Dell PowerEdge SC420 Server $229 after coupon

[sk3tch]

Cool...I guess you have to get lucky with CSRs..just talked to them and I'm getting $50 off my purchase price. Getting the Celeron system with a single 256, 80GB, for $189 (+tax since I'm in MN..wah).

Should be receiving it any day now! (Ordered 12/21)

 

[imported_scholar]

sk3th AND others,
Any trick to getting the discount? I ordered the same machine knowing what price they were asking. So surely just asking for a discount or processor ungrade will be met with derisive laughter. Tips please.
Peace out.


Oh and one more thing -- HAS anyone set up this machine as a LINUX desktop successfully? Thanks.

 

[sk3tch]

The "trick" was I ordered on 12/21 when they were not running the double memory promotion. So I paid the same as you would today, except you would receive 2X the memory for that price.

So, instead of asking for them to send me RAM (which costs money, labor, etc) I asked for a $50 credit...I offered this as an alternative to me returning the system to them and costing them more. I also stated that I had ordered a few other servers as directed by the previous CSR because he would not pricematch.

 

[DrPizza]

Help a n00b at putting together a system, please...

Would this make an excellent barebones system to start with?

Thanks

 

[DrPizza]

darn server errors

 

[DrPizza]

darn errors....

 

[imported_scholar]

Sk3tch,
Fair enough. Am stoked with the deal anyway. Noticed your Penguin Icon, hence another question. Any thoughts on running Linux (desktop) on the 420 and which distro might work best on this box? THanks.

 

[jdm5]

Originally posted by: foolish501

My SC420 is almost dead silent.

wish i could say the same about mine, i would get a whistling noise from the cpu fan, and i'm not the only person to have the problem.

FYI - I got my SC420 about a month ago. I was also getting a LOUD whistling noise; it turns out Dell ran a power cable right near the fan blowing air over the CPU - the fan was actually scraping the wire. Pop open the pastic cover and bend/move the wire away from the fan. It made the machine essentially silent.

 

[sk3tch]

Originally posted by: scholar
Sk3tch,
Fair enough. Am stoked with the deal anyway. Noticed your Penguin Icon, hence another question. Any thoughts on running Linux (desktop) on the 420 and which distro might work best on this box? THanks.

Dell states on their site it will work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0...so my guess is that getting it to work with Fedora (or a similar distro like Mandrake) will be fairly trivial.

 

[BMdoobieW]

Originally posted by: paulmob
btw.. deal is back.. even cheaper now $224 no coupon, no rebate, free ship, no tax (for me, in CT).. can get w/1GB RAM for $333, add $10 for a 80gb SATA

I'd say this is even hotter!

Thanks for the update. I ordered one with the 80GB upgrade for $234 plus tax. Great deal!

 

[OctaneZ]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Would this make an excellent barebones system to start with?

It won't play games, but for a decent server web browser/email/office machine it will work just fine... here's how I would do it:

$234:
[*]2.53GHz Celeron
[*]512 Meg Memory
[*]80 Gig SATA Drive
[*]48X CDRom
[*]Mouse/Keyboard
[*]NO OS
[*]1Yr Warranty
-OZ

 

[Hersh]

Originally posted by: sk3tch

Originally posted by: scholar
Sk3tch,
Fair enough. Am stoked with the deal anyway. Noticed your Penguin Icon, hence another question. Any thoughts on running Linux (desktop) on the 420 and which distro might work best on this box? THanks.

Dell states on their site it will work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0...so my guess is that getting it to work with Fedora (or a similar distro like Mandrake) will be fairly trivial.

I've heard reports of problems with getting the NIC card recognized when attempting to install Fedora Core 2 but it seems like Fedora Core 3 installs without a problem.

I wonder if CentOS 3.3 would install without any issues.

Mandrake 10.1 also was reported to work with the SC420 without problems.

Anyway, got my SC420 today:
P4 2.8 (upgraded free)
2x256 DDR2 ECC RAM (upgraded free)
80 GB SATA
... and everything else the same.
for about $250 after tax.

Dang, I shoulda bought two of these.

 

[Hersh]

Originally posted by: jdm5

Originally posted by: foolish501

My SC420 is almost dead silent.

wish i could say the same about mine, i would get a whistling noise from the cpu fan, and i'm not the only person to have the problem.

FYI - I got my SC420 about a month ago. I was also getting a LOUD whistling noise; it turns out Dell ran a power cable right near the fan blowing air over the CPU - the fan was actually scraping the wire. Pop open the pastic cover and bend/move the wire away from the fan. It made the machine essentially silent.

I think I'm having a small issue with the noise in this box as well. Well, other than the fact that the box was runnnig right in front of me on the floor probably made the sound more irritating then it really is...

But it seems like one of the fans is varying its speed constantly so I hear a small whirring noise coming in and out.

 

[sohcrates]

Originally posted by: alphaz

Originally posted by: jdm5

Originally posted by: foolish501

My SC420 is almost dead silent.

wish i could say the same about mine, i would get a whistling noise from the cpu fan, and i'm not the only person to have the problem.

FYI - I got my SC420 about a month ago. I was also getting a LOUD whistling noise; it turns out Dell ran a power cable right near the fan blowing air over the CPU - the fan was actually scraping the wire. Pop open the pastic cover and bend/move the wire away from the fan. It made the machine essentially silent.

I think I'm having a small issue with the noise in this box as well. Well, other than the fact that the box was runnnig right in front of me on the floor probably made the sound more irritating then it really is...

But it seems like one of the fans is varying its speed constantly so I hear a small whirring noise coming in and out.

yeah, fan speeds up and down depending on how hard machine is working. very annoying to me. but it was for my parents, and they claim they don't even notice. it's not too loud, but i'd love to disable that speed sense circuit or something

 

[sk3tch]

You can play games on this...mod the PCI-e slot or toss a PCI video card in. Check the forums mentioned previously in this thread...people are doing pretty cool stuff with these guys.

alphaz - how'd you get 2.8 P4 for a free upgrade???

 

[eyeguy]

ok - as an office workstation - the meg video card will support 1024 x 768 at 16, right? I can not remember the formula.

The ram is very expensive if you check crucial.

And it looks like a celeron D - enough for a non - graphics workstation.

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: Monotaur
Are the SC420's about as quiet as the SC400s? I'm amazed at how quiet the 400SC is... Also, is this as "desktop usable" as a 400? If not, can you still buy 400's from Dell or are they gone forever?

My SC420 is almost dead silent.

mine too...especially without a sound card:laugh:

It's desktop usable, but you'll need to add a sound card, and if you want to game or run at really high resolutions (like 1600x1200), you'll need to either install a PCI video card or physically modify the PCIe x8 slot to accept a PCIe x16 video card.

It is not nearly as simple to convert to a desktop as the 400SC was.

 

[Hersh]

Originally posted by: sk3tch
You can play games on this...mod the PCI-e slot or toss a PCI video card in. Check the forums mentioned previously in this thread...people are doing pretty cool stuff with these guys.

alphaz - how'd you get 2.8 P4 for a free upgrade???

When I ordered this, there was another deal going on with the SC420 where they gave you a free processor (not sure what it was about exactly) upgrade. I asked for that via email and they cancelled my order and they gave it to me.

I woke up the next day and saw that they had a brand new deal for double your memory upgrade (still on I think). I called them up and they gladly just gave me that upgrade for free too.

Just got lucky, I guess... I should've asked them to bump the quantity of the order to two when they gave me the free upgrades.

I'm giving this machine to my sister who's been running on a 500mhz P3 for a couple of years. I said if she didn't like the new machine, I'd gladly take it

Eh, I think she's giving me back my old P3 500mhz for this new machine ...

 

[Hersh]

It is not nearly as simple to convert to a desktop as the 400SC was.

I think Dell is over-exerting itself trying to prevent people from converting this to a desktop. Don't know what their marketing strategy is but they won't see the SC420s go as much as its predecessor.

How many ever SC400s they sold for strictly web server usage would probably remain the same with these SC420s but the percentage of sales the SC400s generated for its flexibility would be very limited with these SC420s.

I'd think putting the plastic dividers into these PCIe slots and taking away the onboard sound would be a negative impact in their sales... but who knows what Dell's really planning?

 

[sk3tch]

Just a quick word in here about the memory - you can buy regular DDR2 (unregistered). That isn't much consolation...but it is $220 shipped for 2x512MB Corsair sticks at zipzoomfly. Better than $300 (with tax for me) for 2x512MB Crucial ECC sticks. I went with the ECC anyway since these will eventually see server use and I've had better luck with Crucial in the past.

 

[RVN]

It is not nearly as simple to convert to a desktop as the 400SC was.

I'd think putting the plastic dividers into these PCIe slots and taking away the onboard sound would be a negative impact in their sales... but who knows what Dell's really planning?[/quote]


I think they're planning on selling more (more expensive) 8400's.

 

[sk3tch]

Just setup an RMA with Crucial. It was about $280 for 2x512MB ECC DDR2 sticks from Crucial for the SC420 - or I could buy an entire server with the new double memory (before it was only 256) for 1GB of ECC DDR for only $333. Heh...$50 for a case, proc, hard drive, cdrom, mouse, keyboard..etc.

 

[eyeguy]

the ram is cheaper from dell in initial config
$100 for 1 gig
probably trying to get rid of the slower ddr2 400 ram - but this is not for gaming ( and i have a dremel )

 

[heartsurgeon]

Don't know what their marketing strategy is but they won't see the SC420s go as much as its predecessor.

they are selling the sc420 below cost
they are not targeting the "we want a cheap desktop for gaming" crowd.

this is aimed at businesses and getting them going with an entry level server...selling them upgrades, service contracts, software, bigger systems....

I would agree with you that you "don't know what their marketing strategy is"
I disagree with your assessment that "they won't see the sc420 go as much as its predecessor"

the sc420 looks like a great machine....the price is freakin amazing....


on the next rendition of the "4XX" series entry level server, i think you'll see the graphics adapter either left off, or replaced with a solid plastic slug....

they don't want graphic cards placed in the machines...servers don't need'em

i suppose its just cheaper at this point to leave it on...but i think they are going to institute even more unhackable methods for making the video adapter slot unusable....

grocery store sell some items below cost, to get customers in the door, knowing that they will end up buying other products..they don't care to retain the customers that only buy the sale items and nothing else, everytime they shop.....

 

[JetsFanatic]

ordered mine