Looking to build school CAD lab SUPER CHEAP, did I mention cheap?

Raycaster

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2005
Messages
144
I have been tasked to look at upgrading or building from scratch a school classroom of PC's that are somewhat decent.

Of course the school has a slim budget so I was hoping someone here had the same experience thrown at them.

They have a classroom of Lenovo Desktops with E2000's and 4G ram which seem not to be worth upgrading. If swapping out the cpu and ram was possible I'd consider it but not even sure the bios would support other cpus etc. and maybe 4G is the limit...

I'm presently searching eBay and amazon for a $350 US / $500CAD pieced solution. The school board is locked on purchasing computers from certain vendors leading to WAY over priced machines... (eg. i3 4Gigs $650 + taxes.)

A grey area would be piecing together pc parts and presenting a "computer building class" making it an legit purchase.

I don't mind eBay as long as I don't look like a moron with a large purchase of broken or faulty parts.

I posted here thinking in the small form forum there may be a small mb + cpu combo power house to fit the bill.

Although this will be running Auto-Cad and GFX stuff it still doesn't need to be 16 core, just usable.

Any help appreciated, keep in mind I'm in Canada. thx.
 
Are you looking for a multi-machine recommendation that would all run autocad, or just upgrading one machine?
 
Decommissioned corporate gear is probably your best bet. It's frequently stuff that's right out of OEM warranty but still very usable. You don't have to go the ebay route either - look for a local PC recycler. A couple of local mom-and-pop PC shops around my area for instance have a corporate-facing side where they take systems off the hands of businesses. I'm sure you could get a volume discount, and buying local you'd have a better chance of support if one or two systems had glitches. It would be a heck of a lot cheaper than buying parts new and assembling, and these systems frequently come with Xeon processors and Quadro graphics - exactly what you're looking for.
 
Are you upgrading your CAD software to the most recent one or are you still running your old license?

If you are going to use an old CAD software, then for example getting old quadros that are still supported in current windows version would be better than upgrading the CPU. Of course if that fits your systems.
 
I have been tasked to look at upgrading or building from scratch a school classroom of PC's that are somewhat decent.

Of course the school has a slim budget so I was hoping someone here had the same experience thrown at them.

They have a classroom of Lenovo Desktops with E2000's and 4G ram which seem not to be worth upgrading. If swapping out the cpu and ram was possible I'd consider it but not even sure the bios would support other cpus etc. and maybe 4G is the limit...

I'm presently searching eBay and amazon for a $350 US / $500CAD pieced solution. The school board is locked on purchasing computers from certain vendors leading to WAY over priced machines... (eg. i3 4Gigs $650 + taxes.)

A grey area would be piecing together pc parts and presenting a "computer building class" making it an legit purchase.

I don't mind eBay as long as I don't look like a moron with a large purchase of broken or faulty parts.

I posted here thinking in the small form forum there may be a small mb + cpu combo power house to fit the bill.

Although this will be running Auto-Cad and GFX stuff it still doesn't need to be 16 core, just usable.

Any help appreciated, keep in mind I'm in Canada. thx.

Are you looking for a multi-machine recommendation that would all run autocad, or just upgrading one machine?

Did you even read the original post...?!?

Very first sentence clearly states, "upgrading or building from scratch a school classroom of PC's"...
 
Yeah, I did.. then I came down farther to "$350 US / $500CAD pieced solution".. which seems to be the price for a single PC let alone tinkering with a classroom. Hence why I asked for clarification.
 
Thank you for the replies, hoping to build some unit under $500 Canadian.
I posted here with the thinking many SF media centers might fit the bill of "decent horsepower without bells and whistles."

A quick list..
AMD Ryzen 3 2200G $135
SUS Prime A320M-K AMD Ryzen AM4 mATX $80
RAM 8G $120
Case + Power supply $80

$415 plus tax...

I don't need monster machines, just decent horsepower for ACAD (not sure on version) + adobe junk.
 
Side note - have you considered using their 'cloud' system? Perhaps snagging an educational discount and issue students logins when they are taking the class?
 
Decommissioned corporate gear is probably your best bet. It's frequently stuff that's right out of OEM warranty but still very usable. You don't have to go the ebay route either - look for a local PC recycler. A couple of local mom-and-pop PC shops around my area for instance have a corporate-facing side where they take systems off the hands of businesses. I'm sure you could get a volume discount, and buying local you'd have a better chance of support if one or two systems had glitches. It would be a heck of a lot cheaper than buying parts new and assembling, and these systems frequently come with Xeon processors and Quadro graphics - exactly what you're looking for.
I 2nd this. Get some Dell precision towers..
 
Decommissioned corporate gear is probably your best bet. It's frequently stuff that's right out of OEM warranty but still very usable. You don't have to go the ebay route either - look for a local PC recycler. A couple of local mom-and-pop PC shops around my area for instance have a corporate-facing side where they take systems off the hands of businesses. I'm sure you could get a volume discount, and buying local you'd have a better chance of support if one or two systems had glitches. It would be a heck of a lot cheaper than buying parts new and assembling, and these systems frequently come with Xeon processors and Quadro graphics - exactly what you're looking for.

I would recommend you get in touch with some bigger local corps (IT departement), I am pretty sure one of them will be able to negotiate some deal with the school. Companies usually really like to give you old stuff they would usually throw away and write it off as charity (which they could) or sell it to the school for a small amount of money and write somewhere on their website or something that they support local schools.
We managed to get five pretty decent computers for our repair cafe like this (for free!).
 
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