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dumb idea of the day

Let’s say we want to buy computers (well, just the basics: processor, memory, disk) which would meet the following requirements:

  • affordable
  • small size
  • small power consumption
  • any kind of disk
  • any kind of cpu
  • at least 256 or 512Mb of RAM
  • at least 1 LAN

Let’s say this is for some kind of cluster or small network experiment, not for workstations.

First thought would be to just buy motherboard, processor, memory, harddrive and power supply and build the thing without a case (or just the bare minimum). This could be interesting. Noisy, but interesting anyway. The cost could be quite low, but the main problem would be the power supply if I used a common ATX motherboard, because most power supplies are 300W+. Having one power supply for several motherboards isn’t apparently the kind of things that can be found easily.

Let’s look at things with full cases. First, I looked at a barebone. We can get a rather surprising low figure, like 350EUR (Sempron2500+/512/80).

A mini-ITX small computer can get us as low as 320EUR (VIA800/512/80) but the performances wouldn’t exactly be the same.

Another configuration would be a micro-ATX motherboard (Sempron2800+/512/80) for 290EUR.

I wonder if I could get lower than that…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 00:36 +0000 and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “dumb idea of the day”

  1. EP Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 10:49 +0000

    Think outside of the box to an Intel powered MacMini. Does everything you want out of the box at $700+change and even comes with a warranty that means something. Awesome engineering. Consumption is 110W peek, comes with dvd burner, gigE lan, wifi, bluetooth, hard disk, 512M ram exp to 2GB

  2. Sebastien Tanguy Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 15:27 +0000

    @EP: In fact, I already own a Mac Mini (but a ppc one). Sure, it comes with a lot more things, but like I said, as weird as it sounds, the goal is not to build a workstation or a home theater. Thinking this way, the Mac Mini still costs twice as much as a plain PC.

    Although I wonder if there are any benchmarks available to compare an Intel Core{Solo,Duo} and an AMD Athlon/Sempron.