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1. Really ? Build a such computer is really trivial and cheap (the 100$ GTX 650 has 300 CUDA cores whereas the 700$ GTX 780ti has 3000 cores). I don't understa

1. Really ? Build a such computer is really trivial and cheap (the 100$ GTX 650 has 300 CUDA cores whereas the 700$ GTX 780ti has 3000 cores). I don't understand the motivation will be for someone to use a such service instead of building it by himself ...

mjallday 13y ago
It's probably more of a marketing angle. I don't know/care that it's a gtx 650. Just a device that fits my needs. Apple abstracts/demphasises certain details to great effect.
thatthatis 13y ago
Let's say, conservatively, that doing the research to know how to build this, having never built a pc before, takes 20 hours. I bill at 100-160 an hour, so let's take the low end and cut it in half, and say my opportunity cost is $50/hour. The cost of building one of these is (20 * 50) + 700 = 1700. If someone can build one for me at $1000 I'm money ahead. It's easy to forget that knowledge acquisition isnt free when you already poses the knowledge.
- nawitus 13y ago
  Couldn't you Google for a PC which has a graphics card with 300 or more cuda cores?
  - e12e 13y ago
    If you're not following hardware, that google result isn't going to help much (other than maybe giving you an idea of basic cost of such a system). There's lots of ready-made vendors, generally they're all crap (for a certain value of crap). There's a big difference between building a one-off rig, and buying one, working with it for a year or so -- getting your code right -- and the knowing you can get 20 more (updated and/or cheaper) -- that won't have driver issues, heating issues or flaky psus. Sure, a contract can help, but whatever you get "back" in cases of failures are always going to be much less than whatever value you wanted in the first place (eg: the hardware ended up being free, but you weren't able to sequence the genome because of glitches). In short, don't underestimate the cost to acquire the required domain knowledge to do such a task well. One can always hope that the new Mac Pro will be successful enough that there'll be a decent Cuda story there -- but I'm not holding my breath. And after seeing what Apple did vs Final Cut pro and OS X server (esp: hardware) -- I'd be wary of trusting them with any production platform.
    - nawitus 13y ago
      I've read from http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc that low-cost computers are cheaper from ready-made vendors. Not sure if you can buy a cheap ready-made PC with 300 cuda cores, though.
smtddr 13y ago
>>I don't understand the motivation will be for someone to use a such service instead of building it by himself ... Personally, I have no interest in learning how to build computers. I'm not into hardware[1] and have no problem paying a premium for someone else to just put stuff together, make sure it works then send it to me. BTW, wasn't this Alienware's business model? 1. There is one exception though; the videogame console hacking scene.
- e12e 13y ago
  Arguably this is all hardware vendors business model (Dell, HP, Sun (now Oracle) ...). But yes, I guess Alienware, pre-dell had that business model, and you might say Penguin Computing does something similar. I'm sure there are others.
qznc 13y ago
He basically wants an off-the-shelf Litecoin mining rig, I guess. You can find those on Ebay etc.

mjallday 13y ago

It's probably more of a marketing angle. I don't know/care that it's a gtx 650. Just a device that fits my needs. Apple abstracts/demphasises certain details to great effect.

thatthatis 13y ago

Let's say, conservatively, that doing the research to know how to build this, having never built a pc before, takes 20 hours. I bill at 100-160 an hour, so let's take the low end and cut it in half, and say my opportunity cost is $50/hour. The cost of building one of these is (20 * 50) + 700 = 1700. If someone can build one for me at $1000 I'm money ahead. It's easy to forget that knowledge acquisition isnt free when you already poses the knowledge.

nawitus 13y ago
Couldn't you Google for a PC which has a graphics card with 300 or more cuda cores?
- e12e 13y ago
  If you're not following hardware, that google result isn't going to help much (other than maybe giving you an idea of basic cost of such a system). There's lots of ready-made vendors, generally they're all crap (for a certain value of crap). There's a big difference between building a one-off rig, and buying one, working with it for a year or so -- getting your code right -- and the knowing you can get 20 more (updated and/or cheaper) -- that won't have driver issues, heating issues or flaky psus. Sure, a contract can help, but whatever you get "back" in cases of failures are always going to be much less than whatever value you wanted in the first place (eg: the hardware ended up being free, but you weren't able to sequence the genome because of glitches). In short, don't underestimate the cost to acquire the required domain knowledge to do such a task well. One can always hope that the new Mac Pro will be successful enough that there'll be a decent Cuda story there -- but I'm not holding my breath. And after seeing what Apple did vs Final Cut pro and OS X server (esp: hardware) -- I'd be wary of trusting them with any production platform.
  - nawitus 13y ago
    I've read from http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc that low-cost computers are cheaper from ready-made vendors. Not sure if you can buy a cheap ready-made PC with 300 cuda cores, though.

smtddr 13y ago

>>I don't understand the motivation will be for someone to use a such service instead of building it by himself ... Personally, I have no interest in learning how to build computers. I'm not into hardware[1] and have no problem paying a premium for someone else to just put stuff together, make sure it works then send it to me. BTW, wasn't this Alienware's business model? 1. There is one exception though; the videogame console hacking scene.

e12e 13y ago
Arguably this is all hardware vendors business model (Dell, HP, Sun (now Oracle) ...). But yes, I guess Alienware, pre-dell had that business model, and you might say Penguin Computing does something similar. I'm sure there are others.

qznc 13y ago

He basically wants an off-the-shelf Litecoin mining rig, I guess. You can find those on Ebay etc.