On Wednesday, March 09, 2011 10:16:34 am Brunner, Brian T. wrote: > This would be far cheaper than the time spent troubleshooting the > running (sometimes hanging) system. Let me interject here, that from a budgeting standpoint 'cheaper' has to be interpreted in the context of which budget the costs are coming out of. New hardware is capex, and thus would come out of the capital budget, and admin time is opex, and thus would come out of the operating budget. There may be sufficient funds in the operating budget to pay an admin $x,000 but the funds in the capital budget may be insufficient to buy a server costing $y,000, where y=x. And if this is an educational institution, and there are grants involved, it may be the reverse situation. So 'cheaper' only has meaning when the costs are coming out of the same budget. So, yes, while it's easy for a single-budget entity to make this decision, it's not so easy when you have multiple budgets involved with different spending parameters and different funding entities. > Starting with RAM and Power Supply is not random ... They're "The Usual > Suspects". This is a very true statement. Heat and airflow are two others.