Budget office Rig

[IHateMyJob2004]

I want to see if I'm alone on this. I'm thinking specifically from the office standpoint. Are the additional costs justified for a "budget" Home Office Rig?

Modifications made versus today's article are in boldface:

CPU & Cooling AMD Sempron 2400+ (Socket A) - retail $65
Motherboard ASUS A7N8X-X $64
Memory 2x256 MB Corsair Value Select CL2.5 $86
Video Card Celestica Radeon 9200SE 64MB $35
2xHard Drive Seagate 80 GB 7200 RPM 8MB PATA $134
Optical Drive Lite-On 52x32x52x CD-RW $28
Computer Case & Power Supply Antec SLK1650B w/350W $73
Display NEC FE991SB 19" $254
Speakers Altec Lansing 220 $16
Add RAID controller: "Adaptec ATA RAID 1200A" -$57
Bottom Line $812

The AT rig was $530

The major changes are:
1) memory. Basically more memmory will help with switching between apps. Less "hitching" will occur.
2) Display. 19" over the 17" as required. Bascly, you want to see as much as possible when workingwith Excel for example. The more clumns the better. To do this, you need to run a higher resolution. To see a higher resolution without squinting, you need a bigger monitor. I view this as justifed especially with today's prices for 19" monitors.
3) RAID 1. What else cacn be said. This is an Office Rig where data files can not be lost. It's an easy/elegant solution where you don't have to spend time doing daily backups and you don't have to worry about hgetting lazy or forgetting to do backups.

The gaming rig is jsutified with a $899 price tag. So, I feal as though I made a much better office rig, while keeping the costs slightly under the gaming rigs price. I feal as though the costs are justiified.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

I jsut noticed the hard drive selection. I would actually get a cheaper hard drive. The 8 MB buffer are unneeded in my opinion. So, an extra $20 could be cut from the costs.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

3) RAID 0. What else cacn be said. This is an Office Rig where data files can not be lost. It's an easy/elegant solution where you don't have to spend time doing daily backups and you don't have to worry about hgetting lazy or forgetting to do backups.

Even that can fail..offsite backups(my pc at work is automated thru the network..i.e. my junky setup is always out there on the company's servers) that are scheduled are better.

 

[mechBgon]

RAID0? You mean RAID1 mirroring, right? RAID1 is still not a backup solution, though, just a fault-tolerant measure. One heavy-duty lightning strike or a PSU failure, and both your drives can be lost.

If you want an actual backup solution then keep the two drives independent, and schedule daily backup jobs in Microsoft Backup to be stored on the second drive. Now you can "go back in time" and recover a file that was deleted several days ago. That's what "backup" means. If you want a true the-building-burned-down-but-my-files-are-safe backup solution, get a Certance tape drive at MWave.com, they start below $400 for an ATA model. Take the tape off-site when you go home. You can have daily backups, plus rotate three Friday tapes so you can go back two or three weeks.

512MB of RAM is a good idea with WinXP. Make sure it's WinXP Professional and not Home.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

wouldnt the mobo have some kind of raid ...then that would save u the need for the controller card

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
RAID0? You mean RAID1 mirroring, right? RAID1 is still not a backup solution, though, just a fault-tolerant measure. One heavy-duty lightning strike or a PSU failure, and both your drives can be lost.

Yeah, I was about to post a WTFBBQ? to that extent. RAID 0 + important data = Suicide. 😛

Oh, and why not get an nForce2 IGP board? Shouldn't be much over the SPP model and you won't need the 9200SE.

- M4H

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

3) RAID 0. What else cacn be said. This is an Office Rig where data files can not be lost. It's an easy/elegant solution where you don't have to spend time doing daily backups and you don't have to worry about hgetting lazy or forgetting to do backups.

Even that can fail..offsite backups(my pc at work is automated thru the network..i.e. my junky setup is always out there on the company's servers) that are scheduled are better.

That is true, but I'm thinking about this from the Home Office perspective, where servers arn't neccesarily available.

It is also true that RAID 0 can fail, but when storage failures accur, it's usually one of the hard drives failing due to a mechanical failure.

 

[mechBgon]

It is also true that RAID 0 can fail, but when storage failures accur, it's usually one of the hard drives failing due to a mechanical failure.

I can tell you that where I work, people accidentally delete or blank-overwrite files a lot more often than they have HDD failures. No problem, that's what we've got a tape drive for 🙂 Rummage through the console for a backup job where the missing/blanked file is listed, pop in the tape, yell TAPE DRIVE POWERS, A C T I V A T E !!! SHAPE OF A PARACHUTE!!! :Q, and run a Restore job. 😀

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

3) RAID 0. What else cacn be said. This is an Office Rig where data files can not be lost. It's an easy/elegant solution where you don't have to spend time doing daily backups and you don't have to worry about hgetting lazy or forgetting to do backups.

Even that can fail..offsite backups(my pc at work is automated thru the network..i.e. my junky setup is always out there on the company's servers) that are scheduled are better.

That is true, but I'm thinking about this from the Home Office perspective, where servers arn't neccesarily available.

It is also true that RAID 0 can fail, but when storage failures accur, it's usually one of the hard drives failing due to a mechanical failure.

Aaagh. Bad no0b. RAID 0 = striping = DATA SUICIDE for an office. One drive dies, EVERYTHING IS GONE.

Use RAID 1 or just two individual drives. What would posess you to tempt fate like that?

- M4H

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

3) RAID 0. What else cacn be said. This is an Office Rig where data files can not be lost. It's an easy/elegant solution where you don't have to spend time doing daily backups and you don't have to worry about hgetting lazy or forgetting to do backups.

Even that can fail..offsite backups(my pc at work is automated thru the network..i.e. my junky setup is always out there on the company's servers) that are scheduled are better.

That is true, but I'm thinking about this from the Home Office perspective, where servers arn't neccesarily available.

It is also true that RAID 0 can fail, but when storage failures accur, it's usually one of the hard drives failing due to a mechanical failure.

must have been writing your post up...reread the replies above ..mechBgon,M4H,etc... gl🙂

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: mechBgon
RAID0? You mean RAID1 mirroring, right? RAID1 is still not a backup solution, though, just a fault-tolerant measure. One heavy-duty lightning strike or a PSU failure, and both your drives can be lost.

Yeah, I was about to post a WTFBBQ? to that extent. RAID 0 + important data = Suicide. 😛

Oh, and why not get an nForce2 IGP board? Shouldn't be much over the SPP model and you won't need the 9200SE.

- M4H

Meant RAID 1. My bad.

Other vcomments involved tape backup. We used that for a project several years ago. not sure why. Itwas a pain to set up and expensive. I kept telling them to just make our servers RAID 5 and be done with it.

So, we spent about 80 man hours getting hte backup system running. 80x$30/hour (est) is $2400. real smart huh.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: mechBgon
RAID0? You mean RAID1 mirroring, right? RAID1 is still not a backup solution, though, just a fault-tolerant measure. One heavy-duty lightning strike or a PSU failure, and both your drives can be lost.

Yeah, I was about to post a WTFBBQ? to that extent. RAID 0 + important data = Suicide. 😛

Oh, and why not get an nForce2 IGP board? Shouldn't be much over the SPP model and you won't need the 9200SE.

- M4H

Meant RAID 1. My bad.

Other vcomments involved tape backup. We used that for a project several years ago. not sure why. Itwas a pain to set up and expensive. I kept telling them to just make our servers RAID 5 and be done with it.

So, we spent about 80 man hours getting hte backup system running. 80x$30/hour (est) is $2400. real smart huh.

And if your building containing the RAID5 server burns down...? Or someone breaks in and steals it? Or the RAID controller itself fails? Those things do happen sometimes. You could duplex (two RAIDs on independent controllers), you could cluster... but if you want to survive a catastrophe, you need to take the data off-site somehow.

 

[Fern]

Since it's an office rig, go here and get an nVidia TNT card for $8 LINK and save a few more bucks.

EDIT: Why the speaks for an office rig?

 

[MGMorden]

Originally posted by: Fern
EDIT: Why the speaks for an office rig?

They could help if doing test runs on a PowerPoint presenation and such. And since he's mentioned it will be for a home office, he could pop in a CD when working and keep the mood more pleasant.