I am building 4 workstations and a server for a small business. I have looked at several different options, and now was hoping to get your opinions on good builds. I keep second guessing myself, and have been considering other options, to save money like a cheaper processor. The budget is around $800 per computer including monitor, and the server $1500 (no monitor). What should I spend the left over budget for on the server? Here is what I have come up with:

Workstations

CHENMING CMUI-601AEB-AW Black Aluminum Server Computer Case - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16811125444)
$71.50 X 4

Thermaltake TR2 W0070 ATX 430W Power Supply - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817153023)
$39.99 X4

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819103535)
$152.00 X 4

ASUS A8V Socket 939 VIA K8T800 Pro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813131541)
$88.00 X 4

CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB (2 x 256MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model VS512MBKIT533D2 - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820145530)
$38.00 X 4

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380817AS 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148040)
$62.00 X 4

CHAINTECH SA5500T2 Geforce FX5500 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814145076)
$62.00 X 4

Microsoft K99-00001 2-Tone PS/2 Wired Ergonomics Keyboard Mouse Included - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16823109117)
$30.99 X 4

SAMSUNG Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Windows 98SE/ ME/ 2000/ XP - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16821103203)
$7.25 X 4

SAMSUNG 913V-Black 19" 12ms LCD Monitor - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16824001192)
$292.99 X 4

LITE-ON Black ATAPI/E-IDE DVD Burner Model SHW-1635S - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16827131419)
$39.99 X 4

Workstation Cost: $591.63 + $292.99 (monitor)

Server

CHENMING CMUI-601AEB-AW Black Aluminum Server Computer Case - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16811125444)
$71.50

Thermaltake TR2 W0070 ATX 430W Power Supply - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817153023)
$39.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3160812AS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148105)
$92.50 X 2

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA3800BVBOX - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819103562)
$322.00

ABIT AN8-ULTRA Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813127212)
$109.00

Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model PDC2G3200LLK - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820220040)
$242.95

SAMSUNG Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Windows 98SE/ ME/ 2000/ XP - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16821103203)
$7.25

CHAINTECH SA5500T2 Geforce FX5500 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814145076)
$62.00

LITE-ON Black ATAPI/E-IDE DVD Burner Model SHW-1635S - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16827131419)
$39.99
Server Cost: $1079.68

I see you're buying cheapo videocards. Have you considered a motherboard with onboard video to drop the cost? The ASUS A8V-MX is around $62.00.

If you don't specifically need to tinker with them yourself, you're honestly probably better off getting a Dell or whatever with a service contract.

If you don't specifically need to tinker with them yourself, you're honestly probably better off getting a Dell or whatever with a service contract.

Agree 100%. Unless you plan on giving them a maintenance agreement for 3 years you would be doing them a disservice by building them yourself.

Dell is a good option, I've always used IBM. The point being, it's not the hardware that costs a lot. It's the downtime and hassle that is created when one of them has a failure.

What should I spend the left over budget for on the server?
SCSI. No question.

I suggested they go with pre-built and they really didn't like the idea. They would rather just have me fix them at an hourly rate. I think they have had bad experiences with Dell in the past.

This is where you need to explain to them that they *should* be buying a Dell, and that youre experience is what they pay you for and that you know they're better off with an Optiplex 620.

It's completely STUPID to build a bunch of grey-box workstations for a small business like this.

The home version come in for <600 a box, including monitor, which is $300 cheaper and includes $100 worth of OS that you're not including in your price, as well as a better hardware warranty than you're going to be able to give them with your mix-and-match mail-order.


Dimension 5150 Desktop P4 630 3Ghz 256MB/80GB Serial ATA, CDRW/DVD, 17in e173FP LCD, 1yr warranty, XP Home $569. No rebates. Shipped free. $24 handling.


Also, you're putting HOW MUCH money into the video card in the server? The server? Puhleeze. It's pretty much a sign of where you're missing the mark. You have all sorts of things in that server that aren't going to help.

Is this going to run a domain for 4 workstations? Do you need one? Does a simple $300 NAS device with simple authentication solve all of their needs? Even if it doesn't, if the box isn't running an application or a database, it just needs fast drives and healthy memory. That's it. End of story.

Hand-customize their Dells. Set a purchasing standard for them. Buy them what they need, and be more to them then a guy who puts cool computers together in Lian-Li cases.

FOUR DELL WORKSTATIONS AND A NAS + PRINT SERVER

In as much I want to punch Pali in the face for the bright red text, I generally have to agree with him.

Long ago in ages past when men were men and cut their hands often on AT minitowers, we used to have a good relationship with a local Vietkoreanese place that would assemble decent clones for us at better than Dell/IBM/DECpaq prices and usually tossed in a few spare parts for us to maintain them with before they got out here for repairs. That time is over now, and it comes down to the major distributors having been forced to become price competitive as well as abandoning most of their stupid Not-Integrated-Here mentality regarding peripherals. It's just not worth it anymore to maintain the machines yourself and most of the Asian chop shops are gone now. The cost of machines dropped below the cost of people's time.

People will sell you a plug-n-play Linux server appliance with basic RAID for less than the cost of the server hardware probably, too.

If they're absolutely stuck on you doing it, I'd look at reducing the video card on everything and getting some sort of SATA or SCSI raid setup for disk mirroring, since you don't seem to have any sort of backup system. There is also no reason for getting a bigger processor on the server unless it's running multiple relational databases or whatever either. Software inefficiency and disk access time are going to be your only performance limitations.

In as much I want to punch Pali in the face for the bright red text, I generally have to agree with him. That's exactly the emotion I was shooting for :)

More about the NAS/appliance solution. Seriously, look into it. Good ones even provide some application support (webserver, FTP server).

First google hit gets you something like this: http://www.adstech.com/products/NAS-806-EF/intro/NAS_806_intro.asp?pid=NAS-806-EF

If you feel like earning a few bucks, customize a Linksys NSLU2 with homebrew firmware. http://www.nslu2-linux.org/

Just bought a couple dells for my new job, good pricing on their home machines, I would suggest against their "Business" Machines if you're trying to keep it cheap. Many of them have the monitor included in the price. I got my Dimension 3000 with 17in flat panel (analog) XP Pro, and Office 2003 Basic for just over ~ $850

If you really *really* want a server still I'd still get one of their cheaper servers. Go with a namebrand because then you only have one place to go if you need warantee work.

*Edit* Check their "Hot Offers" some good deals in there

If you go Dell, make sure you call the order in. So far, everytime I've ordered from Dell via phone they've taken roughly 10-15% off the price of at least a couple of the things I ordered. You'd think it would work the other way around, but it doesn't with them.

I have passed along all the suggestions, and gave them their options. It looks like they are going to listen, and go with the pre-built dell option. I am still building the server though, that was the only thing they insisted upon. They want to run MS Exchange so they can share their Outlook calendars, and also they need IIS / ASP.NET for some internal projects.


Thanks for the advice.

I modified the server some to, cheaper video card..and some other changes, I don't think I am going with dual processor chip now either, it looks like it isnt a good use of money.