What do I get with $400 to play with? mobo, CPU and ram

sequoia

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 21, 2007
Messages
171
So I am kinda bored and have spare change. I have an empty case, hard drives, video card and PSU. Was looking around the forum last night, and stumble on multiprocessing thread. I can spare about $400 or so to build a dual proc workstation. This sounds cool to own :) While this is just for spare PC at home and something to do for me, I like to see whats the best I can get for as cheap as I can - best bang for the buck. I see some xeon quad core very cheap on ebay, some mobo that seems pretty cheap too. I still got to do some research on this, so any help or suggestions on where to start are welcomed. I dont know much about dual proc workstation, all my past build has been with single proc.
 
So I am kinda bored and have spare change. I have an empty case, hard drives, video card and PSU. Was looking around the forum last night, and stumble on multiprocessing thread. I can spare about $400 or so to build a dual proc workstation. This sounds cool to own :) While this is just for spare PC at home and something to do for me, I like to see whats the best I can get for as cheap as I can - best bang for the buck. I see some xeon quad core very cheap on ebay, some mobo that seems pretty cheap too. I still got to do some research on this, so any help or suggestions on where to start are welcomed. I dont know much about dual proc workstation, all my past build has been with single proc.

What exactly are you going to do with this once you build it? Or are you like me? As in - you just scrap together some hardware and THEN decide what to do with it? I'll subscribe to this just because I'm interested in this kind of thing. :)
 
Well, pretty much like I said... I am bored + have some parts laying around. I love tinkering with stuffs - its therapeutic for me. Seriously though, we have internet base home business, so this can be a spare workstation, so it will have its purpose. The spare now is an old Dell dual core PC, so we would be hurting if our main workstation died. The case I have is huge - old Rocket fish made by Lian Li, so I can use it to combine all our drives into this box, and maybe use it as a server.
 
Well, pretty much like I said... I am bored + have some parts laying around. I love tinkering with stuffs - its therapeutic for me. Seriously though, we have internet base home business, so this can be a spare workstation, so it will have its purpose. The spare now is an old Dell dual core PC, so we would be hurting if our main workstation died. The case I have is huge - old Rocket fish made by Lian Li, so I can use it to combine all our drives into this box, and maybe use it as a server.
 
mATX Supermirco 2p S771 board + 2x Intel L5420 (2.5ghz, quad core) + 4x1gb ddr2 ecc registered only cost me ~$100 back earlier 2012/2011 from ebay. Heatsinks were pricey however, ~$80, but keep things cool without noisy fans.

I'm sure you can do much better nowadays.

Where are you located? I wouldn't mind selling this rig / parting it.
 
Buy an off lease Dell C1100, they are about $400 shipped for one with dual l5520s and 36gb memory on ebay.
 
You can get a couple of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Super-Micro...335371?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item2ec6c59dcb

Per server: 2x 2.66GHz E5430 Quad-core Xeons, 4GB RAM, no HDD.

With the remaining $40 in your budget, you could pick up some extra RAM. Also, you could re-use the hard drives you have. 16 cores for $384. Hard to beat.

Note that I am not affiliated with this eBay seller, and cannot vouch for them. This listing is given only as an example of what you can expect on the used market.
 
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