[mythtv-users] Good deal for someone on a video card, or a B/E ???

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Mon Apr 30 13:55:44 UTC 2007


Brian Long wrote:
> On 4/29/07, *Brian Wood* <beww at beww.org <mailto:beww at beww.org>> wrote:
> 
>     <snip>
>     If you want to talk about good deals, I just spotted an IBM Z Pro Xeon
>     machine with a Quadro 4 video card, 4 64-bit PCI slots, 1 32-bit PCI
>     slot, an integrated Ultra 320 SCSI controller and a lot more for
>     $289.99. I don't know where you could buy the quadro, or the scsi
>     controller, or the Mobo alone for that price, not to mention the HDD,
>     Xeon CPU, case, PSU, ECC registered RAM and everything else that goes
>     with it. With a H/W RAID card, or even without, it would make a
>     killer B/E.
> 
>     http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ZPRO2660-2B&cat=SYS
>     <http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ZPRO2660-2B&cat=SYS> 
> 
> 
> Backend for sure.  Have you ever heard an IBM Intellistation Z Pro while
> it's powered on? The fans during POST run full blast and sound like
> blowers.  Once the machine passes POST and temperature detection kicks
> in, the box is still very loud.  Many people have complained these
> machines are too loud while sitting under their desk at work.  Of
> course, when you run the CPUs at 100%, the fans run full blast and
> bother your cube neighbors.  ;-)

All true. My servers are literally in my garage, so noise level is
unimportant. But that's why I said backend in the first place, but I'll
bet you never heard of too many thermal problems with the internal
components :-)

Still a good price though, as I said I don't know where I could buy just
the quadro for that price, and it's not a bad price for the ECC
registered RAM, but both of those things are not generally needed by
Myth users.

It's amazing what you can get these days used/surplus. I picked up a
couple of Sun Ultra-10s for $50 each, they work just fine and Solaris 10
is free. Units like that are considered obsolete for commercial
applications and consumers generally don't know what to do with them, so
most of them wind up being scrapped.


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