Do any of you guys have experience leasing servers? I'm thinking of getting a dual opteron for about $4K from monarchcomputer.com Over 3 years they quoted $135/month for a fair-market-value buyout, and $143 for a $1 buyout. What is the catch? The fair market value of the machine will be at *least* $1500 after 3 years.. why would anyone choose the option when the $1 buyout is only $7/month higher?
Go to Dell and price out a similar computer. It is amazing what they value the server at after three years - like 10% of the original purchase price. IMO, Dell computers are so cheap and work so well with most linuxes that I see no reason to get any other computer. I recently just bought a 2850 from them but considered a lease instead. If you want to go Opteron, that is another issue altogether. nitro
Definately going opteron, that's why I decided against dell. I checked out HP but they were seriously expensive. --Stephen
Faster, cheaper, 64-bit. AMD has really been making Intel look foolish lately. Intel Xeon 3.6 2MB vs AMD Opteron 252 Database Test Workstation Battle Royale : Xeon 3.6 GHz / 2MB vs. Opteron 252
Only dumb cattle-like instinct. Used over 100+ Intel motherboards since 1994. Never liked them 100% but had only one go really bad: 29 months old, Intel replaced it under the 3year warranty. I like reading the amd stories very much, but the last few years, red also about a lot of tears from peope trying to keep their mobos in shape. Maybe one day I'll give it a try. Which mobo though? Dunno.
Only dumb cattle-like instinct.. yeah, I must've 'red' that somewhere too.... So far, a few anecodotal stories about amd boards going bad is not enough to convince me. I'm going with the Thunder K8S. More reviews here and here
'red' your: http://www.2cpu.com/hardware/motherboards/tyan/thunder_k8s/conclusion.html "All in all, a wonderful Opteron board with PCI-X and integrated dual-channel U320 SCSI. While the Xeons held a lead in a large number of the benchmarks, I'm hoping AMD will roll out some faster Opterons to counter the threat." also: 64bit amd benchmarks still seem not worth the trouble. dunno which motherboard they tested the dual Xeons with. Thanks
They tested the Opteron 246 btw, which runs at 2ghz. I'm getting dual 252's which run at 2.6ghz. They tested the xeon on the Intel E7505 chipset.