Shuttle PC render slaves?

[Da_elf]

for anyone on ottawa this is where i get my stuff (through my bro who lives there. http://www.shoprbc.com/ca/index.php
alot of times they would have sales on pre-built systems where they would just sell them for 500-900

[CCS]

I've been thinking about Shuttles lately.

Would you recommend Shuttles over the Boxx rack mount render nodes? (cost, heat, speed, life, etc)

[dbuchhofer]

Two different things, with the boxx you're paying a premium first on being able to call them and say, 'Hey, Overnight me a CPU-or-HDD-or-PS, this one is borked', and secondly for the dual proc speed thing..

Though truthfully, not too much of a premium, a nearly identical system (as the boxx rendernodes) can be set up at monarchcomputers for ~$250 less..

I'm doing a lot of shopping at the moment single dual core procs look like they could be the best buy at the moment, but you need to rig them up yourself, and i dont want to support that many personally

so..

3 main options i'm leaning towards at the moment are:

Monarchcomputer.com: Dual 246 2.0ghz (Tyan Thunder K8S) 2gb Os, 3year warranty, in 1U case w/ rails for $1952
5 machines, 10 processors @ ~9760 (+shipping)

Monarchcomputer.com: Dual 265 dual core 1.8ghz (Tyan Thunder k8s) 2gb ram, os, warranty, in 1u for $2976
3 machines, 12 processors @ ~8928

^ My problem with that, is i dont know that i want essentially 4 procs trying to share 1.74gb of ram, and a xp64 doesn't cut it yet with max
I wish i knew.

boxxtech.com: dual 246 w/2gb in the 1U.. $2197
5 machines, 10 processors @ ~10985

advantage: known and used previously..

Dell/Hp.. soo many options and mostly geared towards IO it seems moreso than processor, so it gets expensive quick to price up anything decent..

Pardon me typing up my shopping/argument list >

[siliconbauhaus]

for the money your quoting you could buy 12 of the sff boxes I linked and have a bloody good vacation for a couple of weeks at least or buy a motorbike

[percydaman]

for the money your quoting you could buy 12 of the sff boxes I linked and have a bloody good vacation for a couple of weeks at least or buy a motorbike

yah but i dont buy computers from ebay period. heard to many horror stories.

[dbuchhofer]

By the time you add operating systems and ram to that poor little cube, it turns out close to even, and for what is quite possibly less proccesing juice, and no warranty.. (Yea, it makes a difference.)

to each his own..

[Da_elf]

gee. i thought the extra we pay at boxx was so that we DONT need to call tech support. ive had my boxx now for a little while and never had to call them once