[BBLISA] local vendors for Intel servers?

[Douglas Alan]

Nick Giannotti <nick.giannotti at gmail.com> wrote:

> Chalk me up as another one who has had bad luck with PCFE: I bought a
> dozen machines from them (I needed Socket 478 boards with an ISA Bus
> on them) and I've had more than 25% of the up and die, due to the
> motherboards conking out.

> I will say that their customer service is good, but their product is,
> from my experience, unreliable.

PC4E is best if you want to specify a system down to the motherboard,
and they'll build it for you.  The system will only be as reliable as
the motherboard you chose, however, so it pays to do some research into
how well-regarded the motherboard in question is.  PC4E is not big
enough, to do their own statistical and engineering analysis of the
failure rates of all the various components they might sell you, though
I'm pretty sure that they will tend to stay away from brands that have
proven to be routinely problematic.

If you want, instead, to purchase a system where the aforementioned
failure rate analysis has been allegedly done, but which offers you many
fewer configuration options, Dell, HP, Sun, Apple etc., seem more like the
places to go.

|>oug