Cases for school computers

[SimpleSi]

It's not our budget.

My point

If/when the budget holder gets a handle on this ...

 

And I don't think your turnover rate would bear an auditors scrutiny (Build 3 computers an hour??? - OK if sitting in darkend room doing nothing else but surely you have a day job as well? )

 

What I'm saying is that unless your a wage slave working for the RM/Redstone/Private firm etc Collective, we all need to be adding value to our schools and building computers cannot be cost effective when there are children in 3rd world countries being paid slave wages to do IT assembly work (On second thoughts, may be it is a good idea to do it ourselves!)

 

And SSDs - your just being a geek - they are for speed freaks who have money to burn (and don't mind replacing them every 3 years!)

 

Si

[synaesthesia]

That was a worse case scenario. Huge money saving. Budget holder is MASSIVELY for it. 3 PC's an our - I reckon I could do all 70 in half a day. And I'm not exaggurating.

Nuff said really on the SSD - we've seen the difference it makes

 

And yes, we are geeks

 

 

(ps, I don't know if the above post was in jest or not but *please* don't start pulling on any "wasting money" strings - I don't have time for that sort of thing, especially when it's making a huge improvement and it's *cheaper* than decent size HDDs.)

Edited May 25, 2012 by synaesthesia

[pcstru]

What I'm saying is that unless your a wage slave working for the RM/Redstone/Private firm etc Collective, we all need to be adding value to our schools and building computers cannot be cost effective when there are children in 3rd world countries being paid slave wages to do IT assembly work (On second thoughts, may be it is a good idea to do it ourselves!)

 

If they are saving £50 per PC and building 3 a day, that's £150pd, £750 per week or an oncost (salary + stuff) of £39,000 per annum. On-costs are typically 20-30% of salary so your tech would need to be earning over £27,300 a year for it to be not effective in terms of cost. The frequent complaints about IT technicians wages in schools might suggest that average salaries are running somewhat below that and building 3 PC's per day seems ... a little lazy to me.

[gshaw]

building 3 PC's per day seems ... a little lazy to me.

 

I'd be disappointed if I hadn't got 3 done in an hour, let alone a day!

 

One thing I would say though, buy the same kit that Stone etc would i.e. get the Intel OEM motherboards not some 3rd party consumer grade Asus-esque thing. Driver support and reliability needs to match whatever you'd be buying and the Intel Desktop Boards are solid

 

When I considered self-builds (then discounted it as we don't have time now we do the VLE as well) we were looking at...

 

- Intel Desktop Board

- Core i3 2120 with stock cooler

- 4GB RAM (so cheap at the moment you might as well have it)

- 64GB Crucial M4 SSD

- Lite On DVD-RW

- case was an issue so didn't decide on one

- Corsair standard PSU

- Logitech basic keyboard \ mouse bundle

- Windows 7 Home Premium OEM (upgrade to Enterprise via EES)

 

The bit that will hit you is the Windows 7 licensing, though that said just found this on Scan...

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/microsoft-windows-7-home-premium-64-bit-sp1-operating-system-single-oem

 

Couldn't find it all from one supplier but added up to about £350, £50 saving over what I've been quoted for a similar machine without the SSD. Not quite enough saving there to make it worthwhile for us but the SSD bit still grates on me...

Edited May 25, 2012 by gshaw

[GrumbleDook]

There are good and bad things about building your own ... with some that have already been said.

 

The argument about staff already being paid so it is effective use of their time ... the counter argument is that if they are sitting around with free time do you need that many staff?

The argument about support ... the cost of building your own machines needs to have in there a given failure rate for parts. Then take into account the time taken to replace these, the risk of buying spare parts and not needing them, the risk of the staff with the specific knowledge on the design and build of these machines leaving (countered by having good documentation, of course). It is not just about physically assembly, but about sorting out difficult drivers, tweaking the build so it works right. With pre-built boxes you tend to find that this has already been hammered to death and it will work (YMMV of course depending on who your buy from and what you get). There is also a risk of spares not being available for the life of the machine, something which is often off-set by buying the machines in (from reputable suppliers with a given roadmap tied into warrantied support).

 

Of course ... having a discussion like this is a moot point. We all know that the correct* route is not to build you own but to *bring your own* (see what I did there!)

 

Back to being serious though ... if you can work through those bits then it can help auditors understand the VfM that *you* might get from it but might not work in other schools.

 

*correct refers to the fact that it is a possible option but might not be the best one for your school, delivering the present or future curriculum and is subject to the variations created by the hype of BYOD without understanding the requirements for infrastructure change, models of support, models of pedagogy and a heap of other reasons why things like this fall at the first hurdle ... including the *shiny* factor which has enticed people to buy stuff without planning!

[gshaw]

The spares availability is a very good point, even with standard Intel OEM stuff it'll be hard to get motherboards etc 2 years down the line. I know Stone do their long-term warranty by keeping stocks of some of the older kit and their buy-back schemes which helps.

[sonofsanta]

And SSDs - your just being a geek - they are for speed freaks who have money to burn (and don't mind replacing them every 3 years!)

 

Seagate 250GB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s Barracuda Hard.. | Ebuyer.com - £41.65 ex VAT

Crucial 64GB M4 SSD - CT064M4SSD2 | Ebuyer.com - £49.99 ex VAT

 

You're only likely to use 50-60Gb of a drive anyway in a network environment, so the additional capacity of the HDD is pointless. The extra speed of the SSD, on the other hand, will be phenomenal. Not spending the extra £8 for that increase in performance would be criminal, frankly. An SSD makes more difference to application loading and multitasking than three generations of processor, and I can't think of anything that improves the subjective experience so dramatically and easily (to anyone, not just knowledgeable bods like us lot. If my Dad can tell the difference, then they're worth doing.)

 

Regarding the cost of building yourself... I always worked on a one-PC-per-techie-per-hour cost, and last time I bought a chunk of PCs it was cheaper to buy them than to build them. It was a much bigger purchase than 45 though, so it's the kind of cost that needs to be accounted for each time. I don't mind us being responsible for repairs - frankly, I'd rather we do it ourselves as it's often quicker than waiting for an engineer, and our warranty with Novatech works beautifully for us (on site replacements free and parts sent next day to repair the original). I'd say the main benefit on getting them pre-built is the ease of dealign with warrantied parts; I don't have to deal with 5 different manufacturers with varying levels of service, I can just ring my account manager and get it sorted next day. That's worth a fair chunk of my time over a 5 year period.

Edited May 25, 2012 by sonofsanta

[SimpleSi]

so the additional capacity of the HDD is pointless.

You make a fair point there.

 

But your not leaving much room future proofing

 

The machine next to me in this school was bought with a 60GB drive and is using 37GB. You can't rely on programmers producing small code

 

Lets agree its maybe on a tipping point

 

(I was thinking of getting one to boot my home from to see what the real world speed diff was like but I have way too much software installed on it!)

 

And remember, its much easier to get your scanning electron microscope out for data recovery on a hard drive than a piece of hard sand

Si

[sonofsanta]

You make a fair point there.

 

But your not leaving much room future proofing

 

The machine next to me in this school was bought with a 60GB drive and is using 37GB. You can't rely on programmers producing small code

 

Lets agree its maybe on a tipping point

 

(I was thinking of getting one to boot my home from to see what the real world speed diff was like but I have way too much software installed on it!)

 

And remember, its much easier to get your scanning electron microscope out for data recovery on a hard drive than a piece of hard sand

Si

 

To be fair, I'm hoping to get 120/8gb drives this summer, and they're down at £66 ex VAT now (Crucial m4 128gb) but I just picked the cheapest HDD and the cheapest known reliable SSD for comparison's sake.

 

It's certainly at the tipping point, and I think that point is going to show itself over the next month - they've already come down a long way in the last month (inc VAT, that drive was £120ish a couple of months ago, £90 last week, and £80 now) and with Sandisk releasing their new drives at an aggressive price point, they may well come down even more yet.

 

Once I've bought some new machines this year to replace old P4 era machines, I'm just going to upgrade the Core2 Duo machiens with SSDs next year, and they should feel like new. Try one, they really are astonishing

[SHimmer45]

Inwin might be worth a look as well had a room with this cases many years ago and was impressed

[Arthur]

You could always buy used 2008 / 2009 / 2010 Mac Pro cases off of fleabay

How would you fit a standard ATX/mATX/mini-ITX motherboard + PSU inside without drilling additional holes?

 

The BitFenix Prodigy might be a good alternative to a Mac Pro if it wasn't so big.

 

http://i.imgur.com/7Mdvt.jpg

Edited May 25, 2012 by Arthur

[synaesthesia]

As said, the 3 per hour (per tech) was being VERY slow. Entirely moot! Noone is sitting around spare, but at the time we're doing these, we will be. Too many technicians? No. 2.5 of us. That's half of what most schools our size have. Plus, the time is allocated and is NOT a problem. Give me some credit!

 

Intel mainboards and CPU's, nothing to worry about there. That sorts drivers out too

Windows licenses are easy - we've already got those (Cheap to buy a base license on top of which EES is legal). Quite a bit less than that cost from SCAN, I hasten to add.

 

Not much point going on much further with this thread - was just after cases, and RM are by far the best bet. So we're going for them. The rest has already long been decided, the discussion about time/cost etc has long departed with a very obvious outcome.

 

Thanks for the input though, much appreciated.

Edited May 25, 2012 by synaesthesia

[dhicks]

Can't imagine they'd be very cheap though?

 

Fabricating your own cases would be interesting to have a look at, though. What you need is a design for a small, robust case that can be cut from a single sheet of aluminium or mild steel, then you can get it CNC milled or laser cut and the parts posted to you. You'd probably also need a press brake to bend 90-degree angles into the metal. I was pondering having a go to make a case for the Raspberry Pi. It might make an interesting open source / open design resource - a free-to-use case design that can be ordered from any CNC / laser cutting shop and put together with commonly available hand tools.

[steveg]

As said, the 3 per hour (per tech) was being VERY slow. Entirely moot! Noone is sitting around spare, but at the time we're doing these, we will be. Too many technicians? No. 2.5 of us. That's half of what most schools our size have. Plus, the time is allocated and is NOT a problem. Give me some credit!

 

Intel mainboards and CPU's, nothing to worry about there. That sorts drivers out too

Windows licenses are easy - we've already got those (Cheap to buy a base license on top of which EES is legal). Quite a bit less than that cost from SCAN, I hasten to add.

 

Not much point going on much further with this thread - was just after cases, and RM are by far the best bet. So we're going for them. The rest has already long been decided, the discussion about time/cost etc has long departed with a very obvious outcome.

 

Thanks for the input though, much appreciated.

 

Just out of interest, what is the cheapest base licence for windows you've found? We also quite often build machines ourselves and have an EES agreement.

 

Thanks

 

steve

[sted]

It might make an interesting open source / open design resource - a free-to-use case design that can be ordered from any CNC / laser cutting shop and put together with commonly available hand tools.

 

there is a PDF avaliable for a paper/card case that might be translatable (then again i might be wrong lol)

 

as to building your own i can see the point about it being a non optimal use of time possibly but if you like me really enjoy building pcs (and iirc the last one i built was mine 5- years ago) it is possibly worth it as a "morale booster" and at least unlike a lot of it jobs its a job with a beginning a middle and a defined end which is always a bonus

[synaesthesia]

@steveg : was £56 in the end. Was a bit less to start with but apparently exchange rates have hit the cost. (Had to confirm that with the boss, thought it was less!)

[steveg]

@steveg : was £56 in the end. Was a bit less to start with but apparently exchange rates have hit the cost. (Had to confirm that with the boss, thought it was less!)

 

Thanks for that, that's pretty much what we pay. Was just hoping you'd found some secret source of cheap ms licences :-)

[synaesthesia]

I seem to remember we had them budgeted at 53 but the exchange rate thing bumped it up.

[pcstru]

Fabricating your own cases would be interesting to have a look at, though. What you need is a design for a small, robust case that can be cut from a single sheet of aluminium or mild steel, then you can get it CNC milled or laser cut and the parts posted to you. You'd probably also need a press brake to bend 90-degree angles into the metal.

I got some quotes a couple of years ago for laser cutting parts for a small novelty egg timer. Best I could get was £50 a sheet - and that was plywood about 400mm*300 (I do have a CNC machine in the workshop but at the time it was a very slow one and anyway laser would be better for small gears in bulk).

I was pondering having a go to make a case for the Raspberry Pi. It might make an interesting open source / open design resource - a free-to-use case design that can be ordered from any CNC / laser cutting shop and put together with commonly available hand tools.

 

There's a few on Thingverse already but go for it! I'll even offer to print or cut it for you.

[SimpleSi]

Noone is sitting around spare, but at the time we're doing these, we will be.

You say your 2.5 - why not be 2 and save the 0.5 and stop playing building computers

 

My point is that its entirely unlikely that your total cost for building vs buying is cheaper - now it might be better but almost certainly not cheaper

 

Si

[RobG]

I really must start checking edugeek more.

 

mATX cases to look at

Chieftec Uni series CHIEFTEC | UNI series they've changed the design recently they are not quite as solid as they used to be. you can stand on the older ones without doing any serious damage, they are all 0.8mm steel separate internal frame and panels.

The newer ones have gone down the route many case manufactures do thinner steel, 0.6mm, folded construction to return some of the strength lost through thinner steel used.

They are still pretty good and robust, just more flex in the panels don't think I'd trust one enough to stand on it, on the plus side they are much lighter, easier to work in and take stnadard ATX psu's now (the older ones used slightly shorter than normal ATX psu's)

 

InWin EM series, this has been replaced by the Z series, but the EM is definitely a better case ::::::::::IN WIN:::::::::: all the different model are just different front bezels, internal frame is the same on all the EM series.

 

Have a look at the fractal design core 1000 Core 1000 - Fractal Design not sure how solid they'd be for a school environment but they are one of the best low cost retail mATX cases around atm.

 

quietpchas got some in at £21.84 ex vat http://www.quietpc.com/products/pc-cases/fd-core-1000

Edited May 31, 2012 by RobG

[synaesthesia]

I do like that Fractal design case, it came up during a lot of our searches. No good for our needs unfortunately (needs to be a slim desktop style thing ala the RM G series) but I may use it as a new favourite for personal friends builds

[plexer]

Slightly bigger but similar to that fractal one is the Antec 300 Gamers case.

 

Ben

[RobG]

Ahh ok I missed that, have you looked at the coolermaster elite 360? it can actually take a full atx motherboard in a smaller form factor, it's done by moving the psu to the front, does reduce hard drive bay spaces but do you need ore than one in a school pc/ heck most home p's don't ether.

Elite 360 - Cooler Master

We've got a load of the viglen genie ultra small's that cases are really quite nice, I've poked around in them, the stands that hold both case and screen are nice, you can get them without the stand, but I don't think they sell the cases separately

 

We've also got a load of pc's built in the HEC/compucase 8K07's 8K Series mini-ITX Chassis::HEC COMPUCASE Enterprise Co., Ltd mini-ITX not mATX but they are good for small form factor cases.

 

PS the fractal design 1000 is great as long as you don't want it for gaming it's just too small to fit 120mm fan based tower cooling in it and long graphics cards cause issues with the hard drive mounting system, look at the Fractal design ARC mini or silverstone TJ08e instead those are probably the best two cases on the market for packing a ton of stuff into an mATX case.

 

Slightly bigger but similar to that fractal one is the Antec 300 Gamers case

the 300 is a Full ATX mid tower

gamer 300, 458mm high, 465mm long, 205mm wide

core 1000, 355mm high, 420mm, long, 175mm wide

Edited May 31, 2012 by RobG