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Recommendation

Posted By: Chuck Bower
Date: Tuesday, 9 June 2009, at 2:37 p.m.

In Response To: Budget Systems for GnuBG (Michael Petch)

If you're going with Dell, get a service contract that brings them to your house to fix it. Our Department (and University) is in bed with Dell so we get tons of their stuff. Maybe it's just my selective memory but we've had a lot of service calls. (E.g. I got a Latitude D630 last June. The HD died in April, after 10 months of service.) A co-worker had a laptop motherboard die roughly within the same timeframe. Our department took delivery of ~80 new desktop systems about four years ago and the sysadmin told me that 20% of them failed out of the box. (Maybe they give us the bottom end of the reliability scale since, as I said, we have a "deal" with them. But even that should be a warning....) Reliability timescales for computer companies are typically 1-2 years so maybe they're better now, but my HD dying while I was in the field (balloon flight) a month and a half ago after 10 months of service has me still on their case.

As far as AMD processors, I've owned three and NEVER had a problem. (I still have all three of these and still run them.) This includes the Athlon Mobile which was built during or right after AMD got a bad reputation for overheating. I've had that computer for five years (with one HD replacement) and have used it for overnight rollouts many times. Very few people have ever worked a mobile CPU as hard as I've worked that one. Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'.

One last note -- if you're going to build one (or have one built) make sure to get a GOOD cooling system. I've built two computers (one dual AMD and one quad Intel) using the Zalman CNPS9500. (These have heat pipes with coolant in the sealed pipes but are technically not considered "liquid cooled".) Rollouts don't phase these systems. Even while running RO's for several hours, when I put my hand on the air coming out of the case it's reasonably cool. The processors come with coolers but from what I've read, if you're going to push them hard, give away the freebie and pay the $50-$100 for a kickass cooler.

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