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Rolling Your Own Business Desktops?
mike asks: "I'm mulling the logic of my company building its own desktop computers. As the IT Manager (plus sysadmin, janitor...) of a struggling-yet-thankfully-still-alive dotcom, money is really tight. We have around sixty ~400MHz desktops which are increasingly showing their age. Acceptable P4 systems from the big guys run at least $1000. By recycling the OS (Win2k), case, cdrom, floppy, and K/V/M, I figure I can assemble a good AMD system for about $600. That's a 40% savings. Is it worth it? The cost difference could very well determine whether this project proceeds or gets put on the back-burner again."
"Some negatives about rolling my own:
- Management: I won't get the special business features offered by some manufacturers. Dell's OpenImage, for example, looks awfully nice. But how much does that really buy me in a company of 60 machines? I don't use such stuff now; am I missing out on nirvana?
- Time to build: Even though we'd leverage Ghost wherever possible, handmade systems nevertheless take time to build, load, & configure.
- Supporting different platforms: Because money is so tight, I can at best afford a capital replacement rate of 25%-33% (15-20 units) per year. That means I'm committing to the support of 3 or 4 different platforms. Having just one platform is great, but how many companies, even ones that actively strive for it, truly enjoy that luxury? I inherited two platforms (Micron & Gateway); support isn't that bad. With proper planning, I don't see why we can't support four.
- Hardware quality: How much can I trust a popular Athlon chipset in a business environment? I feel silly bringing this up because I have a few Athlon systems at home, each with a different chipset, and they've been nothing but rock solid. But I know the lack of a really good chipset has been a large contributor to why AMD's aren't more prevalent in the business world. (well, that and long term bullying by Intel).
- I don't get a proven, prepackaged system that works right out of the box.
- Cost savings. Plain & simple.
- Increased horsepower per dollar spent.
- By choosing my own equipment (mobo especially), I suffer fewer OEM shortcuts.
- I have to admit that I'd enjoy the pure geek satisfaction of rolling out 'my' creation to the company.
For those that are curious, Ask Slashdot did an article on the AMD issue, here.
Those that actually need them?
I mean really suzy in the phone center has no need for over 400 mhz, I'm striving along just fine on my 667.
What's your salary/the salary of the people that will have to build 60 boxes? How long will it take? Are you sure $600 + labor costs + no manufacturer support will be less than $1,000? If not, there's no business case to do it yourself.
-matt
If you must, go out and get some low-end consumer PCs and buy a bunch of spares: it's less work than building your own and still very cheap.
While I can appreciate the geek factor here, I think you'd be nuts to roll your own systems here. It will eat up loads of your time, overall costing your company more than it would to just pay more for each system. And I'm not just talking build time. When (not if) one of the systems go kerput, you'll end up diagnosing it yourself, RMAing the defective component, replacing it yourself, testing, reloading OS (if needed), etc etc. Compare to getting a Dell or something, where you determine software or hardware. If hardware, it's under warranty, you don't have to so much as crack the case open. Saves a lot of time and therefore cash.
Even if they cost a little more, I think you'll find yourself grateful for a warranty to fall back on. Plus, when machines go boom, you aren't instantly blamed. If you roll your own, any system that crashes will be pinned on YOU, and you alone.
I know that's not a situation that I'd like to be in. Would you?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I also do the exactly same thing for a small dotcom just like the poster. I brought up the issue of building our own desktops for increased horsepower and reliability (I haven't like the experiences I've had with big name manufacturers) but they countered with "Well, if you leave, who is going to support our machines? At least we can call Dell if we buy from them." I know I'm in this position for the long haul, but they have no guarantees of that. Support is a big thing for small companies.
...and I can't really recommend it.
I worked in a 50-user shop, and provided services and equipment to a 200-user shop under contract.
In our case, the only way to get decent specs and meet the client's budget was to roll our own. The other options were too few systems, or systems too cheesy to contemplate. Cheesy as in crap, not as in creamy goodness.
If you go down that path, my suggestion would be to make sure you have confidence in your component choices, and that all your component choices interoperate flawlessly. Any system you have to see again will blow the savings - your first callback or return could be fatal. Make sure you source quality components, and if you're trying to minimize the number of discrete configurations, buy all your components at once.
Spend money on decent cases with good power supplies. Don't yield to the urge to "cheap out" on components that "don't matter" - they all matter. Don't buy cadillac parts, but make sure everything you do buy is good quality, sound, and durable. Keep extra original parts on hand, especially a mobo or two.
Come up with a logo and have the stickers printed - it amazed us how many people would readily accept a brand they'd never heard of, but would never accept an unbranded system.
Your initial problem will be evaluating a number of different hardware options, then settling on those you want to standardize on. Once you get to that point, what do you do with the bastard love children of your prototype period? Don't deploy them to users, you'll water down any faith and confidence your production systems should inspire.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
(Note: I don't work for Dell, but after buying this latest round of systems, I wholeheartedly recommend them.)
;)
I got two Celeron 1.1GHz systems and a Pentium IV 1.6GHz for $588 each (shipped!) Here is a Slashdot post that details my experiences with them.
There was absolutely no way I could undercut Dell on price by building my own -- especially not when you include the cost of Windows XP (preinstalled), one-year on-site warranty, and the awesome cases that open with the press of a button.
It really doesn't make sense to build PC's yourself anymore when manufacturers are offering PC's like this for bargain-bin prices. Plus, you can always recycle monitors as well -- that's what I did with this set.
Building your own will certainly give you job security (as someone else mentioned), but it will also give you no end of headaches. Why doesn't video card A work with motherboard B? And installing Windows 60 times is enough to make even the bravest person run away in fear. Even with a copy of Ghost in hand, you still have the daunting task of putting everything together (and charging the company for your effort). In the end, it's really not worth it to either you or the company. Besides, do you really want to spend the next two weeks testing out RAM and hard drives by hand? Bleh.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I used to build machines for other people (family members, etc.) Now I just tell them all to buy a Dell because the hassle on me to maintain them is WAAAAAY less.
Preach it, friend!
For the last near 20 years I often built systems for friends, family, or businesses who wanted to save money. But these days I can't build them cheaper than Walmart sells them. The only time I build a system now for anyone other than myself is if all they want is some old wreck good enough to get on the internet and I already have the parts laying around.
To the guy who started this discussion: You start out by comparing a pre-built P4 system to a scratch-built Athlon system. You also need to be looking at Duron/Celeron pre-builts. I bet there is only a handfull of people in your company, if ANY, who need the power of a P4 or a top of the line Athlon. A Celeron or Duron would them just fine, and you're not going to build something from scratch with either of those that is cheaper than what Dell or Walmart can sell them to you for.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
- You can get a reasonable deal from a Dell or IBM for 50 PCs. This includes putting your own image on the drive, support, a decent salesdroid who will likely help with any issues down the road, a sturdy warrenty to back your purchase up, lotsa help in the drivers & spares market, etc.
- You can get 50 PCs assembled at ye local screwdriver shoppe for about what it would cost you to build-your-own but insofar as support & such you are own your own (unless it is some gross defect they can return to the manufacturer.)
- Or you can do it all in house and assume you've got the time to do it all, keep up with everything, and of course document it all in case of a proverbial bus hitting you.
My own argument would be if the business is a real business it should invest in its tools that are a critical part of it's operation. If this eats into the other budgets tough - employees need a roof, lighting, and decent computers. Trying to nickel & dime on hardware is foolish because you invariably end up with a herd of increasingly quirky systems slowly becoming Frankensteined. Unless the tech support (you) is free they're going to end up spending any savings in your time as well as the downtime of the aging & rebuilt systems plus the increasingly irate rest of the staff.Put this all on paper, generate some good estimates of costs & time allowences, failure rates & resolution times then present it to the CFO. Even for a company in a cash crunch these are generally compelling arguments that are well understood by the numbers folks.
They they don't bite then ask yourself if you want to hang around babysitting these monstrosities as the rest of the world moves on?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Waaaaaaaaaaait a minute. (Not you, the original questioner).
What's really wrong with these systems in the first place?
He's got an assload of 400 MHz P2s, probably Slot-1-based, and each box has either 64 or 128M of PC100 SDRAM.
Why not buy a bunch of Celeron or P3-800ish chips and FCPGA (new-sk00l slotket), and another 128M of RAM for each of them?
I think you could get a decent CPU and RAM upgrade for less than $100 per box.
Moreover, you wouldn't have to reimage any drives - it'd be a straight hardware swap, with maybe 15 minutes to figure out what voltages the motherboard supported, and to configure the slotket or motherboard correctly. (If you had quality components to begin with, this might even be automatic).
Add onto that maybe 15 minutes per desktop to properly apply thermal transfer paste.
No EULA concerns, no hardware/driver concerns, and it's dirt cheap.
I'd bet that you, plus one or two of the "hardware geeks" (you know who they are :-) in the office could do this overnight for $100 per desktop, plus the price of a case of beer and a couple of large pizzas with all the trimmings.
If you don't want to build your own machines but still want to economise - look for the computer deals that offer you just the computer - you keep the monitor, mouse, keyboard etc - so you save money compared to replacing the whole lot. Surely on the amount of hardware you're going to need you could set up some kind of trade account and get a discount anyway.
Video Game cheats, hints a
What on earth is an office PC doing that needs an AthlonXP 1600+? (OK, the sysadmins need that to play Quake after-hours, but what about the guy who only uses Excel and Powerpoint? :-)
For that matter - sure, the WD 5400RPM 40G drives are down to $52 - but what are office PCs doing that requires 40G?
This may depend on what he's already got -- if these PCs have only 100M of space left on ancient 2G drives, then fine, upgrade the drives to 40G. But if they've already got 6-8G drives (which probably have 4-5G free), and all the "real stuff" is stored on a central server, and all the user machines have several gigs free, isn't that enough space for your employees to store their downloaded MP3z and pr0n? ;-)
What does he need a newer video card for? Are his users likely to run 1600x1280 on their 17" monitors?
For office computing, you can often KIWI - Kill It With Iron. Add more RAM, swap the CPU for a P3 at either 133 MHz FSB or 100 MHz FSB, and see if it still sucks. If it ceases to suck, the problem's solved, probably for less than $100 per desktop.
This guy is either going heavy 3D, or something like that...or he has quite a strange concept of "obsolete". Add some RAM to those machine be happy with them.
*sight* People don't know how to take care of computers anymore :-(
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Introduce them to a little known test called "A+ Certification" -- anyone who has that piece of paper (and heaps who don't) is capable of supporting your PCs. And don't think Dell is going to give you any support for a measly 60 PC order. You get a 3 year warantee, whereas with OEM parts you only get 1 year, and only 30 days on CPUs and memory unless you pay a couple buck extra. That is the 90% of the difference between Dell and Joe Blow. For $600 apiece, I could give you fully assembled Athon XP 1800s (with no OS, shipping extra) -- and that's with *quality* parts. 512MB DDR, 300W Power Supply, etc.
To be honest, I rather like Dell's new keyboards (the black ones). Nice soft feel to them. At any rate, just let your secretaries and transcriptionists keep their old keyboards, and everyone with a wheel or trackball keeps their old mouse, and all is well. Very few other people would even know the difference.
We're talking business systems here. No worries of game playing. At most, we just need RealAudio/ Windows Media sounds, and MP3's.
I don't think business PC's should come with more than a 10GB (or less even) HDD. People shouldn't store things on their hard drive, it makes support a nightmare. Give em server space, and lock it with quotas. Very few office workers need more than 100MB in personal space. After that, it's time to clean it out or achive it.
Do your cube farm cohorts a favor and pull all speakers out of there. Give them $5 mono (so they can talk on the phone, listen to office chatter, etc.) headphones instead.
Good point. You should upgrade the RAM with Crucial memory after receiving the machines. Go with at least 128MB for Win9x, 256MB for Win2K, and 384MB+ for WinXP (if you're actually running that POS for some reason). Get it from Crucial and save the extra $100 bucks the OEM would've charged you.
I've never known Dell to not use a 3Com NIC. True, their integrated ones are a 3C920, but they're pretty good. For around $50, you can go with an industry standard 3Com 3C905C.
Though I historically despise Winmodems, they're more than decent enough for occassional use on a business system. Who doesn't have at least DSL anymore? Only older programs still use modems, and they're relatively few and far between. If someone really uses a modem, leave off the internal Winmodem one and get an external USRobotics. Otherwise, stay away from Dell's USRobotics hardware PCI modem, as it goes on Com5, which causes problems with most older apps.
Reuse the old monitors. Also, keep a few in stock for quick replacements when they do die. Most users will stick with 800x600 on a 17", and 1024x768 on a 19"+ anyways, so the clarity isn't too big an issue. Only your heavy spreadsheet users and graphics pros need a really good monitor.
As for Linux compatibility, that would be nice, but is mostly irrelevant since he's already said that it's a Win2K shop. Keep it in the back of your mind, but, for the most part, you'll only need to replace a very few components if you ever migrate. Minus the OS licensing fees, you'll still save a boatload of money.
Your arguments may be valid for a home system, but a business PC is completely different. Most of the points you brought up are simply not relevant for an office worker's PC.
You're either crazy or just a masochist. Yes, it sounds cool and very geeky, but it's also rather impractical. The money your company would save by doing this in house would be lost on having to maintain them and pay you to set them all up (thus taking you away from your other duties.)
This would also take an insane amount of time. Sixty machines is a lot of boxen; optimistically it would take you an hour per machine to swap all the hardware around and reformat the drives and install Windows. In other words, you'd be down at least a week.
Order sixty new machines from an OEM and you're down 2 days tops. Plus you get the guarantee that the machines work (out of 60 boxes, you're bound to get some bad hardware) and you get a warranty from a reputable company, not to mention saving yourself a MAJOR headache.
If something goes wrong with one of the machines, you just call the vendor and straighten it out. If you roll you own, you have to spend time doing diagnostics, then tracking down the receipts, RMA from parts warehouses, limbo time for replacement parts.. All this time your company is paying you to not do the job they hired you for.
Sure, they can hire on another guy to help you, but then there goes all that money you saved having to pay his salary. So in the end, your company didn't really save any money, they just have 60 new machines with no comprehensive warranty, poor tech support, and probably a very frazzled and stressed admin. The geek factor sounds fun, but in reality, it would be more practical to order from a vendor.
Hard drive: You do not want a bottom-of-the-line hard drive. It's not economical. If the current standard midrange size is 80GB, get an 80GB drive, not a 40GB. The small amount of savings you get for the large loss in space are not worth it.
Only on a standalone system. On a LAN you end up with workstations with lots of useless diskspace or worst provide an incentive for (l)users to store work on the local HDD.
I've worked for a white-box builder/consulting company and now i'm a sysadmin. I've been on both sides of the build or buy question and i've finally decided to buy pre-built boxes...here's why:
Replacement parts availability.
That nifty Athlon board from MSI, ABIT, Epox, and the like won't be around 1 year from now. If you image machines, you will most likely have to create new images when you service/replace hardware. (Win2k doesn't like having its boot controllers moved around very much...you'll get the "inaccesable boot device error".)
The upfront cost savings may be attractive, but there isn't a free lunch...you'll have to spend more time maintaining different platforms.
-ted
As far as the flames you direct against AMD, I'd say they're mostly, uhm, bullshit, I think the term is.
But you have brought up an interesting point. Know the old adagium 'no one's ever been fired for buying IBM'? Well, it's still around today and it's called 'no one's ever been fired for buying Intel'.
If your AMD craps out, your boss will be all over you for choosing a 'non standard CPU'. If your Intel craps out, it's just bad luck (which it is if your AMD craps out as well, but your boss doesn't know that).
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Support for plain vanilla PC's is easy, you could pay high school geeks $10 an hour to fix them up. It's only when you get to laptops that things get tricky.
my $.02
You can change CPUs though.
But whats the fine line, you change cpus, or keep same cpu but change motherboards....
Personaly, who cares what the EULA is, just do it , as long as its not running on the old pc too.
Remember the article the other day when we all laughed at the Wilkes Barre IT guy who stopped the IBM maintenance on the AS/400 ? Well, this is the same kind of thinking: penny-wise and pound foolish.
Remember: support contracts are a form of insurance. They insulate you from the risk associated with the issue at hand. When looking at any form of insurance, you have to take into account what the worst-case senario is, and if you can handle it. In your case, the scenario is that you have multiple desktop failures, including critical failures of important machines (ie, severl of your main developers). Do a cost analysis: if I do a roll-my-own machine, what's the cost of it breaking? How much does it cost for that developer to have no (or a seriously inferior) machine for a week or more, vs. the 1 or 2 days a supported machine would be out?
For small companies, (especially those heavy in software development) I can't imagine a situation where the TCO of a fully-supported system is worse than a roll-your-own box. None The downtime and IT personnel time alone will kill that equation. For huge companies, it may pan out, but for a 60-desktop company with 1 IT person? Not a chance.
You need to put this into perspective with Management. Once again, they are looking at only the up-front costs, and none of the hidden costs, which in this case are the majority. Explain to them what the true cost of a desktop is, and how NOT buying a supported machine results in a WORSE return over the next year.
Now, here's a couple of recommendations for getting SUPPORTED desktops into your organization while not breaking the budget and still meeting increased performance needs:
I don't mean to harp on you personnally, but this kind of thing is why IT has a long, long way to go before being really professional. Folks, this isn't a garage. IT folks need to quite thinking like it's an expanded hobby, and also need to remind the Executives of this, too. It's a Profession, not a Trade.
-Erik
Systems/Network Architect and former SysAdmin
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.