[tech] Catfish replacement - Cowfish

[Andrew Adamson]

Hi Prad,

CPU - good.

Mobo - Asus good, Gigabyte less so (imo).

RAM - the old machine has 8GB of DDR3. Maybe it's worth testing that RAM 
in another machine for a week to see if it's any good before we go buying 
more?

GPU - good. I'd go for whichever of those has the best cooling and will 
cope best with the dust buildup you get in UCC machines.

HDD - use the existing 1TB disk in the machine. There's nothing wrong with 
it and we're quite a long way from filling it still.

Case - definitely use the old case. We were careful when we got catfish 
and combtail to get cases that we could use in future machines. It 
probably wants a good dusting, but is otherwise all good. The existing 
case has been modified for our security cables too, and the ability to 
make cases work with security is a criteria you need to look at if ever 
you're buying cases for UCC. I check that the mobo you specced also has 
all the correct headers for the front panel connector of the existing 
case, so all good there. If you need any parts for it they should be in a 
box in the machine room.

PSU - use the existing one unless it doesn't have the right connectors or 
not enough power. The bag of connectors for that PSU was kept and should 
be in the machine room.

Optical drive - use the existing one, there's nothing wrong with it. Even 
if it weren't, the club now has an external DVD drive, which should be in 
the machine room.

SSD - definitely a luxury item on windows machines where most of the 
login-time length is due to samba slowness. Games (including steam games) 
should be on the bulk storage disk on the windows machines, so not a lot 
of gain there. An SSD may make things faster for people with cached 
profiles, and maybe the odd program I guess. Eh, all the other machines 
have them, may as well get one.

The only other thing I think we should get is a new screen for Catfish. 
The current one is a 21.5" Samsung that really is a bit long in the tooth 
for the machine it's on. I'd suggest another Dell U2412, or maybe it's 
time the club splashed out and got a 3D screen with glasses. Whatever we 
get, it just needs an available VESA mounting hole for security cables.

Andrew Adamson
bob at ucc.asn.au

|"If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them."                |
| ---Peter's Laws                                                        |

On Fri, 22 Aug 2014, Pradyumn Vij wrote:

> Running these parts and prices past anyone who cares for Committee to approve on a new desktop for the clubroom.
> $1000 limit
> Build recommendation
> MSY prices, competition is almost $300 - 400 more expensive
> 
> CPU
> Intel 4460 Core i5-4460 3.2GHz 6MB LGA1150    $201
> 
> Motherboard
> Asus H97M-E  $115
> Gigabyte H97M-Gaming-3 $129
> 
> RAM (whatever is available with a lifetime warranty)
> Kingston Hyper X Fury 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz HX313C10FK2/8 $95 G.Skill 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz - F3-1600C9D-8GAO $98
> 
> Graphics Card (only need 2gb as not playing on high res.)
> EVGA GTX760 2gb SC ACX $299
> Asus GeForce GTX760 OC 2gb $295
> Gainward GTX760 2gb              $267
> 
> HDD
> Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB   $63
> Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB   $92
> 
> Case (assuming no extra case fans need to be bought)
> Coolermaster K282 if in stock $49
> Thermaltake Versa H25 $49
> Coolermaster K350 $53
> 
> Power Supply
> Corsair CS550M $115
> Corsair CS650M $135 (unlikely option) 
> 
> Optical Drive
> LiteOn IHAS124-OEM Black $17
> 
> Luxury Item?
> 
> SSD (not sure if I should have budgeted for this, will draw money away from graphics card, would fit in fine if we had the 750 except it's a trash card).
> Samsung 840 Evo 250gb     $155
> 
> If we get the cheap Gainward 760, the 1 tb HDD this will be $77 extra.
> 
> 
> Regards
> [VIJ]
> [cleardot.gif]
> 
> 
>