The $25 gaming rig!
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From: Atlanta, GA
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The $25 gaming rig!
A funny thing happened the other day...
A little background: I am currently building a render farm for my 3D work. I started with some obsolete i7 (gen1) Laptop motherboards crudely mounted in picture frames and hung on the wall..... Because art! Talking about this at work one day someone informed me that the test lab here had just thrown out some old servers but looking into the spec the CPU benchmarked miles ahead of the junk I had. Since I missed out on the free stuff I went to ebay, bought a few system, then found a local scrapper that had several of them for stupid cheap! The power house of my render farm now being the couple of dual Xeon x5550 1U HP servers, each loaded with 24GB and a pair of 15k RPM HDDs, and sourced for the retardedly low price of $150
I also picked:
1x Dell 1950 iii = $40 (http://www.dell.com/downloads/global...spec_sheet.pdf)
1x HP DL580 G5 = $81 (http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf....115.pdf?ver=34)
2x HP DL380 G5 = $25/each (http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf....115.pdf?ver=34)
Just for the sake of silliness I decided to put together one of the DL380 G5s as a gaming system. WHY?! To see if it could be done. See the spec and price list below:
DL380 G5 Server = $25
2x Xeon 5150 2.66GHz 2 core CPUs = included (http://ark.intel.com/products/27218/...z-1333-MHz-FSB)
4x 2GB DDR2 (speed unknown) Registered DIMM = included
Corsair V32 32GB SSD (boot drive) = free/gifted
eVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW = free/gifted
Keyboard = on loan from an old G3 iMac
Boomslang 2000 gaming mouse = $200...... back in 2000.
Extra 450W PSU = Hacked from an old PC (the DL380 has no internal 6 pin GPU connector and I didn't yet want to splice wires.)
TOTAL (out of pocket) COST = $25
Now for the pics:
11864872_10152869543217723_7718403868143064070_o.jpg
11845095_10152869036742723_8100109701054181871_o.jpg
11856409_10152869036747723_4851350614906345046_o.jpg 11884613_10152869036752723_933788390971998630_o.jpg
results?
11872026_10152869746362723_9114083793497031587_o.jpg
Meh.... But I'd like to see you build an ARK rig for $25
The going plan is to buy a G6 next, splice accordingly, invest in a good GPU (GTX 970?) and a pair of x5670's. CPU (passmark) benchmarks north of 15k and possible SLI capability for under $500 ($750 with 2nd GPU)
Possibly less if they toss one out downstairs.
A little background: I am currently building a render farm for my 3D work. I started with some obsolete i7 (gen1) Laptop motherboards crudely mounted in picture frames and hung on the wall..... Because art! Talking about this at work one day someone informed me that the test lab here had just thrown out some old servers but looking into the spec the CPU benchmarked miles ahead of the junk I had. Since I missed out on the free stuff I went to ebay, bought a few system, then found a local scrapper that had several of them for stupid cheap! The power house of my render farm now being the couple of dual Xeon x5550 1U HP servers, each loaded with 24GB and a pair of 15k RPM HDDs, and sourced for the retardedly low price of $150
I also picked:
1x Dell 1950 iii = $40 (http://www.dell.com/downloads/global...spec_sheet.pdf)
1x HP DL580 G5 = $81 (http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf....115.pdf?ver=34)
2x HP DL380 G5 = $25/each (http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf....115.pdf?ver=34)
Just for the sake of silliness I decided to put together one of the DL380 G5s as a gaming system. WHY?! To see if it could be done. See the spec and price list below:
DL380 G5 Server = $25
2x Xeon 5150 2.66GHz 2 core CPUs = included (http://ark.intel.com/products/27218/...z-1333-MHz-FSB)
4x 2GB DDR2 (speed unknown) Registered DIMM = included
Corsair V32 32GB SSD (boot drive) = free/gifted
eVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW = free/gifted
Keyboard = on loan from an old G3 iMac
Boomslang 2000 gaming mouse = $200...... back in 2000.
Extra 450W PSU = Hacked from an old PC (the DL380 has no internal 6 pin GPU connector and I didn't yet want to splice wires.)
TOTAL (out of pocket) COST = $25
Now for the pics:
11864872_10152869543217723_7718403868143064070_o.jpg
11845095_10152869036742723_8100109701054181871_o.jpg
11856409_10152869036747723_4851350614906345046_o.jpg 11884613_10152869036752723_933788390971998630_o.jpg
results?
11872026_10152869746362723_9114083793497031587_o.jpg
Meh.... But I'd like to see you build an ARK rig for $25
The going plan is to buy a G6 next, splice accordingly, invest in a good GPU (GTX 970?) and a pair of x5670's. CPU (passmark) benchmarks north of 15k and possible SLI capability for under $500 ($750 with 2nd GPU)
Possibly less if they toss one out downstairs.
