Adesola Martins, ICT Coordinator at a private secondary school in Port Harcourt, reached out to Sephora Systems with a specific brief: equip a new 30-seat computer lab for secondary school students learning Microsoft Office, programming basics (Scratch, Python), and web design. Budget was fixed; reliability was the top priority.
The Requirements
Thirty identical workstations, a teacher's station with projection capability, a managed network, and a UPS solution for each workstation. Budget per seat was strict, with the total for hardware, software, networking, and UPS deployment agreed upfront.
The Build Decision
For educational workstations where the workloads are light, Sephora Systems recommended a no-GPU configuration to reduce cost, heat, and failure points:
- Intel Core i3-13100 (4-core, integrated graphics)
- 16GB DDR4
- 512GB NVMe SSD
- mATX case with strong airflow for warm classroom environment
- 1000VA AVR UPS per machine
Lessons from Deployment
Deploying 30 identical machines simultaneously revealed the importance of a master image. Sephora Systems prepared a ghost image with Windows 11, Office, Python 3, VS Code, and the school's required software — deployment took 4 hours for all 30 seats rather than the 30+ hours of individual setup.
The one lesson learned: classroom ambient temperatures peaked at 36°C without air conditioning. Three machines that had marginal cooling configs showed elevated temps in monitoring. All were immediately serviced and thermal paste reapplied with better paste. Now all machines run within spec even in peak heat.
Eighteen Months Later
The school has seen zero hardware failures in 18 months of daily student use. The only maintenance performed has been routine dust cleaning every 6 months. The lab director reports: "The kids actually look forward to computer class now."