£99 Dell server (ex VAT and delivery) - 1 day only

spellinn

Dell are having one of their 1 day specials on PowerEdge SC420 servers.

Details here :

***URL edited, redirect links not allowed. MSE Controller 2***

Cheers,


/Neil/

cuteusmaximus

Cheapest unit is £173.90 including shipping (and VAT on both!)

Sub-total £99.00 17.50 % £116.33
Total Delivery Charg e £49.00 17.50 % £57.58
Total Price £148.00 17.50 % £173.90

This is for a Celeron, 256MB RAM, 48XCDROM, 80GB hard drive.

No network card, no mouse, no keyboard, no monitor, no operating system, etc

timbouk

cuteusmaximus wrote:

Cheapest unit is £173.90 including shipping (and VAT on both!)

Sub-total £99.00 17.50 % £116.33
Total Delivery Charg e £49.00 17.50 % £57.58
Total Price £148.00 17.50 % £173.90

This is for a Celeron, 256MB RAM, 48XCDROM, 80GB hard drive.

No network card, no mouse, no keyboard, no monitor, no operating system, etc

No network card in a server, now thats usefull!

Rave

It has built-in gigabit ethernet.

At the moment when I go to the configure page it come up with an error, anyone got an e-value code?

kalico

You are right that it is not as cheap as it looks. However, when I last ordered one (plus foollishly 'upgraded' to include a NIC which it has built in) I was told that if you give them a call and moan a little about the delivery cost, they will happily half it.

So, starting to look better value. It is not a top of the range machine but it is extremely well built (brick toilet?) and includes an 80GB serial ATA drive PLUS one year on-site warranty, which must be worth about £30.

As a server or base machine for a small office that is something of a bargain I would have thought.

ednotdave

Er....could you explain what a server is/does, please? (I do know, obviously, but not everyone is as clever as me!)

seth

ednotdave wrote:

Er....could you explain what a server is/does, please?

To give you an example a server might be someting like www.google.com or www.egg.com (actually both these sites have lots of "servers" behind them not one) your PC at home that you access say Google with is known as a client, that consumes services, in this case a web service, provided by a server at Google.

A server can be used to provide services such as web, print, file, databases, mail, etc. for example if you bought this unit from Dell, you could buy a copy of Windows and use it as a PC client.

These machines are very well build, good construction, cooling, fans etc and are designed to run 24 hours a day, so although you could use it as a client PC you might find it noisy.

If you wanted to use it as server you could use it to provide services to other client PC in your office or home, for example as a file and print server.

You might have a web site you want to run and you if you have broadband you might use it as a web server. If you have an ADSL connection to the internet you might use it as a firewall to protect other client PC on home network from outside attack. These are examples of server programs or "using the PC as a server".

You can of course use a laptop or desktop PC, but these often do not cope well with 24x7 operation.

You can buy server software from Microsoft or Linux vendors (such as Redhat) Indeed the both are options when you order the unit.

If you wanted to use it as a "normal" client PC then you would have to purchase a desktop operating system and software.

If you want server software to convert one of these PCs into a file (Windows and Appletalk), print, mail (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, including webmail), web server and firewall, and can put up with on line support, then a simple web based server solution like SME server might be worth a look.
www.contribs.org Download, burn the ISO, boot the CD, install and config. Then all admin is via a web page so it is quite simple to use, free software (GLP) so no fees for use.

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&kc=305&l=en&oc=SC64205&s=bsd&sbc=pedge_420sc_ide

ednotdave

...so it's nothing to do with Wimbledon, then? :rolleyes:


Cheers!

BritBrat

Ist game 15 Love

andreboyle

Just to re-iterate. I've used several of these now and they're superb. Performance is great and they run at near silent volumes.

To run as a server you'll need to go to 512MB of RAM but aside from that it's great.

If anyone says this is useless as a server please rest assure knowing that they simply do not know how to configured a server properly. I've got on of these running Windows 2003 Small Business Server which has been appropriately tuned and it will happily handle 10 inbound eMails per second as a mail server and over 50 concurrent web connections to a database driven website. Combined general use it hasn't gone over 20% processor utilization in the 4 months mine's been in use.

If you take a standard PCI graphics card and dremmel the main board connector it'll run as a great games machine.

These machines are selling like hot-cakes in the USA as people buy them for what amounts to 80 pounds and are running them as games PC. Their power supply is great at getting rid of the extra hot air.

All in all these are highly recommended.

On another note, complain to Dell about postage and they'll do what they did for me, chuck off the postage.

The reason these are so cheap is because there are so many server snobs who believe a server must be multi-processor with multi-GB memory to be usefull. Yes, these aren;t rack mounted, but they are great little work-horses. If you need a server for your business you'd be hard pushed to go wrong with this as a basic unit.

If anyone wants further advice please message me and I'll help you any way I can.

Dre

ash333

Does anyone know, how much would it cost to get it up to 512mb of ram? would that be enough to run as a games machine/everyday workhorse email word processor? How do I go about dremmeling the base to put a graphics card in - is this drilling the motherboard or the case?

Ash333