Matrix (standard)

Specifications:

To insure this build would have greater life expectancy on campus we purchased, within budget, some real horse power. This will also insure upgradability and eventual Vista readiness.
Motherboard: ASUS M2NPV-VM Mother Board
GeForce 6150+nForce 430 HT Nvidia chipset, PCI-E x16, SATA, USB , Firewire (on board)
CPU: AMD 64x2 4600 processor running at 2.0Ghz (dual core - AM2 Socket)
RAM: 2 GB Life Time Memory PC5300 RAM
Hard Drive: 80 GB Western Digital
Optical Drive: LiteOn 16x DVD-R / CDRW Combo Drive

Matrix -GT

The GT is a more robust model of the Matrix to better suit the needs of the TV Studio and Animation Lab. The addition of an upgraded video card, more RAM and a second large hard drive for storage, sets the GT apart from the standard build.
VIDEO: Quadro FX-1400 PCI-E video card with 128MB video RAM - (TV Studio)
  Quadro FX-1500 PCI-E video card with 256MB video RAM - (Animation Lab)
RAM: 4 GB Life Time Memory PC5300 RAM
Hard Drive: 80 GB Western Digital (system)
  500 GB Western Digital (Storage)

Additional Information:

The build process was cut short due to delays in ordering. However, this year's builds were completed in just over 3 weeks. Due to the implementation of new procedures, the total build time was decreased. We worked out a deal ahead of time with the vendor supplying the mid-tower cases to install the power supplies before delivery. Since they had to un-box the cases to install the PSUs, we asked them to deliver the cases without boxes. No boxes would reduce our man hours by reducing the un-box and breakdown/recycle/trash time. No boxes also took some of the "GREEN" factor away from us, and put it back on the vendor. This seemed to work out OK for us. Problems incurred by this decision were;

  1. The vendor fell behind in delivering the cases with PSUs so we had to ask for delivery of 100 cases and PSUs. Then we installed the PSUs ourselves. Note: The hardware team built the systems very fast. The vendor just could not keep up.
  2. Due to communication and delivery errors about 136 cases were delivered in boxes. However, campus-wide announcements were sent out via email and most of the boxes were taken by other faculty and staff.
Issues that delayed the build process were:
  1. The delay in getting a PO for parts shortened the build window.
  2. 17 of the ASUS MOBOs were dead out of the box. So this delayed initial build time because we had to swap in another board and then we had to RMA, receive back and build the remainder of the computers.
  3. The GT model difficulties lied in cable tying and making the system look nice since it has a see thru side.
  4. We also had a delay in receiving the GT video cards and Hard Drives.
Features that helped speed up the build process were:
  1. Screw-less insertion of drives and peripheral cards.
  2. PSUs installed by vendor.
  3. No boxes for the most part.
  4. 2 of the techs populated 400 of the MOBOs with memory while waiting for the cases to be received.
  5. While populating the MOBOs with RAM, the techs also sorted out the accessories in the box for use during the builds and also made extra parts clean up at the end of the builds take no time at all.