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Building a dekstop with reliability in mind

N

ncalipari

Senior member
Hello,

I need a desktop to be 24/7 up to provide some web-based services.

They are not very cpu-intensive, but the more CPU (cores before speed) I have, the merrier.

Anyhow reliability is the main concern, I will be happy if the system will run 3 years consecutively, 4 years is even better. Budget is under 900$, so it is tight enough to force us to opt out Opteron and Xeon. I think AMD could give me a better value than Intel, but maybe at the expense of reliability.


What CPU/Motherboard combo is best suited for my needs? Intel mobo + CPU is more reliable than an AMD Cpu with a third party motherboard?

Should I go with a low performance CPU like AMD fusion, or should I stick to the Athlon X4?

What steps should I take to ensure a longer life of the machine?

Any advice is welcome 🙂
 
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By "3 years consecutively" do you mean 3 years with no downtime? If so, keep dreaming. What you really want is a server, not a desktop. While mnewsham's build certainly comes with a ton of power under the hood for $851 (kudos!), it's not really a server-grade machine.

I'd take a look at the Dell T110. You can configure it with an X3440, 4GB of RAM, RAID1 250GB HDDs behind a PERC H200, and a 3-year warranty for $848. It's a pretty damn good deal IMHO considering that the H200 is a real hardware raid controller.
 
I would say go with a Intel branded motherboard and CPU. I built a Intel system a few years ago and the system has been essentially problem free.
 
mfenn said:
By "3 years consecutively" do you mean 3 years with no downtime?
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Obviously not. Ideal would be not to spend more than 30% of the initial budget in replacements. So I sure expect a fail from the hard drives (raid 5 +backups are mandatory), and maybe from rams.

What I hope is not to have to replace the motherboard, or CPU, as it would be a prolonged downtime and an expensive replacement.

Unfortunately in the last 3 years I burnt 5 computers (motherboards and CPUs mostly) so now I would like to spend a little more in quality over quantity.


If so, keep dreaming. What you really want is a server, not a desktop. While mnewsham's build certainly comes with a ton of power under the hood for $851 (kudos!), it's not really a server-grade machine.
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what should I use to make it server grade? I thought that buying high quality equipment (Supermicro+AMD or Intel+Intel) was enough....

I'd take a look at the Dell T110. You can configure it with an X3440, 4GB of RAM, RAID1 250GB HDDs behind a PERC H200, and a 3-year warranty for $848. It's a pretty damn good deal IMHO considering that the H200 is a real hardware raid controller.
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Unfortunately in my country the same machine cost 1885 $ (italy) ... Dell is not cheap here... as the other pre-built servers manufacturers...
 
ncalipari said:
Unfortunately in my country the same machine cost 1885 $ (italy) ... Dell is not cheap here... as the other pre-built servers manufacturers...
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Important information like country/currency for purchasing should be in the OP. The $900 will not go as far if you are buying in Euroland (compared to, say, the egg or Dell-US).

You can do this using the edit button!
 
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ncalipari said:
What I hope is not to have to replace the motherboard, or CPU, as it would be a prolonged downtime and an expensive replacement.

Unfortunately in the last 3 years I burnt 5 computers (motherboards and CPUs mostly) so now I would like to spend a little more in quality over quantity.
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My Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R v1.0 boards have lasted for over 3 years without issues (knock on wood). I did upgrade the CPUs from E2140s to Q9300s this past Dec., after about 3-4 years. Been running overclocked to 400FSB all the time, although on one of the E2140 rigs I had to downclock to 350FSB, because the computer was spontaneously rebooting after a month of uptime. Never did track down the cause. Now they are running fine at 400FSB with the q9300 CPUs, so it sounds like that particular E2140 might have been just out of spec with regards to the FSB at 400. (They are a normally 200FSB chip.)

I also use quality power supplies (mostly Antec), and UPSes (battery backup units).

If you've burnt motherboards, then that is either down to poor power (no UPS, line voltage spikes get into the PSU and into components), or poor quality PSUs (poor voltage regulation damages components), or just down to poor component quality, or running without adequate cooling.

Gigabyte's "Ultra Durable" series of motherboards are among the best in the industry, I would check them out if I were you.
 
betasub said:
Important information like country/currency for purchasing should be in the OP. The $900 will not go as far if you are buying in Euroland (compared to, say, the egg or Dell-US).
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Yes you are right, I should have added this info.


Anyhow I made the change in my mind : 1 $ + higher european taxes + higher average price = 1 Euro


So speaking of mnewsham's build, it would cost here 819 euros, which is fine for my budget.

Anyhow Dell or other manufacturer make us pay a big premium, so for now a DIY build is the way to go...
 
VirtualLarry said:
My Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R v1.0 boards have lasted for over 3 years without issues (knock on wood). I did upgrade the CPUs from E2140s to Q9300s this past Dec., after about 3-4 years. Been running overclocked to 400FSB all the time, although on one of the E2140 rigs I had to downclock to 350FSB, because the computer was spontaneously rebooting after a month of uptime. Never did track down the cause. Now they are running fine at 400FSB with the q9300 CPUs, so it sounds like that particular E2140 might have been just out of spec with regards to the FSB at 400. (They are a normally 200FSB chip.)
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That's what I'm afraid of. Maybe for personal purpose a small bug is not an issue. But if the system reboots in the middle of an important computation it's really sad.

May I ask you if you were running a windows or linux?

I also use quality power supplies (mostly Antec), and UPSes (battery backup units).

If you've burnt motherboards, then that is either down to poor power (no UPS, line voltage spikes get into the PSU and into components), or poor quality PSUs (poor voltage regulation damages components), or just down to poor component quality, or running without adequate cooling.
Click to expand...

I think a mix of poor quality, poor cooling (the ambient was hot and there were a lot of dust) and maybe poor power.

Anyhow the new location is MUCH better.

Gigabyte's "Ultra Durable" series of motherboards are among the best in the industry, I would check them out if I were you.
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I'll definitely check it!

Any other brand produce motherboards with durability in mind?
 
We have had a lot more problems from Dell servers. However, the IBM Intel Servers seem to be more dependable. Cant say much for price. Hard Drives can still go bad at any time. If it is really critical buy 2 systems and keep a tape backup. UPS is a nice item to have also. If you live in the midwest you can expect a lot of thunderstorms and outages. Would not suggest anything that makes extra heat, like overclocking or crowding too many hard drives. Nice to have a case with an air intake in front of the drives. Standard junky cases need not apply. Good airflow will go a long way toward a better experience. Might want some extra power supplies also. A server is one item where you want an extra sturdy power supply, or a redundant power supply. That is where the UPS can help the power supply to last longer if you get any brown outs or power outages.
 
You can have what you're wanting (consumer parts for a 24/7 build) if you go with certain parts, brands, and suppliers. It all comes down to QC really. I've built quite a few 24/7 machines over the years and learned a thing or two. Recently on a build the machine was having random disc timeout errors in the logs causing slow writes. It came down to the cheapy DVD drive ... you have to watch these consumer crap parts.

There are other ways of doing this but I don't have time to try every brand out there, so here is my advice.

Building 24/7 machines with consumer parts:

* Only buy Corsair or Seasonic power supplies ... clean power is everything!
* Connect the PC to an APS power backup supply, don't go direct to the wall.
* Only use Intel chipsets, who cares about the CPU.
* SuperMicro boards or Asus, don't update the BIOS from the shipping version. Don't buy Asus cheapest boards.
* Crucial Micron memory, go with the slowest speed.
* Western Digital drives or Intel SSD.

If you'll notice I did not mention an ECC ram build. Sadly it has not really been made easily available for the enthusiast market. Too much confusion and erroneous support. I'm sure this is intentional.
 
Well, to be honest you wont be getting the reliability and power you are looking for in the price range you are at.
 
With a 1.5k budget then you can start looking at dell, HP, IBM, etc. Those are the companies who sell reliability, i know you might balk at paying 2x the price of a BYOPC, but with a large company (such as dell) you get professional level support and warranty, as well as reliability that is almost assured.
 
mnewsham said:
With a 1.5k budget then you can start looking at dell, HP, IBM, etc. Those are the companies who sell reliability, i know you might balk at paying 2x the price of a BYOPC, but with a large company (such as dell) you get professional level support and warranty, as well as reliability that is almost assured.
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keep in mind that here in italy price is 4x-6x a BYOPC.

Would you still go for Dell?

For 1700$ I could get an Intel Core i3-540, 4gb ram and 2 250 gb 5400 rpm disks in raid 1. Pretty lame.

For the same price I could build 3 of these servers and keep them as fallback machines.
 
ncalipari said:
keep in mind that here in italy price is 4x-6x a BYOPC.

Would you still go for Dell?

For 1700$ I could get an Intel Core i3-540, 4gb ram and 2 250 gb 5400 rpm disks in raid 1. Pretty lame.

For the same price I could build 3 of these servers and keep them as fallback machines.
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If you can stretch to 1.7k then possibly building two of what i posted earlier and keeping one for a backup might work, or selecting higher end components (but the same overall power) to make a more reliable build.
 
mnewsham said:
If you can stretch to 1.7k then possibly building two of what i posted earlier and keeping one for a backup might work, or selecting higher end components (but the same overall power) to make a more reliable build.
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yes the idea is to build a system today and keep the cash to build another one, even more performing, when the first system fail in 2 or 3 years.


I think higher end components is the way to go. What would you choose? Intel mobo+cpu or supermicro+opteron?
 
I like Intel chipsets, and I've always used Gigabyte, and Asus MBs. I also like Corsair ram, and their PSUs have treated me well. I've never had a failure with any machine I've built with the exception of Crucial ram I bought awhile back. It honestly comes down to luck in the end. As long as you don't buy something that has inherent design flaws, consumer equipment will last as well as the commercial stuff. What you won't get is commercial support. If it breaks, you'll be fixing it yourself. You aren't guaranteed of anything, from any price range lasting 3 years. I'd suggest a quality consumer level build, and maybe buy some spare parts as insurance. That won't prevent breakage, but it'll allow you to recover much more quickly. I assume you'll always have physical access to the machine?
 
lxskllr said:
I assume you'll always have physical access to the machine?
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Yes. I even sleep with the machine sometimes 😛

Using quality components and having spare parts around is fundamental.

Nonetheless finding the mobo+cpu combo with the lowest failure rate would be very nice, but I know it's impossible just with the data we have.
 
I would say build a decent i7-2600k rig (i can give an example if you need) and then possibly buy a spare Motherboard, HDD, and one or two sticks of (matching) RAM. as those are your components that (in my opinion) could die.
 
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