Purposed Machines for Mult-Boxing...

[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/sh...=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/dellsto...=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/produc...82E16811119077
MotherBoard: http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16813138077
Video: http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16814150229
Power: http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16817339012
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16819103213
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16820211066
Floppy: http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16821103203
HD: http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16822135106
DVD/CD: http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16827135151

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.