commercial 24hr system spec

Hobbsie

Hobbsie

Hobbsie

Associate
Joined
20 Oct 2012
Posts
459
Location
west sussex
Hi all been asked to make a 24hr running pc for a commercial premises.
Its only going to be running powerpoint presentations and playing audio.
So it does not need to be gaming or quick really.
But it does have to be able to run 24hrs and reliable.
To be windows 7
They want to be able to raid 1 mirroring with 2+tb hdd's
Graphics to have dual vga (if such gpu exist's)?
If someone could help me spec a system id appriciate it.

thanks in advance
 
Last edited:
Quite a lot of people on here leave their computers on all the time without noticeable ill effects. 24 hours a day isn't a problem.

Reliable might be. If the computer going down is a significant problem, the answer is multiple computers in different data centres with some form of load balancing and fail over set up. If the computer breaking is bad, but not bad enough that it's worth buying a second computer, then you can go with pretty much whatever spec takes your fancy.

Going down the redundant hard disk, redundant power supply, error correcting memory route would improve uptime - but probably not as much as a second computer would.
 
hi thanks for info, i forogt the mention that it needs to be a rack mount pc or in a case that is laying down? i see ocuk dont sell these ;(
 
ok my 1st attempt in speccing a pc please be gentle with me ;)
Hope this will work?


YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus Z97-K - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£14 Saving** £278.58
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 750Ti Razor 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Retail (75IPH8HXB9XX) £119.99
1 x Corsair RM Series RM 850 '80+ Gold' 850W Power Supply (CP-9020056-UK) £114.95
1 x Silverstone LaScala LC17 Rackmount HTPC Case - Black (SST-LC17-B USB 3.0) £84.95
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) £84.95
2 x Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD5003AZEX) HDD £54.98 (£109.96)
1 x Avexir Core Blue Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16001104G-2CW) - Blue Light £49.99
1 x Silverstone Argon SST-AR02 CPU Cooler - 92mm £19.99
Total : £878.36 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
hi thanks, im not 100% sure they run powerpoint all day i think its for a few hours a couple of times a day.
But do you think i need togo something like an i7?
Sorry never used intel before so its all new ;)
 
For your use you need the cheapest CPU you can find, a celeron will be fine.

Your spec is completely overkill. You could have a more than adequate machine for less than half that.
 
Minstadave said:
For your use you need the cheapest CPU you can find, a celeron will be fine.

Your spec is completely overkill. You could have a more than adequate machine for less than half that.
Click to expand...

Buy two of them.
When one breaks, take the other one out of the cupboard.
I wouldn't build from bits for work, I'd buy a PC from someone with support / maintenance unless it was my day job to build and fix them.

If you're picking two drives for RAID 1 then make sure you have standard drivers for it if you need to rebuild it on something else. Or a RAID card from an established vendor.

Also, if this is for business, then do you want Windows Home or Windows Professional for connecting to the corporate network?
 
I like to use ocuk for everything, as you can tell im not tech guy when it comes to this, the main problem is it needs to sit in a rack so it need a sidways pc case.
This is why i went down build route.
As i tried the system configurator but wasnt sure if the game console or media centre cases would work?? silverstone milo HTPC is that something that will fit the bill?
The customer wants a to raid the hdd's hence why theres 2 (but never really played aorund with raid before)
If the HTPC is the type of case/size etc i need ill just go down the system configurator route on ocuk.

Thanks

edit: sorry for bad spelling.
 
Last edited:
Buy a cheap rackmount server from Dell. Or OcUK. Or wherever. Then activating RAID should be a non-brainer. RAID is actually really boring once its done.

Stick a dual VGA card in it (does it really want dual VGA? Or will it hookup to a projector / LCD display over HDMI? or is that for some 1980's KVM switch?)
 
Hobbsie said:
Would you reccomend in buying a pc and rack mounted case and swap it over? simplest thing i guess.
Click to expand...

No, because there goes your warranty.. 3 months in, something broke. You have to put it back in the other case and send it back to them or an engineer comes out and says "what the chuff?".

Buy a rack-mountable shelf, and then you can put anything you like on it.
 
cool thanks got the graphics card sorted as its 3 monitors going through a 1970's! kvm switch.
Only got 6u to play with in a 21u rack so that shouldnt b an issue at all.

thanks for info.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom