[K12OSN] Saving money on memory

[Dave Hopkins]

Not necessarily advocating them, but check out asacomputers.com.  You 
can get very close to your $2200.00 limit with dual cpus (in either 
xeons or opterons), 4GB memory, dual nics for some of the 
configurations.  However, I don't know how you would get hardware RAID 
and still keep the price below $2200.00, but ... who knows.  I know that 
some on the list have custom built systems as well for around this price.

Sincerely,
Dave Hopkins


Bill Bardon wrote:

>I am in the process of spec'ing a K12LTSP server.  Currently looking at
>the Dell PowerEdge SC1420.  Getting enough RAM in this thing is
>expensive!  If I get it from Dell, 4GB of ECC memory will cost me almost
>$1500, more than the server itself!  I've tried other penguin-friendly
>vendors and they are at least as much, or more.
>
>I assume I can't substitute non-ECC memory and order it from somewhere
>else.  I've seen 1GB non-ECC DIMMs at memory4less.com for $140, giving
>me a total of just $560 for RAM.  I don't think using non-ECC will work,
>though.
>
>Maybe I should articulate my goal: a dual-processor tower server that
>can run K12LTSP handily for 30 clients.  (This will be the first install
>of K12LTSP in this district, so it needs to perform well.)  Will be
>using IceWm, but also expect heavy OpenOffice and Firefox usage. The
>servers I find on eBay are usually rack-mount units, or sub-1GHz
>machines, so don't fill the bill.
>
>So it boils down to this - can I use cheap memory in a Dell or similar
>server? If not, where do you get a server as above for less than $2200? 
>Any input is welcome!
>
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