Hey Guys,
My school(rather small Christian school) is going to be purchasing new computer systems in a month or so, and after bringing the idea before the Administration they decided they may have me build the new systems for them. Here are the specs below, they are gonna want 20-25 of these babies....

Nec Accusync 5V-Bk 15" LCD Monitor

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 333mhz.
Albatron nForce2 Ultra 400 Motherboard
512MB 333mhz. DDR(2x256mb for Dual Channel)
120GB Western Digital 7200rpm SE Hard Drive
Ati Radeon 9600 128mb 8x Video Card
48x CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive
Floppy Reader
6-in-1 Memory Reader
Antec Sonata Case w/380w PSU

Memorex MX 2750 Keyboard
Logitech MX300 Optical Mouse

Windows XP Professional(They already own a volume license)

I'm offering these for $999 a piece, what do you all think?
They were considering buying from Dell...but with these specs it would cost them around $500 more per system almost....

P.S. I'm also supposed to gather specs for a good server...I'll post those when I get done with them...

Less fancy keyboard / mouse, that way it won't encourage them to steal them.

Slower VGA card, that way they don't get tempted to install & play games during school hours.

No CD-RW/DVD, that way they don't burn the mp3s they download & they don't bring DVDs to watch.

Other then that, it should work very well.

Well the principle told me he wants them to be "ready for the future". And several of the programs he has recieved have been on DVD format..maybe I could just get a DVD Rom then..... Its not really worth getting a slower VGA card is it? I mean it'll only save maybe $20 a system... Then again....$20 of extra profit would be nice.....

Simply get a nForce 2 IGP board, you'll save a lot more on it & as for the keyboards/mice in 5 years, it'll be the same so you might as well get a simply cherry kerboard & cheap wheel mouse ( eventually optical ).

Hey I like the idea of integrated gfx....Hoever I have to get optical mice..The kids at school steal the mouse balls and throw them at people...

What Nforce 2 MB with Integrated video would you all recommend? I was looking at the ABIT nForce2 IGP Chipset Motherboard

Your way to excited with the systems.

Its for a schcool. No radeon 9600, no cd-rw, no 120 gig hdd, and definately no LCD screens!

You know how often kids (and not so kids) touch and punch the screen of the computer!? Hey click there! bang, a finger just blew up 20 pixels of your lcd screen....

120 gigs is way to much. Not like they are going to do dvd ripping, uh?

Here are the savings:

Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB 120GB Hard Drive - $83.00
Western Digital 40GB EIDE ULTRA ATA/100 7200RPM - $53.00
Save $30

Sapphire Radeon 9600 Video Card - $96
PowerColor Radeon 9200 SE Video Card - $45
Save $51

Memorex COMBO CDRW/DVD 52X/32X/52/16X EIDE - $67.50
Lite-On LTD-163 DVD-ROM 16x - $29.50
Save $38

NEC LCD1560V 15" LCD Monitor - $365
Samsung SyncMaster 955DF 19" Monitor - $170
Save $195

You save total $314 per PC. You can save more if you take out the case and the nice keyboard/mouse. Thats $6280 - $7850 savings for your school.

Also, don't think of profiting yourself. Even if they don't ask, you SHOULD give them a copy of the bill, so they know how much the hardware costed, and then bill them your work hours. Don't take profit from the hardware unless you have a special deal with the place you are going to buy the parts from.

Then, are you going to copy 20-25 cd-r's with windows xp? Not for a school. Then, you forgot to take in count the price of the licenses. You can also put linux and see how the boys get it to work / show them how to compile a kernel.

Sorry, didn't see they already had volume licensing. Ignore the part where I talked about the winxp licences.

Also, what tasks will the server have to do?

By the way, I hope you realize that if you "offer those for 999", you also offer free technical support every time a computer screwes up. That can happen ocasionally whith 20-25 computers running.

Mouse Balls

Stealing mouse balls and throwing them at people...now THERE'S a real Christian attitude...

All our mice get glued at the bottom so you carnt yank the ball out. However the whole mouse just gets unplugged and thrown at someone now. Do they have RM (research machines) computers in the US? over here our school gets really good deals of RM. I dont even think a 9200SE is necessary. Id just get a decent mobo with onbord sound and gfx, 17inch moniter and standard input deivces. R9600... do they hold gaming tornaments a dinner time or somthing?

Wow, didnt realize you guys replied to this so quickly.

The Server:
It will become the center piece for some new software the school is purchasing. It's a software which will essentially replace paper lunch forms, attendance sheets, etc, teachers will submit that all from their classrooms, it is also includes new financing software.
(also they may purchase an add-on, which will allow parents to check their students grades online, I assume they will log onto the server somehow, havent reviewed the software yet)
PC's:
Perhaps I did overdo it a bit...I admit, the computer's are well..monsters, especially since they'll mostly just be doing Word documents, and using spanish typing programs. I'm going to configure another system, and post it here, see what you guys think, ok?

Yes the Mouseballs were all over the school...it was crazy, now we have 22 useless computers in the computer room, mouse balls gone...keyboards cables ripped out.... The students were mad because they all kept crashing,(all are P166 with Windows 95)

I donno, the principle just told me he wants to be good to go for another 3 years.

I do plan on giving them tech support for the next 2 years BTW..

Ok guys, what about this system?

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1.83GHz 333FSB 512KB Processor Retail
Biostar M7NCG 400 nForce2 Athlon(XP)/Duron SktA DDR M-ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Video, LAN Retail
Maxtor Fireball 3 40GB Ultra ATA/133 5400RPM Hard Drive
Crucial Technology 256MB DDR333 PC2700 Memory
Asus DVD-E616P1 16X DVD-ROM / 48X CD-ROM Drive (Black)
Antec Sonata Quiet Mid Tower Case (Piano Black) Retail
380w Antec TruPower PSU
2.0 Speaker System Retail
Sony 1.44MB 3.5in Floppy Disk Drive
Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard & Optical Mouse Combo OEM

Monitor:
KDS XF-7BK Xtreme Flat 17" CRT Monitor (Black)

All of this comes to $612
I tack on $150 per system for building and 2 Yr. Tech support, bringing the price to $762
Sound Good to you all? I mean $150 per pc, meaning if he gets the expected 20-26 systems I'll be looking at a $3000-3900 profit.

Thanks for saving me the time, I was about to post the very thing. I think you should really tone down the HDs, and videocards. Remember, this is a school PC. That doesnt mean make a POS, but theres just no need for a 9600 or 120GBs of space per computer.

Aside now that I just noiced you posted new specs, my .02 on them:

Get a 7200RPM Hard Drive, other then that looks like a damn good plan to me. Your super lucky to get to make those for your school - Good Job!

Hey Guys, Thanks alot for your help in the decision making, bringing down the price to $750 a system was a big help in the push for the systems, and helped my principle convince the school board to approve the $$ for the systems. I'm definitly going to be building the systems, no exact date, within a few weeks....

P.S. Dang they get the deals, XP Pro for $60, and Office 2003 Pro for $55....I want to own a school....

How about, with those savings, get 1GB of memory and not 256MB? I go to a private technical school in the morning and my class gets the fun of building computers for all the different classes. I don't know the exact specs, but in each there's an XP2500+, MSI nForce2 board, 2x512MB DDR333 Kingston ValueRAM, Geforce4 MX440, 40GB Seagate/Maxtor HD, 52X CD-ROM drives, and they have the lower range of Antec cases. You should consider something along these lines with a few modifications, they work great. Perhaps replacing the CD-ROMs with DVD-ROMs and using different cases/monitors/input devices if the teachers want aesthetics.

It's a school, and we all know schools never have alot of money. So the more money you save them, the easier it's going to be for the principal to convince the school board to approve them, and for you to even get the job. And the more your school is going to love you and look to you in the future for future computer work, which is only good news for you.

Also be sure to set up Active Directory on that server you make - but that's probably already taken care of. I'm the local administrator for my class, and I'm public enemy #1 because noone (especially the "1337 h4x0rs" in my class - which there are no shortage of) can install programs or download anything on their machines. Thus they hate me because I delpart their computer if they get past the domain policies or have anything on their machine they're not supposed to. My teacher explicitly said "the only thing they should be able to do on their computers is use the internet, Word, Visio, and access Site Storage [the network drive to upload our projects into]." I got to have fun after that.

But, good luck, and I sure wish my school hired me to build them computers. Instead they just buy Macs and I could sure use $3000 just for building computers.

Actually the server will be on a seperate network for Teachers/Office only. Seemed like the safest setup to me, the students dont need any sort of access to the primary server where all information including their grades and the schools financial info is going to be located...

Being connected to a server doesn't mean you have any sort of access to all the information on it.

I was just saying, the administration may want a way to curb installation of programs and general misuse of the machine. In that case, local policies would need to be put into place or Active Directory on another server (which would be best).

Veh: Thanks for the pointers.

Rick: Yeah if you read my latter posts I toned down the systems a bit...

I decided on the Sonata cases for the sheer look and I didnt want to purchase any cheap PSU's either...So they looked like a good deal to me with the 380w TruePower PSU...hehe...