A friend doesn't trust my opinion....

[wheelema]

There is a small system builder in town who builds and installs custom systems in Temecula. A friend asked him for a custom system based on a AC-1Core4 Carillon system, stressing the need for quiet performance, and he quoted the guy the following...

• Intel P4 640 3.2GHz 800MHz FSB, 2GB of RAM (on 2 sticks!, so easily expandable to 4GB), on a Gigabyte 8GPNXP-DUO motherboard (SATA Raid, dual NIC, Firewire, USB 2, and S/PDIF in and out).
• Gigabyte PCI-Express GeForce PCX5750 video adapter w/128MB.
• 19" rack case with three 120mm fans controlled by a Silverstone fan controller. The guy explained that three 120mm fans turning at half speed are a lot quieter than several 80mm fans spinning for dear life. All incoming air supposedly has to pass through filters.
• ePower xScale 600watt power supply
• Four 160GB SATA HDD (640GB total) mounted in shock isolated removable rack trays, each with it's own 40mm fan. The HDD are Samsung SpinPoint drives which are supposedly the quietest HDD available.
• Two Pioneer DVD-RW drives
• Windows XP Pro
• 3.5" floppy, keyboard, mouse.
• no monitor(s)

$3,200

I am in kind of a quandry. On one hand this box beats the Carillon in a lot of ways for the same amount of money, but on the other hand it's from a little local vendor. What would you advise??

 

[Bulls Hit]

Looks like a good unit.

Only thing that bugs me about it is that's a lot of coin to drop on a box that will be, well not obsolete, but looking kinda dusty in 12 months time

 

[ez_willis]

The price seems kinda high to me, but I've always built my own. Ask the guy for references and about warranty/customer service issues. Are you opposed to posting the vendors name? I'm not too far from you(Rancho) and it might be someone that friends have dealt with.

 

[wheelema]

Initially I favored the Carillon, but you raise a good point. It IS a LOT of money for tech that will be obsolete too soon. At least THIS box is using the 6xx processor (even if at 3.2MHz), instead of the 5xx processor used by the Carillon. I'll raise that point and see what the guy says.

 

[tdukex]

My approach would be to buy the parts myself then pay a tech $100 to put it together. This is what I have done with my last three computers over the years. I have had no problem finding competent computer techs willing to do this for $100.