KB/MS/Monitor?

No, we're all set for software, and have asked elsewhere about possibility of having 30 wireless (radio or BT) desktops in the same room (though if anyone here knows if it'd work I'd love to know).

Still figuring out what our monitor situation will be, so don't need that either. Basically just the box and what goes in it.

---
NihmRodd

 

[Darth Farter]

Hmmm, I'd suggest for core components:

Intel: 630 cpu's (for HT & 64bit but the cheapest ones R fine)
mobo's: i915 w/ IGP chipsets (on board video and available pci-e for future upgrades)

AMD:
cpu: 3000+ Venice (bad: no HT, but good cheap and costeffective i.t.o less power/heat solution)
mobo's: s939 nforce4 ultra's (solid performance)
vidcards: 6200TC's (needed as mobo doen't have on board gpu)

memory(for both as 915 also has ddr1 solutions): 2x512MB corsair value or other brand name value RAM.

the amd systems will probably perform better in non-heavy multitasked environments where the intels will shine.

 

[ribbon13]

802.11/Wifi with that many nodes would be terrible.

$77 Antec SLK1650B

$95 MSI RS480M2-IL
$146 AMD ADA3000BIBOX
$104 G.skill F1-3200PHU2-1GBZX

$145 Seagate ST3250823AS
$53 NEC ND-3520A-BK
$11 NEC FD1231H-302

$631

 

[rasczak]

how future proof do you want / need to be? it really would help to have a dollar figure(regardless of how conservative it may be) to get a better bearing on what you can afford.

 

[MrControversial]

Did you say video editing? In that case go with the latest mid-high Intel chip. Go with Dell or someone and get prebuilts. You don't want to risk doing your own support on 30 custom-built PC's. Plus Dell has great discounts for educational institutions.

 

[wisdomtooth]

to the OP:

Most major IT corporations like Dell, IBM, Apple, Sun, Oracle, etc. work with universities on deploying campus-wide systems with complete packages such as warranties, networking, maintenance, licensing and support. I'm very surprised that your university would go at it alone.

Whoever is running your program, you might want to talk to and try to convince them to go with one of those corporations. It would mean a much smaller headache for you, trying to put together, deploy and maintain such a large number of machines.

HTH.

 

[dullard]

My thoughts:
1) Just plop in 512 MB into each of your current machines and you should be good to go for quite some time. They are good specs and your uses don't really need more than that (except for the memory).

2) The big OEMs do make it quite nice to have 30 machines configured exactly the same so one ghost image can handle all your support needs. Never underestimate the benefit of something like that. Plus, unless your IS staff is seriously underworked, who has time to assemble 30 machines? Some companies can sell complete machines at prices below what you could buy the individual parts for. However, for education machines, there is typically a good price premium for 3 year warranty. Call them up and see what sort of deal they can make.

 

[Duvie]

PPL remember I doubt most of the macines need to do multitasking abilities like some of us home users...HT is nice but AMD is not far off for the price. You will get performance with video editing by getting good HDDs and ample ram....

64bit?? Are you prepared to upgrade 30 licenses to the new windows 64bit when it come available???

opterons and xeons are prohibitively expensive...rule them out....

Great performance can also be had still at the sckt 754 level with a 2800+ A64....mobo and cpu in some areas can be had for under 200 bucks...maybe even worth it to get 3000+ A64 sckt 754.....

Since it appears you will hold onto these systems for a bit sckt939 upgradability is probably a moot point...

As for P4s....I would recommend northwoods on older i865/i875 platforms...They run cooler, take less power and most likely will be less noise for 30 cpus..that in the fact so many reports of ppl with stock p4e's at 3.2ghz range have trouble keeping them cool . I have ehard these winchesters in antec cases with silent K boosters and it is like they are not even on....hands down what I would want in a lab of 30pcs...

Obviously the netwroking if for the internet only. Are you allowing file sharing between the cpus or all back to one base computer??? I have never netowrked more then 4 computers together so 30 is beyond my knowledge...

 

[biostud]

all good replies, but I would probably choose one of dullards solutions.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: biostud
all good replies, but I would probably choose one of dullards solutions.

really??? I would shoot myself in the head if I went back to a 1700+ XP...have you ppl seen what kind of performance difference there is in video editing by raising cpu speed??? I eam you say video editing but re-encoding or encoding comes at the end and that is mainly a cpu intensive app....

go check out toms hardware cpu chart roundup the performance differences....

more ram and it still will few lame encoding. might as well go home in most of theose instances...ram will nice in the editing part for sure......

http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-18.html
http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-20.html

If you meant the OEM route that may be good....I bought a bunch of preassembled stuff (I got to chose the parts from their list) for my office back in the p3 days and it was nice having basically 4 clones....I did one install and ghosted the image of the basic drive with basic apps and cloned it through a serial port using pcanywhere....

 

[sniperruff]

i think throwing a stick of dirt-cheap 512mb PC2100 into each one of them will squeeze another year or two out of those machines.

 

[montag451]

I'd also go for IDE PATA drives at the moment, just because there doesn't seem to be any massive advantage to SATA at the moment, but a few disadvantages [just look at the technical support pages of any forum to see all the SATA problems].

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: sniperruff
i think throwing a stick of dirt-cheap 512mb PC2100 into each one of them will squeeze another year or two out of those machines.

Yeah for general internet stuff, but it is getting long in the tooth now for the video editing...read the charts I listed....newer cpus are over 100-150% faster now...in 2 years with dual core it will be like 250% slower.....

 

[Blackjack2000]

Originally posted by: Duvie


really??? I would shoot myself in the head if I went back to a 1700+ XP...have you ppl seen what kind of performance difference there is in video editing by raising cpu speed??? I eam you say video editing but re-encoding or encoding comes at the end and that is mainly a cpu intensive app....

I don't know the specific situation, but I would be surprised if there was a lot of DV editing going on in that lab. My experiance in general university computer labs is that 99% of what goes on is MS office and web browsing. After that it's mostly software development. The lab computers have all the applications installed on them to be sure, but I rarely see people actually using CAD software or other advanced apps in the general labs.

I don't want to speak for Nihm Rodd's situation, but if he optimizes the machines for DV editing, he's likely going to sink a lot more cash into processing power than he needs to.

Also, I think it's rediculous, and maybe even irresponsible for the IS dept. to want to build the machines themselve. I would price the seperate parts, and then machines from Dell to show them how much money they'd be wasting.

 

[sniperruff]

Originally posted by: Duvie

Originally posted by: sniperruff
i think throwing a stick of dirt-cheap 512mb PC2100 into each one of them will squeeze another year or two out of those machines.

Yeah for general internet stuff, but it is getting long in the tooth now for the video editing...read the charts I listed....newer cpus are over 100-150% faster now...in 2 years with dual core it will be like 250% slower.....

OP did mentioned "pretty basic stuff". besides, i doubt the budget would be the highest priority, not performance.

besides, like you have said, in 2 years there will be dual -core's. and those would be faster than the A64 that you have suggested. doesn't that make the A64's obselete?

it depends how much is their budget. basically if i'm the manager, i'd buy the RAM and use the machines for at least another year.

 

[montag451]

Wouldn't it be good to have 3 lots of different configurations.

You could then do some testing for us to see what differences there are between each computer with the same configuration.
Also, you would be in an excellent position to see what turns up DOA more often than anything else.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: montag451
I'd also go for IDE PATA drives at the moment, just because there doesn't seem to be any massive advantage to SATA at the moment, but a few disadvantages [just look at the technical support pages of any forum to see all the SATA problems].

MOst tech problems (around here in regards to SATA threads) are compatability, ppl trying to oc with SATA drives, etc...They are as reliable...

they are also within 10%-15% in cost so on an 80gb drive it may only be 10 bucks or less...It provides enough of a benefit to justify that slight cost....



I looked at bang for buck, compared it to prices at pricewatch, and to toms charts...

Hands down a 2800+ newcastle at ~110 dollars (OEM...a bit more for retail w/ warranties) is the best (even compared to p4c's with HT) bango for the buck in cpus...nearly a 100% increase over current systems in video encoding....

80gb SATA drives is the sweet spot in price and speed...

Find a nice sckt 754 integrated mobo and you are set.....

Plenty of great deals for value ram of 1gb in nature...single channel you can get just one stick and be fine....

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Blackjack2000

Originally posted by: Duvie


really??? I would shoot myself in the head if I went back to a 1700+ XP...have you ppl seen what kind of performance difference there is in video editing by raising cpu speed??? I eam you say video editing but re-encoding or encoding comes at the end and that is mainly a cpu intensive app....

I don't know the specific situation, but I would be surprised if there was a lot of DV editing going on in that lab. My experiance in general university computer labs is that 99% of what goes on is MS office and web browsing. After that it's mostly software development. The lab computers have all the applications installed on them to be sure, but I rarely see people actually using CAD software or other advanced apps in the general labs.

I don't want to speak for Nihm Rodd's situation, but if he optimizes the machines for DV editing, he's likely going to sink a lot more cash into processing power than he needs to.

Also, I think it's rediculous, and maybe even irresponsible for the IS dept. to want to build the machines themselve. I would price the seperate parts, and then machines from Dell to show them how much money they'd be wasting.

I agree on the last part, but I just go with what the OP gives me...i wouldn't want to be responsible for 30pcs...odds are you will get some bad parts anytime you buy 30 of anything....

 

[Soubriquet]

Originally posted by: NihmRodd

Considerations: our IS department seems to prefer systems they can build themselves, so Dell, IBM, etc are unfortunately out of the picture. I need specific, individual parts recommendations.
---
NihmRodd

For replacement IDEs I would suggest Seagate Barracuda 160Gb 8Mb SATA because the sources I am looking at offer a 5 year manufacturers warranty on the 160Gb model.

Storage Review gives the generic ATA barracuda a 93rd percentile rating for reliability (higher is better) which is indicative of the reputation Seagates enjoy, and they are quietest (by far- I have a Seagate ATA) and competitive due to large production volumes (as opposed to cheap).

They are slightly slower than ultrafast noisy models. Allegedly 8mb Cache IDEs are faster for AV processing and Seagate do also make these in a 120Gb flavor with 3 year warranty but only a little less money. Re cost : [2x160Gb] is cheaper in total than [1x300Gb].

In a working environment with 30 boxes, Seagates will help to keep noise down considerably.

 

[Duvie]

http://www.buyxg.com/system/xg2000sp.asp?v=d

custom config here and I could get a system for 600-700 range looking for what you stated.....30x that is a shite load...18-21k...Ouch then you need to buy the networking equipment....Hope you have the monitors....

 

[montag451]

Originally posted by: Duvie

Originally posted by: montag451
I'd also go for IDE PATA drives at the moment, just because there doesn't seem to be any massive advantage to SATA at the moment, but a few disadvantages [just look at the technical support pages of any forum to see all the SATA problems].

MOst tech problems (around here in regards to SATA threads) are compatability, ppl trying to oc with SATA drives, etc...They are as reliable...

UMMMM
don't think so,
Don't hear that many ppl complaining about they can't get their IDE hdd recognised.

I'm not saying that SATA is less reliable - they are the same drive as PATA, its just that if you have 30 computers and you don't want to screw around too much, then IDE/PATA is nice, simple, and what the hell, they can always get SATA later on if they really want to.

They can use PATA for the storage drive. That way, also, if things go wrong, OS probs and so on, PATA is easier to deal with/troubleshoot.
At least it will be that way till SATA is natively recognised, or at least MORE natively recognised than at present

 

[Duvie]

I have never had an issue with SATA drives (recognizing or whatnot) and building PCs (for myself, family, friends, and work) the last 2 years...the only issue I had was in this sytem trying to get a SATA to work with a PATA drive connected...first issue, but now I dont mix....dont need to...any new drives will be SATA cause the cost is neglible to do anything otherwise.


Either way the HDD isn't really the issue here as much as ram and cpu processing speed....