Ideal mining PC

[Femto]

I want to build/buy a cheap, compact, quiet PC to datamine 24/7. I was looking at those Shuttle XPCs, and while those would certainly get the job done, I think they are a bit overqualified. I probalby need 2ghz at MOST, 512mb ram, 60gb hd, etc. The bare minimum. Ideas?

[tinhat]

For a machine with just this purpose, a 486 with 16M RAM running WFW would be fine. IOW "cheap" is very good here...

Mike

[Femto]

What is WFW?

[tinhat]

Windows for Workgroups (early 1990s; windows 3.11 IIRC). It was the best performing consumer windows version until windows 4 (a.k.a. win95).

My point was simply I think your specs are far too high. 512M RAM is a complete waste and so is a 2GHz CPU. If you use it for nothing other than mining poker sites and if the software would run on win98 for instance, you can go pretty much to the very bottom of the hardware tech market (wherever that is these days)...

Mike

[Femto]

ah, i see. well, its gonna need 512 ram i think, i mean i'm using 150mb for poker [censored] alone, and windows/system stuff would take another 100+. i also want this thing to have some decent uptime and not crash and burn. i'd be willing to spend $300.

[Femto]

not to mention the fact that it will have to support postgresql. does win 98?

[tinhat]

[ QUOTE ]

not to mention the fact that it will have to support postgresql. does win 98?

[/ QUOTE ]

I honestly don't know. I'm guessing "no" because IIRC win98 doesn't support NTFS? Which IIRC postgresql requires. Only you know if you really need postgresql - I have no reason to switch so probably (maybe) never will.

Can you really get something for $300? I didn't know that's all we were talking about so whatever you can squeeze into that budget will probably be perfectly acceptable for its intended duties...

Mike

[Femto]

With the amount of mining that is going to be done, using an Access PT database is simply not an option due to the 2gb file limit. An SQL database is mandatory.

My main concern is size though. I want this thing to be tiny and out of the way.

[Nomad84]

[ QUOTE ]
For a machine with just this purpose, a 486 with 16M RAM running WFW would be fine.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree. I use a PII 350 with 320 MB of RAM and have a hard time mining 4 tables through the night without some sort of problem. I think 512 is the minimum RAM that I would try since I'd like to run the max number of skins at 4 tables each if I were buying a mining computer. I doubt processor is all the important, but I don't know. Either way, I agree with your main point; basically the cheapest computer on the market today should suffice. If I wanted to spend any more than the bare minimum, I think I would probably increase the RAM before anything else.

[tinhat]

I didn't know how to do a sarcasm smiley /images/graemlins/smile.gif

But still, I'd bet the reason you need 512M is strictly because of your OS. Using a less-resource intensive OS if possible, to save on hardware only required because of the OS, is really what I was getting at. IOW you're having to load up on hardware because of XP - not because of the poker software...

Mike

[Femto]

Ah, I see :-)

[Nomad84]

Gotcha. BTW, I don't run XP, but I wouldn't be surprised if you told me ME is as bad or worse.

[Femto]

ME is indeed much worse. I will never go back.