Dell - A cautionary tale

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Originally Posted by 'Sarduci',index.php?page=Thread&postID=101610#post 101610

Lol, for $5400 I'd have 8 22" monitors, 4 video cards, and only 8 GB of RAM on a dual socket Q6600. I don't think there's a mobo out there right now that'd let me do that though..... I'm 100% certain I can do half of that at well under $2700.00

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There are a couple boards that can do 4x videocards (although some will have to be single-slot cards, including cooler):
Asus & MSI X48 boards (4x PCI-x16 slots, two operate at x16, and two operate at x4):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131300
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130140

Otherwise, for dual-socket and 4x PCI-x16, you'll need the socket LGA 771 Xeon Skulltrail board:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Tpk=skulltrail
Not only is the board $630, the RAM is more expensive.. $340 for 8GB FBDIMM-DDR2. That's $1000 for the mobo & RAM without the CPUs, the cheapest being Xeon 5405 at $231 x2 = $462.
Hmm.. I wonder if the Skulltrail platform is capable of smoothly 10-boxing on a single PC..
2x Quad Cores..
16 GB RAM..
4x Videocards..
8x Monitors..

I purchased an XPS 420 desktop system w quad core 6600, 8 gig, 500 gig sata, 8800gts, vista 32(upgraded to vista 64 because the oem license is either and MS has media for it ), 24 widescreen monitor and a g11 keyboard for just over $1600.

I manage several 100 dell desktops/laptops across the country. We have several machine still in live enviroments that are over 8 years old. The only problem was we had (and everyone else had) was with the sx260/270 usff desktops machines and bad capacitors on the MB for short time. Luckily dell extended the warrenty on those machines. Other than that, I would recommmend Dell to anyone.