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Decent all in one motherboards? (for educational institution)

C

cmv

Diamond Member
The k-12 (kindergarten to 12 grade) has a motley assortment of old computers. Due to budget limitations and the goodness of my heart I've donated my time to put together some decent computers. I need suggestions on decent all in one motherboards. What is good? What is bad? Note that these computers will be used by people running Word, etc. not Quake III or Half-Life.

The cost savings of an all in one motherboard is extremely attractive... It looks like I'll buy Win 98 SE OEM with a hard drive ($109 for the OS license) so that is covered and the rest is pretty easy.

My basic idea is to standardize on one motherboard, install OS + drivers, load Microsof Office + any other apps, then burn a disc with the complete install. Then when problems develop (and they will) I can simply wipe the disc and reload quickly. A server will be in place for file saving, etc... Now to figure out how to enforce saving on the server instead of local drive...
 
WL810 - looks good, Intel OEM board

BCM IN620 - looks horrible, one person on usenet said their 440bx based motherboard processed a packet for one of the code cracking sites in 7 - 7.5 hours while the same processor in this motherboard took 20 hours! Doesn't sound good so I'm avoiding...
 
Intel D815EEAL Easton board....

i815E with integrated i752 video, onboard sound and LAN. Very stable, performs well, no overclocking.
 
Have a look at offerings from ECS/PC-Chips. They have all-in-one mainboards for socket-7 or socket-370 that have graphics, sound, modem and LAN (!) right away.

Those all-in-ones take an experienced system builder, thanks to having to get everything right in one go instead of adding one card after the other. For ease of installation, use mATX form factor, not BAT.

If budget is extremely tight, or if you prefer more computers over faster ones, then your entry point would be an M599LMR board (SiS 530 chipset) with 64 MBytes of SDRAM and a Cyrix MII processor on it. Performance is certainly good enough

Spend more money for 758LMR socket-370 (SiS 630E chipset) and VIA Cyrix III processor or Celeron.

These boards also offered in preassembled barebone systems. These come complete with mainboard, CDROM and FDD drives, case, mouse, keyboard and speakers.


Then there's the "BookPC" range, equally preassembled, tiny little cases with all-in-one boards including LAN. Perfect for networked stuff. Available for socket-7 with VIA MVP4 chipset and socket-370 using i810.

BookPCs and preassembled systems are a bit hard to find in retail stores, but they save a lot of work.


Regards, Peter
 
AndyHui: where can you get the D815EEAL board? only one vender on pricewatch comes up with it...

Peter: thanks for the suggestions, I'm checking out the boards... MicroATX seems pretty good and overstock.com has MicroATX cases for $29.99 shipped w/ 145w power supply...

Kingofcomputer: yeah, good idea... but we need really low cost. right now on their desktops they have p133 - p200. Some people randomly go out and buy a Gateway... They have no plan or method... I'm hoping to standardize a bit...

After considering this more and more I'm not sure what to do... My boss thinks they should go with HP Brios and I have to admit they are pretty damn cheap. Trying to find a place that stocks old 6x-20x CD-ROMs, 4-8gb hard drives, etc at good prices is pretty hard...

I'm willing to donate my time outside of work to make it happen but I have this feeling it is a lost cause and my time would be better spent setting up the network and a small decent server w/ file storage, etc...
 
Check out the Intel CA810EAL. Seems expensive at first glance, 'til you realize that it's all there 'cept for the memory and cpu. Ought to be pretty much bulletproof, It's Intel, after all. Quality shows, particularly when kids get to pound on it.

Might want to let potential vendors know it's for a school, lots of people are looking for a tax break this time of year...

And yeh, it's tough to beat the upfront price on something like a HP Brio. Looking just past the end of your nose is not generally regarded as a necessary administrative skill in many organizations, unfortunately.
 
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