I no longer build PC. I don't understand why some do. The cost is more then just money. OS licence, Assemble time, dealing with multiparty distributors for parts warranty, self service. even installing the OS for the hardware can get involved.
I'm retired and don't want to spend $5K to get a real high end machine still I want a fast well build machine for half that price. I also have no problem opening a machine and adding stuff. Just happens I got a new machine last week here is what I got and paid .
Dell Outlet Precision Fixed Workstation T5600, 825W Tower
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit Operating System DVD
Processor: Intel Xeon Dual Six Core E5-2620 Processor (2.0GHz, 15M, 7.2 GT/s,Turbo)
2GB NVIDIA Quadro 4000, Dual Monitor, 2DP & 1DVI (max resolution 2560x1600 two)
8GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1600MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS)
PERC H310 RAID Controller
256 GB Solid State Drive
500 GB SATA, 3.5 Inch, 10K Hard Drive
8X DVD +/- RW Optical Drive
Usb English Keyboard and Optical Mouse
Precision T5600: 3 Year Basic Hardware Service with 3 Year
$2,029.00 Dell Outlet
$3,598.10 Dell retail Sale Price
$5,135.86 Dell High List price
Dell t5600 Dual Xeon Six Core E5-2620 Processors 2,029.00
Added External 4TB USB disk 3 for images storage 179.00
Added Ram 32GB ECC Memory for a total 40GB 316.00
------------------------------------------------------
Total 2,524.00
15Bit wrote:
Heavy lifting generally comes with a heavy price tag - i'll bet that wasn't cheap...
Now that Moore's Law is dead, I don't have to buy a new machine every 18 months. Last one I bought (2x Pentium III Coppermine, 2GB) has lasted 12 years with just a P/S swap, and is still in use. Bigger of my new machines cost $4K, half of that into CPUs: 2x Xeon E5-2650 (2GHz), Tyan S7050, 64GB Samsung ECC PC3-1600. The m/b is server class: 4 GbE, 16 DIMM slots, 8+6 SAS/SATA headers, IPMI.
Here's a performance example with 10,000 gzip'ed files in the Linux man page /usr/man/man3 directory. Single -threaded case:
d% time zgrep foofoo *.gz
real 1m1.931s
user 0m20.674s
sys 0m22.959s
Multi-threaded case follows. By multi-threaded, I mean 10,000 processes launched simultaneously. Linux can do that.
d% time (for f in *.gz; do zgrep foofoo "$f"& done; wait)
real 0m4.547s
user 1m6.285s
sys 0m37.738s
Files were pre-cached. Using pigz (multithreaded gzip) on this box is spectacular.
P.S. Nice PC, Mr Mouse! The E5-2620 is an attractively-priced Xeon choice. Looked at it myself.
rico wrote:
Now that Moore's Law is dead, I don't have to buy a new machine every 18 months. Last one I bought (2x Pentium III Coppermine, 2GB) has lasted 12 years with just a P/S swap, and is still in use.
I retired my dual coppermine about 3 years ago when the motherboard caps finally gave up. Was an excellent computer, that. I miss the days of cheap consumer level multi-socket systems, but with modern cpu's the market isn't there.
Bigger of my new machines cost $4K, half of that into CPUs: 2x Xeon E5-2650 (2GHz), Tyan S7050, 64GB Samsung ECC PC3-1600. The m/b is server class: 4 GbE, 16 DIMM slots, 8+6 SAS/SATA headers, IPMI.
We buy similar at work for scientific calculations, but thats well outside my price range for home.
Mr Mouse wrote:
I no longer build PC. I don't understand why some do.
Well i do it cos it saves money. My last upgrade from a Q6600 to an i5-3570K cost me motherboard, RAM and CPU. My upgrade before that (from dual Opteron to Q6600) cost me motherboard, RAM, CPU and CPU cooler. I've had the same case, DVD reader, PSU etc for years. Hard disks of course, come and go, but they are all older than the i5-3570K upgrade.
I agree that comparing two fully built new systems a vendor solution is not unattractive, but over the period of several upgrades the ability to re-use components is a real money saver.
15Bit wrote:
We buy similar at work for scientific calculations, but thats well outside my price range for home.
I keep the big one at the office. My home machine is $2K: 2x Xeon E5-2609 (2.4GHz), half the RAM, same m/b. I should add these prices include 900W PCP&Cooling P/S, plus DVD-RW and small HD drives. Perhaps this fits your budget better. A junior Xeon is quite affordable ($200 or so), and my configuration flies with 4+4 cores. Having a pair of boxes with identical m/b, p/s and case allows part-swapping for h/w debugging, and a hand-me-down upgrade path.
I am in the same shoe. But i finally decide to buy from Dell outlet store with 25% discount. My system is Dell Optiplex 7010, Core I7 3770, 8GB memory, 500GB hard drive 7200 rpm (all around cost less than $600)
So it's simple system. I only use it strictly for photoshop, some web browsing, and music. That's it nothing else. Eventually, i'll upgrade memory to 16GB once i spot something on sale.
I know it's not the best, but it fits my usage and my bill. At work, i use the same Optiplex and it's quite and efficient.
15Bit wrote:
I agree that comparing two fully built new systems a vendor solution is not unattractive, but over the period of several upgrades the ability to re-use components is a real money saver.
You can do the with prebuilt machines too. There is nothing stopping one from using part from old machines external devices like tablets monitors, readers, speakers are always use-able. So are internal hard drives if they are compatibly with your new RAID controller and drives. Disk are not that expensive these days unless you go for the fast turning 10 and 15 K RPM types. Your better off with SSD if you got the money..
Mr Mouse wrote:
You can do the with prebuilt machines too. There is nothing stopping one from using part from old machines external devices like tablets monitors, readers, speakers are always use-able. So are internal hard drives if they are compatibly with your new RAID controller and drives. Disk are not that expensive these days unless you go for the fast turning 10 and 15 K RPM types. Your better off with SSD if you got the money..
True, but you still end up with a extra case and PSU at the very least. Unless you know a vendor who will supply a pre-built PC without a case?
15Bit wrote:
True, but you still end up with a extra case and PSU at the very least. Unless you know a vendor who will supply a pre-built PC without a case?
What you don't use the recycling truck will take away or you put them into one's spare part inventory. I even saw a 3 1/4 floppy drive in there the other day however I can not remember the last time I saw something come on 3 1/4 floppy disk. There is an end of life for some technologies. Then vinyl records are making a comeback maybe I'll hold on to that 3 1/4 drive a little longer...
I'm actually pretty good about removing obsolete technologies, so no floppy drives, no IDE hard disks, no PCI cards. I also keep only a very minimal stock of spares.
If you are happy buying vendor PC's then that's great. You get a solution in a box, and it does save you the trouble of buying and building. Personally I find the savings from building my own are worth the hassle. You don't, and I quite understand that.
My UP5, oddly enough, sleeps fine under OSX but will not sleep under Win7. Need to look into that but that is just about the only 'issue'. 10x USB3/2 and 6x USB2/1 on the mobo
aubsxc wrote:
Based on a little research I did a few months ago, a computer that Puget Systems might sell for about $2,500 would set you back about $1,500 to 1,600 if you built it yourself using brand new parts. So a saving of about 35 to 40% would be more in line with my experience.
Which system were you looking at, as that is a huge saving? Not being familiar with US PC builders, are they well over priced?
howardm4 wrote:
My UP5, oddly enough, sleeps fine under OSX but will not sleep under Win7. Need to look into that but that is just about the only 'issue'. 10x USB3/2 and 6x USB2/1 on the mobo
All very interesting. Is there a list of supported peripheral hardware that you can use with MacOS on that kind of "Hackintosh?"
Last one I bought (2x Pentium III Coppermine, 2GB) has lasted 12 years with just a P/S swap, and is still in use. Bigger of my new machines cost $4K, half of that into CPUs: 2x Xeon E5-2650 (2GHz), Tyan S7050, 64GB Samsung ECC PC3-1600. The m/b is server class: 4 GbE, 16 DIMM slots, 8+6 SAS/SATA headers, IPMI.