This should be fun!!Net cafe shopping spree!!

[kenstarr]

Ok guys I really need some help.I have a net cafe in the Philippines and it's doing great.I'm going back home to Miami,Fl in two weeks and have alot of shopping to do.I'm expanding my Net cafe by opening up two more shops.I'll be in the states for two months and have a budget up to $25,000.00 for each shop.I'm going to New York also to visit family and will stop by Micro Center in L.I. to pick up whatever I can to save some money and get the most out of my budget.I also like to purchase from Newegg and Tiger Direct online.My current setup at the shop is
cpu I5-750'S
mobo ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156
vga XFX HD-485X-ZDFC Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit GDDR3
monitor Acer H243Hbmid 24" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen
psu CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W
ram 2x2gb ocz gold ddr3 ram
0S windows 7 32bit ultimate
Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000AADS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive

I was an apple fan trying to come back to the pc world last year when I built these setups.Now from what I learned
from my last build for my needs I went over kill with the vga and monitor.I'm looking to get a 22" acer monitors for about $159.99 a smaller corsair psu and a cheaper vga.My clients don't watch movies in HD and play online games wich have low requirements so pls keep this in mind.I'm having a hard time of deciding weather to go with a $910 i5-760 build or the budget route with quad core amd's.I need something stable I don't o.c. and electricity is my biggest monthly expense.Pls put together some builds that include
ssd boot drive
hdd storage drive
cpu
mobo
ram 4gb
psu
monitor
heat sink
vga
Remember $25,000.00 and life span is vital.I'm not going to save $200 each build for something that is old for I'm looking to use these builds till the wheels fall off.Thanks in advance and I'm looking forward to your suggestions and shopping.

 

[Lmeow]

Few questions first.

How many whole computers are you looking to buy?
What type of games do they play? (Give us the most common and most demanding)
Just how long do you expect these computers to last?

 

[kenstarr]

Well 25 units per shop 50 in all and the game that everyone plays is called sf online.The requirements are as following
CPU P3-1G or AMD Athlon 1.0 P4-1.8G or AMD Athlon XP 1800+
RAM 256 MB 512MB
VGA Geforce3 (64 MB) / Radeon 9000 Geforce FX 5700, Radeon 9500
DirectX DirectX 9.0c
Required Memory 500Mb
Other then that my clients just stream youtube vids and play facebook games.What I would like see is about at least 4 years of usage from these builds.I don't mind upgrading what ever might extend it's relevancy a year or two down the road.

 

[wolfram23]

You could probably get away with much cheaper builds. Like go with 775 socket, maybe E5400 or if you want AMD get Athelon X3s. Maybe go with 5670 video cards, or even 5650. I think those are fairly cheap. At the most you'd need about 550W, even 450W. Just some ideas, for SSDs I don't know exactly but really you shouldn't need them. If anything just do like two 320gb HDDs in RAID 0. Plenty faster than a single HDD but much cheaper and bigger than SSD. I can't see those PCs having to be booted up over and over... I mean on a daily basis, sure, but even then it'll just be a couple minutes.

 

[kenstarr]

I have to maintain a certain level of quality.I figure if I built units last year for about $1,000 each quad cores and big lcds (in the Philippines) I can't move backwards.It's a major selling point for my net cafe to be able to say I have these kind of specs vs. the cafes here with old dual core amd setups.I'm looking to save money this time around with my cpu,mobo and vga with out having to move down in cores and performance.If I build a amd quad core setup that has to be a big savings of rip.The reason I would like a ssd boot drive is because having to turn on and off units all day those couple of min. go along way and no one here in my city has ever seen one yet so I can imagine how much hype will come along with it.

 

[Lmeow]

50 computers, $50,000 budget = $1000 per computer then. I'll see what I can do with that, or bat can (though he can't rely too heavily on rebates ).

A Phenom II X4 works just as well as a Core i5 for most games just so you know. If you really want hype then you could stick an a hex core Phenom II X6 in one of those machines, although they don't perform as well as their quad core counterparts at stock speeds.

 

[Lmeow]

Based on a ~ $740 budget (as you have to buy the monitor & OS), this should be far more than enough than what you'd need. It has expansion for better graphics and CPUs later on.

AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz - $139.99
Gigabyte GA-890XA-UD3 - $119.99
OCZ Special Ops Edition OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK - $94.99
PowerColor PCS+ HD 5770 - $144.99

Total = $499.96 so far. $240 left for a power supply, case, SSD & HDD which should be doable. Tell me if you have OSes or not yet.

Something like this as a base would work great. Although extreme overkill for what your customers want. As Wolfram said, a dual core would suffice but if you really need to keep up your rep then you probably want a quad core.

You could try buying Phenom II X2 550s for $100 ea and see how many unlock. Even as a dual core it would be just as fast as the quad for SF Online. Dedicate the CPUs that don't unlock to the SF Onliners, and the ones that do to ones which play CPU intensive games.

 

[wolfram23]

Alright well if it's $1000 per PC with keyboard, mouse, and monitor, then we're talking probably around $800 for the internals.

I'd look at either Phenom X4s or Intel i3 540 (dual core with hyper threading). Either set up will be good. Then I still think a 5670 is a good enough GPU, if you can upgrade to a 5770 then great.

Here's a couple good threads for you
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/294016-31-bestconfigs-budget-intel-based-gaming
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/294017-31-bestconfigs-budget-based-gaming

EDIT: I also like the idea of having 2 sets of PCs. Maybe charge a premium for i5 750 set ups and get like 5850s for them, so people can play literally any game. And then have lower end PCs, like dual cores with 5670s for the onliners. You could flip all your current 4850s into the lower end PCs and just upgrade the GPU in those i5 machines or something.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been moved from the section CPU & Components to section Systems by Mousemonkey

 

[kenstarr]

Sorry if I forgot to mention but I don't need any o.s. case or keyboard and mouse.

 

[dad43]

Sorry if I forgot to mention but I don't need any o.s. case or keyboard and mouse.

hello dear
i want to know, are you in your net cafe business in phili.. still?
i'm living in malaysia, and have a plan here as same as what you are doing there, then if you are still working , please let me know ,and i can use your kind guides here too.
my email add is, ibajarila@hotmail.com
best regards