[QUOTE=petrw1;351457]255 Km South down the #11

Sorry for not noticing that we are almost neighbors[/QUOTE]

This is why this forum is so great. I have never met anyone in person from Saskatchewan. In fact, I think I could count on one hand the number of times I have heard Saskatchewan come up in conversation or on the news. I don't even think I've ever seen a Saskatchewan license plate (which is amazing, considering that I *have* seen a *Nunavut* plate tooling around down here in the Lower 48).

But, come on the Mersenne Forum, and lo and behold...*two* members from Saskatchewan! :smile:

I didn't need no forum to meet a man from Saskatoon, and a man it was, lemme tell you. At 24, he had 4 kids, all boys. I don't know if he stopped ...it's been 10 years since then. Could already have 14 by now.

[QUOTE=NBtarheel_33;351465]This is why this forum is so great. I have never met anyone in person from Saskatchewan. In fact, I think I could count on one hand the number of times I have heard Saskatchewan come up in conversation or on the news. I don't even think I've ever seen a Saskatchewan license plate (which is amazing, considering that I *have* seen a *Nunavut* plate tooling around down here in the Lower 48).

But, come on the Mersenne Forum, and lo and behold...*two* members from Saskatchewan! :smile:[/QUOTE]

We came to visit in '08 but didn't come by car. We were in Bethesda and Congressional Golf course at the AT&T PGA Golf Tourney

[QUOTE=Fusion_power;351462]Bait n Switch Ewmayer?[/QUOTE]

I consider it initial estimate vs final price - normally prefer to do other things late on Friday evenings than play with various packaging scenarios and materials.

But our official explanation is "achieving democracy is hard", or something.

I drove past Regina once on a 2-day drive from Ann Arbor to climbing country in the Alberta Rockies. It was a bit of an "Oz" moment - hundreds of miles of flat plains and wheatfields in every direction, and suddenly a giant glittering city rises up as if by magic out of the flatness. [Tweren't green, alas, at least not at the time of the day I saw it.]

Oz was only green because the denizens wore green tinted spectacles.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;351413]Back in June George did a cost/benefit analysis and offered me \$150 for the Asus-mobo/SB-cpu combo, but has since noted that a 2nd budget-minded Haswell-based system for him would yield a tad more bang-for-\$[/QUOTE]

This is a good, cheap upgrade for a non-AVX system that has SATA drives. In my case, I'm upgrading a fairly powerful overclocked i7-860. In less than 1.5 years, this \$150 upgrade would provide me with more iterations per \$ spent (assuming \$0.12 per kwh). Upgrading a slower system would breakeven much, much faster.

My alternative Haswell upgrade has a higher upfront cost (\$400), breakeven in just over 1.6 years, but a somewhat longer useful life.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;351419]If I told you it was, would you pretend to believe me?[/QUOTE]
This makes me think that Leon Festinger (with all due respect) "borrowed" the idea of [I]cognitive dissonance[/I] from Orwell's [I]doublethink[/I].

In other words, -- [I]yes[/I].

Sold to petrw1 - will ship Tuesday, as tomorrow is labor day in the US.

[b]Edit:[/b] Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear in my 4sale post - This is a mobo/cpu/heatsink/ram bundle *only* - buyer supplies the atx case, power supply, drive(s), keyboard & monitor. I don't have any of the mobo-associated manuals [as Mike/Xyzzy built the original Asus/SB system, he may have a comment about this], but the onboard boot prom should provide what you need, especially as this mobo does not support OCing-style configurability, i.e. there are no fancy cpu/ram-speed customizabilities supported.

The idea is for purchaser to swap out the guts [or would the heart be the better analogy? or the brain? or do we have a multi-organ transplant?] of an older case system with the new gear. Now the case/PS/drive part of a system are also available quite cheaply, but I am using mine to house my new Haswell gear - and shipping (especially out of US) would be rather more for a full cased system.

Wayne/Petrw1 apparently thought this was the complete original system -

[QUOTE=petrw1]I thought this was for the entire system as pictured on post 1. Might still work. You say ATX case. Would not any full tower case work? Any idea how much power it needs? Can I get windows7 on 35G? I'm guessing the PS and HD from an old P4 are out of the question?[/QUOTE]

Not sure how far the upward compatibility goes here - I believe any tower-style case will work, and any PS of at 300W or more should be fine (you need more only if you add a GPU, in which case >= 600W is better). Not sure about the Windoze bit - I know George often runs Win off a USB stick, so it depends whether you will be using for just-crunching or as a general-purpose system. Can any readers can help Wayne with the Win/HD question?

Arrived today....
 

... stay tuned.

where's Ernest?
 

Does anyone know why I can't PM him lately?

For some reason his username is purple. That implies he has been banned. What craziness is going on?