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So after building my new 2500k, I've began to feel the itch behind having slow secondary systems here in my home office to scan customers computers for viruses, ect. SOOOOO Of course I was thinking about the possibility of building a system based on an inexpensive core i3 to get the job done. My thoughts on it is I can pick up on a core i3 for right around $100, a motherboard for really inexpensive with some of the deals around the internet for another $100 or so, slap a random HDD I've got in it, Windows 7 and say... 8gigs of ram. Combine this with USB 3.0 and a USB 3.0 IOSafe 2tb and I should be able to backup most customers systems a hell of a lot faster than I've previously done. I could also scan their drives out of their system at this rate without performance decreases (like I have by using usb 2.0 right now), no I don't want to us eSata.

I'm wanting a second opinion from the Gerbils about whether an i3 is a good choice, my reasoning is lower power consumption, less heat, 2 cores but has HT so 4 threads (should help) and enough cache for the simple single 1 job that the machine will be doing. Any thoughts on this idea? Should be easy for me to keep this build WELL under 500 bucks. I'm considering using the motherboard tray that came with my Lian Li PC-60 as a "permnent" test bench platform. I mean I'd gladly sport an MSI open air platform IF THEY OFFERED IT FOR SALE TO CONSUMERS.......<<<<<< *Very jealous of you Scott*

Again, this system will scan Viruses on systems, I will hold tech software/tools and installs to keep it seperate from my personal system, it will also provide a single entry point to my 2tb usb 3.0 (fireproof/waterproof) backup drive where I keep Acronis images for my customers.

How are scanning your customers' PCs? Over the ethernet? With the hard drive directly plugged into the virus-cleaner machine?

Either way, faster hardware probably won't help much here (though you didn't say what you're currently running). The reason being you're going to be bottle-necked mainly by the speed of the customer's drive which, dollars to donuts, probably are slow laptop hard drives.

Save your money and invest in something else, I say. The only hardware that may help you here is more RAM, or a USB 3.0 add-on card.

You can probably ignore what I said if you image the customer's drive and then run an anti-virus scan on a faster drive, though I imagine that isn't much faster than just scanning directly when all is said and done. I guess if you're going to do it anyway, you might as well. Regardless, I think an i3 is overkill. Check on ebay for a C2D or Athlon X2 setup with PCI-E and SATA II if you're current systems are very old.

Mostly running on single or dual core socket 939 systems, DDR 400 :|. I would most definitely benefit from the speed increase for scans. What I generally do is make a backup of a customers system as is with the drive out in an external cradle. I do this prior to making ANY changes because if for some crazy reason me getting rid of a virus off their system or something goes wrong, I've got all of their data. Hardware I can produce in a worst case scenario, data I cannot. I've never had the need for this sort of disaster recovery, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Takes me all of but 5 minutes unattended to do this and it covers my butt.

I would like to start scanning their drive for virus using Avast via something like a boot time scan. I could do it as a removable drive in windows, but anytime you can cut a live OS out of the mix, it will help prevent a virus from having the chance to run or do its thing. I'd be running something like DeepFreeze on the actual windows PC. The benefit to having something like an i3 is that if I need to backup multiple drives like I often do, I can handle making multiple backups/transfers without worry of it slowing down the system tremendously. That extra memory throughput and the extra cores/threads will just allow me to do so much more and quicker. Plus I can run more stuff, faster.

Core i3-2120 (On Sale)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115077
$15 off brings it to $112.99

Looking at it, there are a lot of H61 motherboards in the $60 range that may compliment this well, however most of them don't appear to have USB 3.0, which I may be better off paying the little extra for a better board that also has 3.0 instead of just doing an addin card.

$70 ASRock H61M/U3S3
$90 Intel BOXDH67GDB3
$90 Intel BOXDH67BLB3

Welch wrote:

I'm considering using the motherboard tray that came with my Lian Li PC-60 as a "permnent" test bench platform. I mean I'd gladly sport an MSI open air platform IF THEY OFFERED IT FOR SALE TO CONSUMERS.......<<<<<< *Very jealous of you Scott*

There are alternates:

http://www.cyberguys.com/product-detail ... uct-search

http://www.katerno.com/detail.php?s=267734

I've used the HSPC open air platforms before, they are alright, but I'm not fond of the plastic screws that they use for addon card slots. And they are pretty basic for the 130-150+ that they want, hell you can get a full on mid-high end gaming case for that. I'd almost prefer to have 3 shelves, bottom for PSU, HDD, ect, middle for the motherboard and top for things like hard drive cradles, ect, would be a decent tall one I guess at that rate.

and from the looks of it the Intel BOXDH67GDB3 is the same exact as the other one you list, but it includes a firewire on the back and a firewire I/O internal port, as well as Display port.... thats it right? Otherwise they look to be identical boards.

The ASRock is the cheapest LGA1155 motherboard in stock at Newegg that includes USB3. The Intel motherboards are the cheapest with USB3 and eSATA.

The ASRocks at the bottom of the barrel also have a LOT of numerous reports of DOA and failures. I can handle a few people stating that, but the % of 1 out of 5's and the info they all talk about correspond to one another.

I did find this one... for $69.99... Only downside for my purposes is no legacy PCI for testing older peripherals.... hmmm. Otherwise its got all of the other things to go along with it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128539

If you're afraid of buying a motherboard from a second-tier manufacturer, maybe you'd like this one, instead.
$125 Asus P8Z68-M Pro

Asus' on-line tech support has been frustratingly unresponsive in the past, but when Intel's defective Cougar Point (P67/H67/H61) platform controller hub disaster hit a year ago, Asus really stepped up. Asus replaced my motherboard at no charge, shipped the replacement in advance of the return, paid overnight shipping both ways, extended the warranty on the new board and gave me a set of earphones as a gift.

Wow.... ya, I like Asus products, but for a test bench I'm not sure I'd want to pay that much more. I'm alright with Gigabyte for this purpose, just not with ASRock still... something about them I just can't get over to trusting them.