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.

Positives of rolling my own:

• 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.

So is it worth it, or am I setting myself up for disaster?"

For those that are curious, Ask Slashdot did an article on the AMD issue, here.

Comments

Microsoft allow it?

[mrmaster]

Will Microsoft even allow you to recycle your Win2k license on a new computer?

AMD is not the issue...

[joshamania]

...but Microsoft might be. You might want to take a look at the EULA from M$ and see if they allow the transfer of operating system. Not that I'm suggesting you follow that load of malarky, but it may be a consideration.

Personally, if they're just office type machines. Get Star Office and Linux and see what you can do. Experiment with a couple of your users to see how much trouble it might be.

$600? Surely you can do better than that.

[drinkypoo]

You can get a motherboard, CPU, and 256MB of ram for less than $400. For instance, access micro (my favorite computer etailer) will sell you an abit AT7, athlonXP 1600+, 256MB of DDR333 memory, and a fan for $339 (with burn-in test.) $40 will get you a GF2MX 64MB SDR. pricewatch indicates that WD 40GB EIDE disks (plenty for most applications) are down to $52 - Call it $75 for a disk, then, just for laughs.

Don't buy more processor than you need; It's expensive. You can always upgrade the CPU later if you pick a good platform. You can do the whole thing for about $450-$500 for each box.

Incidentally, I picked the GF2MX because it has good drivers and VERY fast 2D. If you are doing cad or something, get something from matrox, they have a much better DAC. The 3D is just icing.

Re:$600? Surely you can do better than that.

[rnd()]

the parent post is dead on. Most slower machines will speed right up if you put in a sufficient amount of RAM.

After that, go after the processors, if they're upgradable.

Find some affordable hard drives and swap them out on the machines that are near capacity.

Invest the money you save into an upgrade plan based on an upcoming hardware platform, such as the Athlon T-bred, and watch the prices on RAM and buy in bulk when the price dips.

I think you're better off replacing the existing machines in thirds. First get rid of the most pesky third of the machines, cannabalize some RAM to improve the remaining 2/3. Then institute your new standard (whether its Dells or your self-built machines). You'll learn how to make the DIY approach efficient after the first 20 machines. In 6 months, you'll be able to buy equivalent machines at 2/3 of their current cost.

Benefits:
The business keeps more cash all along, and you make the absolute most out of the existing investment.

Walmart PCs without Windows

[crow]

Perhaps you should consider Walmart's Microtel PCs without Windows. Assuming you don't need software or monitors, you can get a 1GHz Celeron for $400. The trick is the legallity of transfering your Windows licenses (Which piece of the original computer does the license go with, the hard drive? Can you swap that piece into the new system). [Of course, if you could convert to Linux, that would be cool, but that's probably a separate battle.]

Get a Dell

[anewsome]

If you are going to pay $600 for these things, you would be better off getting a Dell. I paid about that much for a couple of 2Ghz P4 systems fairly well loaded.

My 2Ghz P4 Dells are:

• 256MB DDR Ram
• 80GB 7200RPM Maxtor HD
• Builtin Sound, Ethernet
• CD-RW Drive
• Full Tower case (solid)

I've been building clone boxes my whole life, but I couldn't pass this Dell up. This is pretty typical on Dell's site.

I usually check gotapex.com for deals.

Today they have a business class Dell P4 1.6GHz GX240 for $357.64 shipped. You can't build a loaded clone machine from scratch for that much, let alone one covered by a 3 year warranty.

Cluster 'em

[Rebel Patriot]

I know this is a little late, but here's a solution we've come up with that's in the cooker for some of our clients in a similar situation.

Basically you should invest $4,000 in a single server, RAID SCSI drives, dual athlon, 2 gigs of RAM. You've already got a 10/100 Mb backbone for your network, so you can slip this in just about anywhere.

Now here's where it gets fun. Load your favorite distro of linux, visit the Linux Terminal Server Project, and make a terminal server out of it. Then, check out MOSIX, or Sun's grid-computing (the later sports better redundancy, a feature I adore when working with end-users). Grab nics and boot-roms for each PC, install 'em, and boom, you've got a complete functioning cluster of what, 40 PII's? You have any idea the power those can muster?

Not only will you see a huge boost in computing power, but you also save money. Need to use quick books? What's a single liscence for Citrix cost? You can publish the app natively on your terminal server. Open Office works great for converting all those old MS documents.

Honestly, KDE 3.0 just came out. Use it. :-)