I was putting together a shopping list at newegg.com for the blades and was wondering if anyone knew of any better deals.

I estimate each blade will cost $190 if we go with all new parts and don't buy hard-drive and OS's for each. Plus there will be shipping and some material costs, but I was just trying to figure an estimate. The UD's will be about $300 with the purchase of new hard drives and XP home.

Here is what I put together:

AMD Athlon XP 2000+/266 FSB Thoroughbred Processor CPU - OEM 2000+/ 1.67GHz, AXDA2000DKT3C $61.00

ECS Motherboard for AMD Processors VIA KM266, Model# L7VMM2Retail Comes with free 6 in 1 card reader. $54.90
Specifications:
Supported CPU:Socket A, AMD Athlon XP, Duron
Chipset: VIA KM266 chipset
FSB:200/266MHz FSB
RAM:2x 184-pin DDR DIMM DDR266 up to 1GB
IDE:ATA 133/100 hard drives up to 4 Devices
Slots:1 AGP slot (4X), 2 PCI slots, 1 CNR slot.
Ports:2xPS2,4xUSB,
Onboard Audio: Intregreted AC97 Audio
Onboard LAN:10/100 Mbs Ethernet
Onboard VGA:Pro Savage 3D Graphics Model#: L7VMM2

Heat sink and fan $6 – $12

Antec Original 300W ATX12V Power Supply – Retail – $40.00

Buffalo Technology 128MB PC2100 DDR Memory Module 16X8 (Samsung Module) – OEM $18

Additional possible costs:

MAXTOR 20GB 5400RPM Hard Drive Model 2F020L0 2MB OEM $55.00

Xp Home OEM $93

Arctic Silver's NEW Premium Silver Polysynthetic Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 3. 3-gram( 1 cc. ) tube. $6.99

Linksys EZXS55W EtherFast 5 Port 10/100 Auto-Sensing Switch $36

They also have AMD ATHLON XP 2200+/266 FSB PROCESSOR CPU – OEM for $76.00.

I'm not sure how their prices stack up....but the service has always been good for me at http://www.globalcomputer.com. (Free shipping for a bit too, I think)

ive purchased my ECS through http://www.americancomputech.com
I configured this at their barebone systems link.. http://www.americancomputech.com/smoreinfo.asp?iid=811

Price: $181.83

Includes:
ECS K7S5A motherboard (onboard sound/video/LAN)
Athlon XP 2000 (266fsb) + socket A cpu heatsink+fan
256mb pc2100 RAM
white cheapo case w/PS

DOES NOT INCLUDE:
HD
OS
Shipping.. i think its 20-30 extra

We don't really need 256mB RAM. See if we can find a stick of 128 or something.

This is what I have configured - http://www.tdprojecthope.org/misc/hope1.png

I have a stick of 64 mb pc133 that I can donate. I think I would go with at least 128 in a system, but maybe this stick could go in one of the server systems for the TSC setup.

I say go with 256 megs of RAM... I know it is just a cruncher but it would not hurt to have extra RAM.

Kristi

It'll hurt the wallet. Honestly, I can't see what advantage 256mB would have over 128. We're going to be running a stock copy of Windows, some sort of VNC software (for remote administration), and a copy of UD/TSC. 128 should manage it just fine.

I'm sure we can do a poll or something to see what we want to do. After all, it IS a group effort.

I think pcs run better with as much as ram as one can afford to get... I always skimp on ram in the beginning and end up having to buy more later on.

Kristi

That's because you actually *use* your system. These will just crunch 24/7. There should be no real need for lots of RAM.

A plain WinXP system (not too sure what XP all runs - I don't care much for it and do not use it on my systems) probably runs similar processes as Windows 2000. I think the general OS could eat up about 85mB RAM, just idle. The UD application is taking about 13mB out of my system. Add about 8 for a VNC application, and the total comes to 106mB. These ARE raw figures, but I think they're about right.

Hmmm.. I'm not one to exactly suggest anything... illegal, but I'm wondering about the price of the OS... I wish there was a cost effective alternative.. if only UD supported *nix.

If you and the hosts think that the machines will run OK with just 128 megs of ram, then I am all for it.

Kristi

I'm sorry if it seemed that I was just going out at you, but I really think 256MB is unnecessary. Please feel free to post comments. (especially hosts. - y'all are gonna have to deal with the machines daily/semi-daily)

We have addressed that in the private board forum. No plans have been finalized, but I think it's safe to say that it will be very cost effective and is all on the up and up.

my only reason for mentioning it is because I can see the money going for an OS could be going towards more hardware which is really what we want, right?

as for the RAM issue, my only opinion on it is the fact that the more RAM we have, the higher the points will be. Points don't matter in the long run, but I'd like to see Team Discovery on top.

Hey, if someone could look through the agreement that MS gives to schools regarding them giving copies of their products to students of MS-certified courses, and could somehow find a loop hole allowing me to hand out my Win2k key for the crunchers...

Very positive looking post

I can't wait to see what we finally end up with :wink:

R/ Slava

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that motherboard support only 1 CPU? I strongly recommend we go with motherboards that support 2 or even 4 CPUs.

We will pay more for the mobos, but further down the road we can add another cruncher just by dropping in another CPU. The total price of a dual (or quad) system will be less than 2 (or 4) separate systems.

Edit: I just don't want to skimp up front, and end up paying more later. I prefer to pay a little more up front to get a system with more value in the long run.

The only problem I see with a dual is that the cheapest MOBO is about $190. Which will Double the initial cost to purchase the blades and also cause us to go with XP Pro for the UD blades as XP home does not support dual processors. Not a bad idea though and should be considered.

We don't need XP at all. I'm donating two copies of NT 4.0, and the TSC machines can go with Linux.

XP may be a better OS overall, but NT provides everything we need with a lot less overhead.

Just my opinion, of course. It's not my decision.

I think a single cpu solution would be best. Dual AMD motherboards are few and are expensive. AMD MP's are also more expensive than XP's. If we go the P4 route with SMP, we need to go Xeons which are even more expensive.

I think we should get as much as possible now going with single cpus.

I'd tend to push towards NT/2000 over XP only because it is less of a resource hog. Less bells and whistles... especially if we go with 128meg of ram.. which MAY be pushing it. TSC takes quite a bit of RAM. We don't want to have swapping causing a bottleneck. I don't know what the price difference would be, but maybe we can find a good sale..

I looked through here - http://ws9.jobnegotiator.com/html/flinks.html and a few of the systems do run with 128mb.

newegg has 256 meg crucial ram for $29 right now. Here's the description - CRUCIAL MICRON 256MB 32x64 PC 2100 DDR RAM - OEM 184-Pin, CL=2.5-Unbuffered 2.5V, 6-Layers CT3264Z265 Requires DDR supported Motherboard -

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?...-145-001&DEPA=0

FYI.. for the network booting nodes (TSC) we need to make sure the NIC is PXE enabled.

I second captins proposal to build multi-processor blades. They will be a tad more expensive that the single processor machines but the increased work units will make it worth it.

Another thing is we don't even need to buy AMD MP chips we can use AMD XP chips and convert them to multi-processor chips if we need to. For any of you curious about doing this check out this article -----> http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/mot.../mpx2/index.htm

Looking on www.pricewatch.com I see these prices listed for CPU's

$51 - Athlon XP 1800
$130 - Athlon MP 1800

As you can see we can buy almost 3 amd 1800 XP chips for the price of 1 AMD 1800 MP chip.

I don't believe we need more than 128 of ram as 256 MB of ram seems a little overkill for our applications. But, going off some prices of pricewatch.com it isn't much more expensive to buy 256 over 128

$20 PC2100 DDR 256MB
$13 - PC2100 DDR 128MB

I do feel that the head server that administrates the blades should have 256 though.

Well, if we could buy them already modded and guaranteed to work, maybe we could go that route - it sounds like a great thing.

However, if we have to do the modding ourselves I would advise against it because we'd be risking it with other people's money. It's one thing to take a chance with your own money, but to do it with group money like this is another story.

I just saw this on ZDNET and wanted to share it.

"According to AMD's Web site, the company reduced the price of its desktop 3000+ by $60, or 18 percent, to $265 and cut the cost of the 2800+ by $45, or 20 percent, to $180. AMD's Athlon XP 2700+, 2600+, 2500+ and 2400+ were lowered to $137, $103, $89 and $84, respectively, which translates to price drops between $19 and $45."

That would be some major crunching from those XP 2400+ , and it would reduce any need to run duals.