On 18 Feb 2004 16:08:55 -0800, am59@ath.forthnet.gr (Apostolos) wrote:

I would like to build a system for my office PC:

Money is not an issue if something is really worth it.  For example I
dont think it is worth the extra $300 to get the Athlon 64 3400 than
the AThlon 3200+.

The Pc will be for office use, however I would like it to be very good
at SETI@HOME.  (8500+ units and going......:))

CPU Athlon or Intel? AS stated above I dont want to spenfd the extra
$$$ If the percentage increase is small.  The cpu must be great at
seti above all since I wont be playing any games on it.  (and run
office but all modern pcs can do).  Toms hardware doesnt have any last
tests on seti.

Motherboard:  It has to be reliable but also support overcloaking. 
For my home pc I have an ASUS motherboard p4c800 that overclocks my
pentium 3 g to 3.3 g.  iT IS PRETTY STABLE AND i AM SATISFIED.

Ram:  1 gig is a must!

Graphics card?  I guess any will do??  Office work mostly.  I have an
eizo monitor so a dvi input is an option if it makes the screen
better!

Sound card:  Simple, only to hear some videos

DVD writer???  Need a good one since it will there for a long time in
terms of speed.

HArd disk?  I was thinking to get the raptor sata 36 Gig for the
system and another for everything else..

Lan card:  A stable one?  Any ok one will do.  

Fan:  I need a silent one, at home I have one zalman for cpu and one
for the power supply and it is quiet:)

ANy other ideas??

Get a cpu with a large L2 or L3 cache!
I have an AMD 2800+ with a 512k L2 cache, my son has a Pentium 4(M)
chip, in a laptop, with a 1 meg L2 cache and he can run 2 instances of
Seti at one time, CLI of course, while I can only run 1.
I believe M means "mobile" but I could be wrong. The point was the L2
cache size.
I guess if you are going to get only 1 machine, I would look at the
Hyper Threading so you can run 2 instances of the program on 1 cpu. If
price is not an option then a dual HT cpu will let you run 4 workunits
at a time.
It may be cheaper to buy 1 machine for the stuff you do and 1 machine
for just Seti! Yours would have all the bells and whistles while the
other one could be a smaller cpu but without all the distractions of
games, videos, programs running besides Seti, it could process work
units just as fast. I buy computers cheap from places and put Seti on
them and nothing else. Currently I have 14 here at home. The slowest
is a 700mhz and the fastest is a 2.4ghz. My times range from about 9
hours to about 2 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours per work unit.
I do have a dual cpu 300mhz server that I was given  and it too runs
Seti but it takes almost 19 hours per unit!
It will go out the door soon! It is not worh it in terms of processing
power vs electricity used. It was fun learning how to set up a Compaq
server, the tech support was THE BEST!!!!
Currently I am at 30,585 work units completed!
I have given older computers to the neighbors as I get newer faster
ones. I gave the neighbor across the street a 333mhz computer that was
faster than the fastest one they had!