Purposed Machines for Mult-Boxing...

[Sentack]

I'm working on building a few machines for Multi-Boxing and right now I'm looking at what parts I'll want to grab. Right now I'm looking at making a 5-Box setup. I have a master system built, so now it's for the other 4 machines. This is what I'm looking at

Box and MB - $229 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101039
Processor - $85 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116063
2GB Memory - $53/$28 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145590
Video - $60 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130313
Hard Drive - $100 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073
DVD Drive - $37 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135156
Floppy Drive - $7 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16821103203
Total: $571 a Box

Now, The only thing I'm missing here is monitors. Those I'm still debating on. At the moment, I'm trying to keep the cost down. So a nice 19" is fine. I don't need huge Monitors taking all my space. But what should I go for? Any recommendations?

Sentack

[Dawnstone]

For just box machines, I'd cut out the Floppy Drives to save $50 in the end.

[thinus]

For just box machines, I'd cut out the Floppy Drives to save $50 in the end.

Lol, I don't have floppy drives at all anymore in any of my machines.

[thinus]

You might want to put the names of the components in your post as clicking on the links to view each item could deter some lazy people, like me.

[Sentack]

The floppies add so little cost it's not a major factor. And while Floppy drives are fairly rare these days, I don't see a reason not to add one. So I will.

And the Hardware is...
Case: Shuttle SG31G2 Intel Socket T(LGA775) (250W PowerSupply built in)
Chip: Intel Pentium E2200 Allendale 2.2GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
Memory: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Video: EVGA 512-P2-N738-LR GeForce 8400GS 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0

Those are the major components. Is their any problem with this set up that I should know about? I'm fairly weak on my hardware knowledge. I know how to assemble a PC and get things running but I'm never quite 100% about hardware compatability. Also things like will the default fan that comes with the processor fit in this tiny box.

[Chorizotarian]

I've been planning to use the same backbone when I build a new multibox machine. No personal experience with Shuttle though. Please let us know how it turns out!

[Wilbur]

250watt PSU?

Screw that, buy a decent one.

[Sentack]

250watt PSU?

Screw that, buy a decent one.Alright, but why do I need a bigger one? Do I need meet the power requirements for the hardware I specified? is their some advantage to a bigger PSU like better spike protection? Why is it I need a bigger PSU, that's what I want to know.

As for the case, the online reviews seem decent for the product, I just don't know how easy or hard it is to make this all happen. It might blow up in my face, I don't know.

[Xzin]

A good name brand ~ 250 is all you need.

[Xzin]

EVGA 512-P2-N738-LR GeForce 8400GS 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16

The 8400 is crap. Get the 8600.

[Shigan5]

With your powersupply you have a couple things to consider. The Watts specified for the products you have listed are the specifications for not at load, meaning when idle or just doing basic desktop stuff. While gaming your components will consume much more power.

The second thing is that the video card you are selecting is requesting a minimum of 300w power supply, granted thats not a necessity. But the big issue which will render it useless is that the video card you have there requires 18amps on the +12v rail. Now let me explain, there are different pwoer "rails" in your PS and each one has its own amperage, this number can vary depending on the power supply, but basically your graphics card requires that many amps on that rail or it will not get enough power. And i cant find a good description for your powersupply but looking at the pictures on Newegg the Amps on the 12v rail looks like a single digit number. I may be wrong. But these are important things to consider, as they can render your hardware useless.

One more thing, the 250W is a rated number, meaning it is not necessarily going to give you an exact 250W. Its just like harddrives, they say 250GB but they give like 246. And that number is also the MAX watts it supports, meaning once you hit 250W at load, the powersupply wont give anymore power and youll get system failure.

Also, does each of your boxes need a combination DVD/CD Burner? Just seems like a waste to me, but thats my opinion. Your going to be using these to box correct and each one is going to have one instance of wow?

[Sentack]

A good name brand ~ 250 is all you need.Okay, so 250 is sufficent, but does the brand name mean anything other then adding more cost to the system? You seem to have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, so I trust your right, but I just need to know a little bit more about why some brand name PSU's are better then factory models.

EVGA 512-P2-N738-LR GeForce 8400GS 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16

The 8400 is crap. Get the 8600.What was it with the 8400? Just a sucky model in general? Part of the reason I picked the 8400 is because it's inexpensive and decently rated. Remember I'm not looking for blazing speeds here. Games like WOW don't need a massively powerful Graphics card. (I suspect Warhammer Online won't too) So since these will be my 2+ Man machines, I don't need a blazing graphics card.

[Sentack]

The second thing is that the video card you are selecting is requesting a minimum of 300w power supply, granted thats not a necessity. But the big issue which will render it useless is that the video card you have there requires 18amps on the +12v rail.
Okay THAT is a good reason for me to get a better power supply in general. Any recommendations, gentlemen? I hate picking products blindly. Which I've done for most of this shopping experience. So a 300w PSU should be reasonable? What are some good name brands for PSU's?

[Wilbur]

Certain brands are better because they use higher quality components which are far less prone to failiure (fires)

As has been stated, graphics cards require a decent amount on the +12V Rail.

Run out of power and you a) increase the risk of your PSU overworking itself and setting itself on fire.
b) Don't get as great performance as you could with a more powerful PSU.

[Xzin]

A 8400 does not NEED a 300 watt. But for a 8600, dual core, I would buy a name brand 300 and call it a day. Anything more is overkill for the rig you describe unless you want a little headroom for future growth.

[Xzin]

What was it with the 8400? Just a sucky model in general? Part of the reason I picked the 8400 is because it's inexpensive and decently rated. Remember I'm not looking for blazing speeds here. Games like WOW don't need a massively powerful Graphics card. (I suspect Warhammer Online won't too) So since these will be my 2+ Man machines, I don't need a blazing graphics card.

It's cheap for a reason.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=1059&model2=854&chart=287

It's worse than a 6600 GT.

[Shigan5]

May I suggest a build for each box that will be much cheaper but run very effectively?

This is almost the same exact build of my old comp with mainly the same parts, other than a few improvements and a different case, but it will run WoW at full settings and get around 40-80 FPS everywhere except shatt, where youll get about 20ish depending on population and where your at, if your on a rise youll get 40ish again but i fur standing by the practicing guards thats where youll get 20 everywhere else was fine, but it never crashed on me and i never had any problems it was a very reliable build. This is also an improved build on the one you have at $160 cheaper, it has plenty of expandability and the power supply has sufficient power to addin other peripherals down the road if you need to.

CASE: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811119077
MotherBoard: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813138077
Video: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814150229
Power: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817339012
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819103213
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820211066
Floppy: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16821103203
HD: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822135106
DVD/CD: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16827135151

Final Price: $414.40

Basically your saving $160 per system, and itll run wow like a charm and you have upgrade room and plenty of power, u can upgrade to 4gb of ram later or add in a soundcard if need be, and the video card is much better than the one you have selected (it also comes with a free copy of Company of Heroes). Also if you plan to 5 box and you already have your main system by buying four of these would cost the same as buying 3 of the systems you had selected up top. Granted this requires more assembly but it is an overall more powerful/ cost effective build. The power supply also is 585 watts so you can add fans and any other fancys you would like. Its also the same power supply i currently use to run my system which is 4gb of ram a nvdia 9600gt and a athlon 6400+. along with other things

[Speedbump]

I think you would be horribly disappointed with the 8400. Tom's Hardware 2007 VGA Charts ('http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=1059&model2=855&chart=318'). *edit* Guess Xzin beat me to it while i was typing this up.

Notice how the 8600 GT performs 3x as well as the 8400, yet there is only a $30 price difference. EVGA 8600GT 256MG: $89.99 ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130085')

Also, I have two friends that have used the shuttles in the past. Both of them had heat issues that made the system unstable. They were fine for non gaming use, but that is not your goal. I purchased my rack mount cases, a 500 watt power supply, and a reliable MB for less than what you will be paying for that little shuttle.

[Shigan5]

The case, mb, and power supply i listed above is only if i remember right about 120 and theres plenty of airflow, with room for fans and the like.

[Sentack]

May I suggest a build for each box that will be much cheaper but run very effectively?
Final Price: $414.40
That's actually a great little set up you have there. I was hoping to make a really tiny line of boxes for visual purposes but you have something there that's actually pretty decent deal and has a lot of horsepower. I might try grabbing two of those systems, assembling them and testing them out myself. Thanks for the advice. Pretty damn sweet.

[Shigan5]

Yeah i ran pretty much that exact system build there for a long time as my main box. The only differences were the case, which i had a cheaper one, the power supply, i was running a 480 not 585, and my processor was the 3800+ not the 4400. Other than that everything is the same, including the parts themselves. Same brands, manufacturers etc. It wasa very reliabale system and ran everything i threw at it. Oh and those FPS numbers I gave were when i was running Vista Ultimate at full settings as well so on XP you will get much better performance, but no DX10.

And as I said its got plenty of expandability, enough power for a 9600gt if you decide to upgrade, and extra slots for ram and you can add cooling and anything else you can think of. You can upgrade to dvd burners if you want and youve got an open ide slot to add another hard drive or two. The audio on the MB is phenomenal, no need for a fancy sound card. And with the hard drive being SATA you'll get much better load times when zoning. The only issue i had with the MB was when i upgraded the Video to my 9600gt, getting the 8600gt out of the board was extremely frustrating as the locking mechanism on the PCIe slot is very small and it sits under the end of the car, so it kills your fingers trying to press it down and do so without hurting your MB. But other than that no problems whatsoever. I hope this has helped.

[Sentack]

Hrm, and what about dirt cheep LCD monitors. I'm thinking that a 17" monitor for the secondary machines would be decent. I also really like ViewSonic monitors, but I'm not sure how cheep you can get an LCD Display these days. Any for around $150 bucks?

[Gallo]

Hrm, and what about dirt cheep LCD monitors. I'm thinking that a 17" monitor for the secondary machines would be decent. I also really like ViewSonic monitors, but I'm not sure how cheep you can get an LCD Display these days. Any for around $150 bucks?

If you're 5 boxing, even a 19" monitors is hard to read with 4 WoW's spread across it. Keep that in mind. I use a 19" as my "alt" monitor, and I have to squint to read text.

[Sentack]

Alright, I ordered the parts that Shigan5 recommended since it made for a rather cheep and reasonable computer. Once I get it up and running, I might see how that runs multiple WoW clients and then begin the research on what it might take to get 3-4 clients running on one machine as the slaves and see how my machine does for a Master machine. So I might go with 3 machines total. 2 Clients on the 2 slave machines and 1 master machine. Right now, my Master machine might be slower then the slaves because It's my current primary system that runs WoW fine even with a single processor. I figure 2 versions of the above hardware would result in a perfectly suitable 5 man machine setup. Right now I"m pondering 4 Mages and 1 Priest.

But, Warhammer Online, my target platform, is coming soon, Word is the Pre-Order and Collectors Edition information just got leaked. Now I have to start considering if I want to throw down the $70 bucks a box for THAT in the near future. Hrm. I need to see if it'll support multi-boxing like Blizzard has for WoW.

[Shigan5]

When i was running aforementioned machine i was able to run 2 clients at a time and get nice framerates, depending on resolution, if you ran two, half screen each depending on resolution you should get awesome framerates, just remember the higher the resolution the more hardware it needs. I was running at 1680x1050 and i was running 2 wows, one had a very large resolution the other had a tiny, the very large one had about 25 fps while the smaller had about 35. The larger one took up 2/3 of the screen while the smaller took up half of that last 1/3. so if you go with a smaller resolution, say 1024x768 and make each half screen you should have no problems breaking 40fps on both instances of wow.

EDIT: I was running at lowest graphic settings for both windows and I was also running vista, so running on xp you should get better framerates and be able to run with a little better graphic settings and keep good framerates. Along with a smaller resolution, of course.

[Shigan5]

Sorry for the double post but I just wanted to put one more thing forward, IDK if you already know but that harddrive and the cdrom drive are both SATA so dont put them in a raid config. Be some very awkward problems there, nothing major just it will make the system not boot and yea, cause a potential head scratcher for a while.

[Sentack]

Sorry for the double post but I just wanted to put one more thing forward, IDK if you already know but that harddrive and the cdrom drive are both SATA so dont put them in a raid config. Be some very awkward problems there, nothing major just it will make the system not boot and yea, cause a potential head scratcher for a while.Yah, actually that might be a problem. I'm not used to working with SATA drives, my last system had a SATA drive and so I know enough that i have to make an driver disk for my copy of Windows XP I'll be using. I"m pretty sure in the past I've used Raid Configuration. So now I'll have to use... what? What's the other mode?

[Shigan5]

Just dont set one. You can opt to set for a raid config, but if you just plug them in and dont set anything in the bios you should be fine, theyll be detected as plunplay devices by your MoBo and thats it.

[Yanamana]

A good name brand ~ 250 is all you need.

uhm

NO!

I suppose if you like random reboots and hardware failure sure, 250 watts is good enuff. To bad no "good name brands" make 250 watt power supplies.

[Sentack]

I suppose if you like random reboots and hardware failure sure, 250 watts is good enuff. To bad no "good name brands" make 250 watt power supplies.Okay, do they not make 250 Watt power supplies because even the most minimalist PC needs more then that, or because they feel their's no profit margion for PSU's that 'small'? Do PSU's that small have problems with stability? Do modern PC's draw more power then that naturally? What is it? Why is it you need more then 250Watts? Tell me more then just "I say so".

[Yanamana]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/static/html/powersuppliesguide.html

should awnser any questions you have about power supplies.

[Shigan5]

250 watts is actually enough power for a basic, non gaming, pure internet/word processing machine. The following specs wouldnt require anything bigger than a 250 watt power supply. Granted it wouldnt hurt but itd do fine with that.

Basic of basic MB with onboard video, non nvidia or ati. Generic brand.
512mb of ram
amd athlon 2400+ (non 64) (non dual)
basic 40gb harddrive
1 cdrom (non burner,nondvd)

that would be fine on a 250 watt. Its not that they are crap, just that they dont have the power needed for performance computing. You need alot more power based upon what your using it for. In the case of gaming you need alot more wattage.

[ahsen3]

May I suggest a build for each box that will be much cheaper but run very effectively?

This is almost the same exact build of my old comp with mainly the same parts, other than a few improvements and a different case, but it will run WoW at full settings and get around 40-80 FPS everywhere except shatt, where youll get about 20ish depending on population and where your at, if your on a rise youll get 40ish again but i fur standing by the practicing guards thats where youll get 20 everywhere else was fine, but it never crashed on me and i never had any problems it was a very reliable build. This is also an improved build on the one you have at $160 cheaper, it has plenty of expandability and the power supply has sufficient power to addin other peripherals down the road if you need to.

CASE: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811119077
MotherBoard: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813138077
Video: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814150229
Power: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817339012
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819103213
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820211066
Floppy: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16821103203
HD: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822135106
DVD/CD: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16827135151

Final Price: $414.40

Basically your saving $160 per system, and itll run wow like a charm and you have upgrade room and plenty of power, u can upgrade to 4gb of ram later or add in a soundcard if need be, and the video card is much better than the one you have selected (it also comes with a free copy of Company of Heroes). Also if you plan to 5 box and you already have your main system by buying four of these would cost the same as buying 3 of the systems you had selected up top. Granted this requires more assembly but it is an overall more powerful/ cost effective build. The power supply also is 585 watts so you can add fans and any other fancys you would like. Its also the same power supply i currently use to run my system which is 4gb of ram a nvdia 9600gt and a athlon 6400+. along with other things

A question come to my mind, can this build hold 2 to 3 wow clients? ?(

[Thedonsquad]

250 watts is actually enough power for a basic, non gaming, pure internet/word processing machine. The following specs wouldnt require anything bigger than a 250 watt power supply. Granted it wouldnt hurt but itd do fine with that.

Basic of basic MB with onboard video, non nvidia or ati. Generic brand.
512mb of ram
amd athlon 2400+ (non 64) (non dual)
basic 40gb harddrive
1 cdrom (non burner,nondvd)

that would be fine on a 250 watt. Its not that they are crap, just that they dont have the power needed for performance computing. You need alot more power based upon what your using it for. In the case of gaming you need alot more wattage.

Not really sure why you are defending this. First off we are specifically talking about a gaming machine. Second, the non-nvidia/ati on board would pretty much have to be intel these days which means sharing memory. With a very limited 512mb assuming XP you would be down to maybe 100mb to run 1 wow game at a junky 1024x768 resolution.

Powersupplies are cheap. Skimping on power is not a good idea, hard drives spinning at the wrong speeds can cause serious issues. While fans won't take much of a hit, you will be raising the overall heat production due to lower fan speeds, and simply put heat reduces the lifespan of parts which is the very reason that gigabyte makes solid capacitors with ferrite cores. Memory and CPU's tend to be very picky about incomming voltage.

There are plenty of ways and things to make a computer cheap. Power should never be one of them. My processor alone is rated at 120w, add 4 hard drives, 2 video cards, 2 dvd burners, extra case fans, motherboard loss and efficiency of the psu itself into the equation and you have the reason i have an 800w psu, on top of the beauty of having 6 rails of 12v stabilized for extra safety when it comes to power surges.

You might be able to reduce power consumption via the 80w processors or even the 40w/60w passive cooled processors but now you are talking about dropping pure performance. You could also detune by underclocking, but why. If you want a real cluster boxing setup find a massivly produced model for the $399 that will give you a better baseline and buy an extra gig of ram. Which also benefits you buy having software pre-installed.



HP Option - http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=desktops&a1=Category&v1=Smart+value&series_name=a6400z_series

dual core AMD 1.8ghz
2gb of ram
320gb hard drive
dvd burner
onboard audio
onboard nvidia video
vista installed
$339.99

for $439.99 you can have 4gb of ram

Dell Option -- http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DDCWFA1&s=dhs

dual core intel 1.8ghz
2gb ram
250 gb hard drive
16x dvd burnder
onboard audio
onboard intel video
vista installed
keyboard/mouse
$429

There are plenty of deals out there for fully capable boxing options that will work out of the box for the same price range you are talking about. Not to mention these computers have warrantys and tech support. are built to work.

Course, now you have to figure in monitors and kvm switches etc... Yes you can technically build faster computers yourself... but you are talking about $400+ systems without software. Meaning that you could easily slap the 4gb or ram into the hp option and be about the same pricerange overall, or stick with 2gb and be able to spend essentially an extra $100 on your monitors/kvm etc.

[Shigan5]

250 watts is actually enough power for a basic, non gaming, pure internet/word processing machine. The following specs wouldnt require anything bigger than a 250 watt power supply. Granted it wouldnt hurt but itd do fine with that.

Basic of basic MB with onboard video, non nvidia or ati. Generic brand.
512mb of ram
amd athlon 2400+ (non 64) (non dual)
basic 40gb harddrive
1 cdrom (non burner,nondvd)

that would be fine on a 250 watt. Its not that they are crap, just that they dont have the power needed for performance computing. You need alot more power based upon what your using it for. In the case of gaming you need alot more wattage.

Not really sure why you are defending this. First off we are specifically talking about a gaming machine. Second, the non-nvidia/ati on board would pretty much have to be intel these days which means sharing memory. With a very limited 512mb assuming XP you would be down to maybe 100mb to run 1 wow game at a junky 1024x768 resolution.

Powersupplies are cheap. Skimping on power is not a good idea, hard drives spinning at the wrong speeds can cause serious issues. While fans won't take much of a hit, you will be raising the overall heat production due to lower fan speeds, and simply put heat reduces the lifespan of parts which is the very reason that gigabyte makes solid capacitors with ferrite cores. Memory and CPU's tend to be very picky about incomming voltage.

There are plenty of ways and things to make a computer cheap. Power should never be one of them. My processor alone is rated at 120w, add 4 hard drives, 2 video cards, 2 dvd burners, extra case fans, motherboard loss and efficiency of the psu itself into the equation and you have the reason i have an 800w psu, on top of the beauty of having 6 rails of 12v stabilized for extra safety when it comes to power surges.

You might be able to reduce power consumption via the 80w processors or even the 40w/60w passive cooled processors but now you are talking about dropping pure performance. You could also detune by underclocking, but why. If you want a real cluster boxing setup find a massivly produced model for the $399 that will give you a better baseline and buy an extra gig of ram. Which also benefits you buy having software pre-installed.



HP Option - http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=desktops&a1=Category&v1=Smart+value&series_name=a6400z_series

dual core AMD 1.8ghz
2gb of ram
320gb hard drive
dvd burner
onboard audio
onboard nvidia video
vista installed
$339.99

for $439.99 you can have 4gb of ram

Dell Option -- http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DDCWFA1&s=dhs

dual core intel 1.8ghz
2gb ram
250 gb hard drive
16x dvd burnder
onboard audio
onboard intel video
vista installed
keyboard/mouse
$429

There are plenty of deals out there for fully capable boxing options that will work out of the box for the same price range you are talking about. Not to mention these computers have warrantys and tech support. are built to work.

Course, now you have to figure in monitors and kvm switches etc... Yes you can technically build faster computers yourself... but you are talking about $400+ systems without software. Meaning that you could easily slap the 4gb or ram into the hp option and be about the same pricerange overall, or stick with 2gb and be able to spend essentially an extra $100 on your monitors/kvm etc.

You havent read the whole thread. I already recommended a system to him thats cheap and runs 2-3 wows perfectly:


May I suggest a build for each box that will be much cheaper but run very effectively?

This is almost the same exact build of my old comp with mainly the same parts, other than a few improvements and a different case, but it will run WoW at full settings and get around 40-80 FPS everywhere except shatt, where youll get about 20ish depending on population and where your at, if your on a rise youll get 40ish again but i fur standing by the practicing guards thats where youll get 20 everywhere else was fine, but it never crashed on me and i never had any problems it was a very reliable build. This is also an improved build on the one you have at $160 cheaper, it has plenty of expandability and the power supply has sufficient power to addin other peripherals down the road if you need to.

CASE: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811119077
MotherBoard: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813138077
Video: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814150229
Power: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817339012
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819103213
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820211066
Floppy: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16821103203
HD: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822135106
DVD/CD: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16827135151

Final Price: $414.40

Basically your saving $160 per system, and itll run wow like a charm and you have upgrade room and plenty of power, u can upgrade to 4gb of ram later or add in a soundcard if need be, and the video card is much better than the one you have selected (it also comes with a free copy of Company of Heroes). Also if you plan to 5 box and you already have your main system by buying four of these would cost the same as buying 3 of the systems you had selected up top. Granted this requires more assembly but it is an overall more powerful/ cost effective build. The power supply also is 585 watts so you can add fans and any other fancys you would like. Its also the same power supply i currently use to run my system which is 4gb of ram a nvdia 9600gt and a athlon 6400+. along with other things

O and the reason i was talking about the 250watt system was cause he asked this question:



I suppose if you like random reboots and hardware failure sure, 250 watts is good enuff. To bad no "good name brands" make 250 watt power supplies.Okay, do they not make 250 Watt power supplies because even the most minimalist PC needs more then that, or because they feel their's no profit margion for PSU's that 'small'? Do PSU's that small have problems with stability? Do modern PC's draw more power then that naturally? What is it? Why is it you need more then 250Watts? Tell me more then just "I say so".

but yeah i already suggested a build that runs fine and he decided to go with that. cheap performance is always a good thing.




A question come to my mind, can this build hold 2 to 3 wow clients? ?(

yes it can and it will run them well, granted your not on the highest of settings.

[marvein]

250 watts is actually enough power for a basic, non gaming, pure internet/word processing machine. The following specs wouldnt require anything bigger than a 250 watt power supply. Granted it wouldnt hurt but itd do fine with that.

Basic of basic MB with onboard video, non nvidia or ati. Generic brand.
512mb of ram
amd athlon 2400+ (non 64) (non dual)
basic 40gb harddrive
1 cdrom (non burner,nondvd)

that would be fine on a 250 watt. Its not that they are crap, just that they dont have the power needed for performance computing. You need alot more power based upon what your using it for. In the case of gaming you need alot more wattage.

Not really sure why you are defending this. First off we are specifically talking about a gaming machine. Second, the non-nvidia/ati on board would pretty much have to be intel these days which means sharing memory. With a very limited 512mb assuming XP you would be down to maybe 100mb to run 1 wow game at a junky 1024x768 resolution.

Powersupplies are cheap. Skimping on power is not a good idea, hard drives spinning at the wrong speeds can cause serious issues. While fans won't take much of a hit, you will be raising the overall heat production due to lower fan speeds, and simply put heat reduces the lifespan of parts which is the very reason that gigabyte makes solid capacitors with ferrite cores. Memory and CPU's tend to be very picky about incomming voltage.

There are plenty of ways and things to make a computer cheap. Power should never be one of them. My processor alone is rated at 120w, add 4 hard drives, 2 video cards, 2 dvd burners, extra case fans, motherboard loss and efficiency of the psu itself into the equation and you have the reason i have an 800w psu, on top of the beauty of having 6 rails of 12v stabilized for extra safety when it comes to power surges.

You might be able to reduce power consumption via the 80w processors or even the 40w/60w passive cooled processors but now you are talking about dropping pure performance. You could also detune by underclocking, but why. If you want a real cluster boxing setup find a massivly produced model for the $399 that will give you a better baseline and buy an extra gig of ram. Which also benefits you buy having software pre-installed.



HP Option - http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=desktops&a1=Category&v1=Smart+value&series_name=a6400z_series

dual core AMD 1.8ghz
2gb of ram
320gb hard drive
dvd burner
onboard audio
onboard nvidia video
vista installed
$339.99

for $439.99 you can have 4gb of ram

Dell Option -- http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DDCWFA1&s=dhs

dual core intel 1.8ghz
2gb ram
250 gb hard drive
16x dvd burnder
onboard audio
onboard intel video
vista installed
keyboard/mouse
$429

There are plenty of deals out there for fully capable boxing options that will work out of the box for the same price range you are talking about. Not to mention these computers have warrantys and tech support. are built to work.

Course, now you have to figure in monitors and kvm switches etc... Yes you can technically build faster computers yourself... but you are talking about $400+ systems without software. Meaning that you could easily slap the 4gb or ram into the hp option and be about the same pricerange overall, or stick with 2gb and be able to spend essentially an extra $100 on your monitors/kvm etc.

except of course what hp and dell did was take the 100bucks and gave you an operating system and a crappy video card instead of an actual usable one.

and @the 250watt PSU argument. If you are going to try and edefend this "250wats is ok" argument with basically a 'look at this non-gaming machine' then stop. We are not grandma who checks email and surfs the web. 250watts (especially shitty generic PSUs) are not enough for a system to run WoW decently.

And @ 'who cares who makes it I want cheap" people. Let me be very clear about what the number on a side of a PSU means. that number means "This PSU, when cranked all the way to the max with a multimeter attached to it output 250watts of power" All PSUs are designed to operate at around 70% capacity because that is the most efficient for them. However, there is no required operating range at all, what that means is using cheap components to save money companies can create a PSU that will peak at 250watts but it will not be providing 250watts of power to your system. Thus the higher quality (but lower wattage) PSUs are capable of running low end machines. And that ooo big number 600W generic thing is about as good as a 250W quality PSU.

A little real world for you.
I have a quad core, 2gig of ram, with an nvidia 7200, with windows xp running at 100% CPU load 24/7 on this PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371005 yup, 380W, but wow that is expensive for a 380W psu. Its because it is not a piece of crap, some of the best PSUs on the market in fact.
And how did our generic do? This is a 450W PSU from a 1month old P4 (yes a pentium 4, that old)

the small red circles are what the cap should look like, the bigger ones are what they exploded into. When this thing blew it took the machine with it, motherboard, chip, and RAM. Say no to cheap PSUs.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y261/pik4chu/pieceofcrappsu.jpg

[Shigan5]

Im only answering the question here, no need to rip my headoff because everyone cant read. He asked a simple couple of questions. One of which asking if they even made 250 watt PSUs and what they were even used for. Thus i answered witht he email build. You dont always need a super humoungous PSU. Yeah if you want to blow the money to make your computer sound better, than whatever but most people dont, they want what they need for what they need it for. And thus the reason for having 250 PSUs, cause not everyone in this world games.


Okay, do they not make 250 Watt power supplies because even the most minimalist PC needs more then that, or because they feel their's no profit margion for PSU's that 'small'? Do PSU's that small have problems with stability? Do modern PC's draw more power then that naturally? What is it? Why is it you need more then 250Watts? Tell me more then just "I say so".

and as for the whole argument of
not enough for a system to run WoW decently.
he didnt ask that as you can see from the quote above. THOSE are the questions im answering, not answering the whole thread, which if you read page 1, I already did.

And yes crap PSUs dont work very well, just like everything else on this planet. But you buy the PSU for what you are going to use it for. You want a performance computer, you want a performance PSU. You want a basic non performance computer, nothing more, you dont need a performance PSU. Thats why they make cheaper PSUs, not everyone who uses computers in this world use them for gaming. Some just like email and chat.

As ive explained before, wattage isnt everything in a PSU. "Oh i have 400 watts and doing all the math thats all I need" your wrong. Check the amps on your 12v rail. Not enough amps, not enough power, causing your PSU to either fail, or work too hard and blow.

And if you say "Oh i have 2 12v rails, i get to add the amps together" Err, wrong again. Check which cables are coming from which rail, you plug everything into one rail, your still only getting the amps from that rail, split them between the two, then you go by how many amps each component takes and see if you have enough.

[marvein]

Im only answering the question here, no need to rip my headoff because everyone cant read. He asked a simple couple of questions. One of which asking if they even made 250 watt PSUs and what they were even used for. Thus i answered witht he email build. You dont always need a super humoungous PSU. Yeah if you want to blow the money to make your computer sound better, than whatever but most people dont, they want what they need for what they need it for. And thus the reason for having 250 PSUs, cause not everyone in this world games.


Okay, do they not make 250 Watt power supplies because even the most minimalist PC needs more then that, or because they feel their's no profit margion for PSU's that 'small'? Do PSU's that small have problems with stability? Do modern PC's draw more power then that naturally? What is it? Why is it you need more then 250Watts? Tell me more then just "I say so".

and as for the whole argument of
not enough for a system to run WoW decently.
he didnt ask that as you can see from the quote above. THOSE are the questions im answering, not answering the whole thread, which if you read page 1, I already did.

And yes crap PSUs dont work very well, just like everything else on this planet. But you buy the PSU for what you are going to use it for. You want a performance computer, you want a performance PSU. You want a basic non performance computer, nothing more, you dont need a performance PSU. Thats why they make cheaper PSUs, not everyone who uses computers in this world use them for gaming. Some just like email and chat.

As ive explained before, wattage isnt everything in a PSU. "Oh i have 400 watts and doing all the math thats all I need" your wrong. Check the amps on your 12v rail. Not enough amps, not enough power, causing your PSU to either fail, or work too hard and blow.

And if you say "Oh i have 2 12v rails, i get to add the amps together" Err, wrong again. Check which cables are coming from which rail, you plug everything into one rail, your still only getting the amps from that rail, split them between the two, then you go by how many amps each component takes and see if you have enough.

It was not my intention to rip your head off (or to sound like I wanted to) sorry. And most of my reply was not directed at you I just quoted your post to give myself a refference point when typing because you quoted some of the people I was replying to. Its just that people arguing over cheap/low-quality Vs larger/good quality PSUs is a big pet peeve of mine. And the reason I said tyo remove all talk of these gimp machines from the thread is because they are irrelevent to the OPs questions because they are not a gaming machine. The fact that yes, there exists a machine that can run on a 250W PSU (heck I have an emulator PC that runs on a 135W) it does not at all help the OP and if anything could confuse him more. Many people underestimate video card power usage. For atleast over the last year or more a high end gfraphics card has been the most power hungry device in an entire system (sometimes even more than everything else combined). Again my response was to keep with the original question of this thread and try to not muddy the waters with points that have no bearing on what the OP was trying to do. And to avoid having this draw out anymore Ill just reply to your very last statement a bit. This is kind of amusing (you are correct btw) but you should compare the 12v rails of a generic PSU Vs a quality one of similar wattage. Most of the time the quality one has much better (and more stable rails) which is smply why for the people that dont know all that much about computers the statement "dont buy cheap-ass generic PSUs for a gaming rg" generally points them in the right direction without confusing them without doing various bits of math on wattage and seperate voltage rails. Anyways, peace bro :thumbup:

[Shigan5]

very correct, as most higher quality PSU do have more stable rails at higher amps but the amps do depend on the wattage of the PSU.As you cant have a 12v rail at 60amps and only have a 250watt psu. And as I said i was only answering the ops question above my post. And as i said id already helped the op decide on what machine he was getting, and then proceded to answer a few more questions.

The only thing I would like to know is if he got the machine and how well its doing for him :D

[Sentack]

Well it's been a week, I might as well give a little update!

Yes, I did get the machine. My only frustration was that I ordered the parts on a Wednesday. Most of them actually showed up on Thursday! But, the Video Card, the last piece didn't show till Moday! Arg! Okay, so that was a week ago I finally got up and running.

The new machine runs like a champ though. I got everything installed, I eventually got KeyClone up and going, and eventually installed Synergy too. The hardware is a lot better then even my old machine (Tells you how long it's been since I've updated my hardware) And for the price, I can't argue that much.

From there, it's been a weak of tweaking, trials and fumbles. I got a 3-box set up going. 1 Priest, 2 Mages. I'm delighted by how efficient they are together. I've gotten them to level 11 so far. Since level 5 it's been all wanding though. Since that doesn't take power and it's great DPS for this level range. I'm still playing a lot around with Add-On's and Macros. I fumbled trying to make a series of /assist + /cast macros. So I'm currently going to stick with my /follow + /assist macro and live with that.

For inexpensive hardware, it runs pretty smoothly. I had no problems installing the OS, knock on wood. The DVD drive runs like a champ, the video card runs 2 clients pretty damn smoothly. I can't argue much at all with the system. It's been a tad slow going though. During the week I had limited play time. The weekend, i barely had 2-4 hours with of game total. It's just been a really busy week for me, so I'm still just scraping the surface of multi-boxing. I hope to get more done soon. Wish me luck!

[marvein]

good to hear its working for you, keep us posted with your progress :)

[Shigan5]

Good to see its working well for ya. Glad my suggestions helped :D