Need oppinions on computer....

OK I have a chance to pickup a really great deal on a computer, it is a Dell PowerEdge 6300 QUAD PIII-550 XEONS 2GB RAM 216Gb hd. Was thinking about getting this as my home computer, I love it, it's big, ugly, noisy, etc, but I wanted the oppinion of the people that come here. So guys what do you think? I am trying to get all the information I can on this from Dell, but it seems that these things were really pretty barebones and configured for the most part to the customers needs, this one has 6 Hardrives, currently running Windows 2000 Server, 3 power supplies, etc. I am sure there are more of you that know this thing way better then I do. But is this a practical idea for a home computer that gets used a lot? Right now I am running 3 different versions of Windows, and my computer stays on all the time, and is the server for my "home" network, I do extensive downloading of songs, video, etc even a ton from majorgeeks! I aalso play games, but the computer I have now is starting to groan from the load. I am thinking of adding my harddrive to the server, with an ide card, and my nvidia card. Right now I am not sure, so I thought I would ask here to the people that always have great advice and plenty of oppinions. Thanks!

 

Dont know nothing about that dell, but sure would like to play with it for a while, sounds awful neat to me. ed

 

Yep what I was thinking! And I think I have found the manual on it, I am going through it now, this thing is awesome, should run anything for oh at least Vista SP2!

 

I do have a hp-kayak xu800 dual 733 p3, two 17 gig 10,ooo rpm scuzzy drives, very impressive. ed

 

OK now we're getting somewhere! How do you like it, any problems useing it at home? I was just reading that the max line surge during powering on can be 55amps for 125ms that would make the microwave sit up and take notice!

 

Mine has only one power pack, so im not sure about the draw, but performance is very impressive, i bet your's will kick some butt. ed

 

OK here it is!!! I bought it for $200 and pick it up Thursday, will be a blast to play with! Although it looks as if some of the newer stuff software wise wont run on it, it will still be a blast to play with!

 

you might want to get an upgraded version of server, or try linux on it.

 

Already ahead on that one, XP will not run on it, but 03 server will and I am looking at several different ones to figure out which one. As far as Linux goes I am thinking of a multi boot system with some flavor of Linux on it, just not sure which one yet, i have several already but trying to research which one would use the capabilities of this machine. Right now I am leaning towards, 3 partitions, one for Windows 2003, (Not sure which one), one for Linux (Again not sure which one), and the other partition for Virtual PC storage, a place where I can store different VPC files I create and want to reuse.

 

Ha they are like the humvee's of computers. I was lucky enough to get a dell optiplex something or other quite a few years ago with dual pIII 550 CPU's and a geforce 3 AGP card. It had onboard SCSI with 4 9.1gig drives and 512MB ECC SDRAM. I held on to it for years but never really used it for what it was worth. When I sold it, I was gutted.

 

Well excuse me while I brag a little on the deal I got, I paid $200 for it and it is great! and compared to what it is selling for else where i thnk I did great! here's and example of one that doesn't have half what mine does, http://www4.shopping.com/xPO-Dell_POWEREDGE_6300_RACK_QUAD_PIII_500_2GB_MEMORY, And there are some modernizations I am looking into already, I have a Nvidia FX5500 to go in a Promise PCI IDE card so a ican add another 120gb hard drive. A decent sound card so I can attach my 500 watt surround sound to it, and even looking into the powerLeap CPU upgrades! That is the true Geek fashion, we can make it better then it was. But considering the deal I got on it I really don't see the down side to it. I have an 8mbs internet connection my goal is to never see that animated hour glass while on a computer again!

 

Quick update after fighting it all weekend finally got the nVidia FX5500 video card working!! Way cool! Ordered 2 more gigs of EEC RAM, and a sound card, next week will be a 8 port USB 2.0 card! This thing is so awesome!! Disappointed at the lack of software that will run on this thing, it will not do XP and any utility software, (firewalls, anti-virus, etc) has to be server but so far games play very very well on it! I did a performance test on it over the weekend, one of the software packages I used was Sisoft Sandra Pro, which reported 4 Xeon Processors with a PR2400! Way better then I thought and now with 256mb of video RAM this thing snaps from one web site to another, installed Virtual PC and installed Windows XP on a virtual machine it only saw one processor, no surprise and the host machine was still runing at less then 15% processor usage running Windows 2003 on the Host, and Windows XP on a virtual PC, and doing the usual web stuff!

 

Wow I am behind...
OK here we go, to drag this thing into the "modern" computer age, I installed another 2gb of RAM so now the total is up to 4GB ECC RAM, and ordered and installed the neatest addon a USB 2.0 card with 3 usb ports on the card a plug cables and a neat little box that goes into a floppy bay with 3 more usb 2.0 ports and 2 firewire ports. I did install XP on it even though XP can only deal with 2 processors, it's on a seperate partition, Have 11 18.2gb SCSI Hardrives on the way to add to this which will bring the total drive space to 416gb. I still use Windows 2003 for the most part, and am trying to get enough software to feel safe running Windows 2003 on line, firewall is the biggest concern right now! By adding the USB it allowed me to add most of the usual toys, printer, digital camera, CD burner.
These things are monsters to configure, but once you do and your running a version of Windows that sees all the hardware it is great to see you try to load it up and it still run less then 15% processor usage!! I also added a Sound Blaster card and a 500 watt Sanyo surround sound system to it. So now games and music are no problem, biggest surprise is the game Age Of Empires 3, when I installed it it popped up and told me that the game requires a 1.7ghz processor and did I want to try and run it anyhow, I did and it ran great no hitches, no problems and with the nVidia card the graphics where fast and awesome!
Not really anything I can add to this thing to really make the drastic improvements that it has seen in the last month. And I end this thread with this thought, if you like tweaking, tinkering and a challenge then get you a server for your "Home" computer. they are cheap, they are fun, and they will fast become a computer you love to use!! I have enjoyed this one so much that I have recently bought a Compaq Proliant ML370 server and waiting for it to arrive, it is a dual processor 1ghz each, and a lot of the things that did not come with this, are built in to the Compaq. So it proves to be fun and another challenge, and when I am done modernizing the Compaq I will sell it, I can't lose I bought a dual processor computer working with a warranty for $32! Told you, you can't beat these servers!!