Time to learn all about the processor
its good for light angry birds playing.
i know itsa server and all, but would be nice to have an SD card reader.
Since it’s a Xeon, is the installed RAM ECC or non-ECC?
It supports up to 32GB ECC and ships with 8GB. Since the specs on the HP website say it only supports 16GB of non-ECC, I’d suspect this does have ECC. I could be wrong.
FYI, this is NOT an HP factory refurb, it is a third party. Most likely these are off lease machines that have been cleaned up. They are old enough that they do not include USB 3.0, and are likely not SATA 600. The hard drives will be well used and most likely over 2 years old. I would not recommend one of these to my clients who needed a high reliability machine. They are fine for surfing the web and storing stuff in the cloud.
The performance per dollar on this thing is pretty fantastic. That Xeon CPU is essentially equivalent to an i7-2700 with a slight drop in performance traded for additional reliability. Still a very viable CPU for today.
I can’t offer any info on the Quadro; very few people would ever want/need one since they’re specifically designed for workstation use, and while it would probably be better than integrated graphics, it’s still not going to allow for intense gaming.
2TB of storage and 8GB of RAM is pretty decent for a machine of that price.
All this being said, it is refurbished and getting a little old in terms of computers. Still a fantastic deal, but maybe not the most reliable machine overall unless you replace a few components.
Was looking for something to replace a much older HP tower that can’t handle over 4gb of ram and has a very slow AMD processor. Using it for my OTA media server. As far as this units age, I just retired a few 8600 workstations @ work. They had been in service for many years. I took one of the XEON processors out and put it in the better of the dozen workstations (the mobo’s support 2 cpus), filled up the 8 ram slots (8gb total but with adapter can handle like 128gb). Darn thing is about 50lbs. Keeping it as a “testing unit” in the shop. Runs great.
The 8600 is actually two generations older than this Woot. They seem to be pretty solid machines for business productivity applications, etc, even several years later.
I’d still be curious to know if these units have ECC RAM installed or not. If they do, it means you’re better protected from possible RAM errors that might otherwise cause crashes, which is especially nice if you’re running the system 24x7. On the other hand ECC DIMMs are a little harder to come by if you wanted to upgrade a couple of the modules while keeping two of the originally installed ones, so it’s a trade-off.
Over all, given the choice, I still consider something like this superior to a new desktop in a similar price range due to the better components and build quality, but as mentioned, you’d probably want to do a full test of the hard drive (or better yet, get an SSD to use as a boot/OS disk and use the hard drive for various larger/less important files). With an SSD, a system like this should feel very fast and responsive for most everyday uses.
Of course, back up any important data regularly to another disk, a flash drive, an online service, or DVDs, etc. That’s always important regardless of what type of system you have. Even a brand new hard drive can still fail.
I have an old home-built that the kids have effectively killed with viruses and my ripping them out. Performance sucks and frequent BSODs. For the price, this would be a hella upgrade even if the video card is one of the worst out there (from what I hear). Basically, $300 for a XEON and a 2TB drive with some other things thrown in. I can probably make something better out of it. on the fence at the moment to pull the trigger.
Just heard back. non-ECC
Even so I would agree this is a great deal for the hardware. My brother just had his home PC die. Micro Center has i5 and i7 PCs for close to $500 and up for similar hardware. So it doesn’t have usb 3.0… how ofter do I use it… not often enough to matter. I am in for one maybe 2 if I can swing it…
I didn’t look very carefully but this doesn’t appear to come with the ability to do a system restore/Windows re-install.
At this point may as well just upgrade to Windows 10 and create install media, it’s free anyway (for now), and you should then be able to use that media to reinstall later if desired. Even better if you find a reasonably priced SSD and reinstall to that for faster boot times and a more responsive system overall.
Windows 7 had a good run, but these days, reinstalling it means waiting for 8 trillion updates to install over the course of numerous reboots taking multiple days (unless you sit there and babysit it) before it’s fully up to date.
As a grandma who knows nothing about the “inner workings” I have some questions. I mostly use a Windows 8.1 HP laptop and love and still sometimes use my old Windows 7 Pro Vaio laptop. But I really need to replace my desktop which is Vista. I use it for genealogy and doing books for genealogy. But mostly use the laptops.
I blog and attend and host Webex meetings and use Skype chats also - all for genealogy. I daily use PowerPoint and Word and occasionally use Excel and Publish.
Can I buy this and add my two screens and keyboard or not?
Really disappointing to see such solid specs with no USB 3. Backing up a multi-TB drive over USB 2 feels like using a tape drive on your 2GB machine in the 90s, or backing up your 20MB hard drive to floppy in the 80s. Or backing up your punchcards to fanfold paper, etc.
I just bought a nice HP z800 dual Xeon from ebay, should arrive Thursday. I bought a usb 3.0 card from Amazon for under $20. I am going to throw in a new drive and I am good to go. On my current system, the usb 3.0 was super handy for my drive clones.
For what you get, it seems like a pretty good value. My primary concerns are the last gen PCI slot and USB 2.0. As pointed out, USB 2.0 can be fixed with a cheap PCI card, but the older PCI x16 slot can not be upgraded. The NVS300 graphics seem to be pretty terrible for games (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=NVS+300)… So I would be in for a hard drive (SSD), graphics card, and USB 3.0 at a minimum which would almost double the price of the machine for me.
It was on a previous generation, but the one time I tried a cheap USB 3 PCI card, it crashed my system every time I booted up. Obviously, this isn’t going to happen to everyone every time, so maybe I should reconsider.
Need a new non-work desktop, though I’m pretty happy with the work machine I got – a ThinkServer TS140 from Amazon, with a slightly slower Xeon, less RAM, a joke of a hard drive, and all kinds of USB 3. I never use the stock HDD or RAM anyway, so the bigger it is (which is never big enough or fast enough, even on the mid-priced models), the more goes to waste. To be fair, when you’re buying a whole system at this price point, anything you get beyond a good processor and motherboard is gravy.