We're mothballing any and all xw8400s and xw8600s from work, the 8600 is still vaugely on our list of supported systems but not for long. Consumer grade is garbage, workstation grade is great. HP's 3 year onsite support for their systems seals the deal, I can't imagine a professional boxing up his machine and making an appointment with the genius, but they do... -Curt
From: Ed Booher <edboo...@gmail.com> To: Curt Raymond <curtlud...@yahoo.com>; Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com> Sent: Friday, May 6, 2016 8:24 AM Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT - built a PC from scratch recently? This is like the system I call "The Beast", a XW8400. Dual quad-core Xeon, 16 GB RAM, and the *case* my Lord that thing is massive. The only problem I've got with this system is the PCI-E is a 1.0 standard, and isn't fully "forward compatible" with the new standard. (That came out almost immediately in a PCI-E 1.1 update, apparently) So new gaming video cards have quirks in the system. But for straight line computing, the XW8400 is insane. The XW8400 and XW8600 differ by NICs, mine has one, the XW8600 has two on board. And mine uses the 5300 series Xeons while the 8600 uses the 5400 series I absolutely love HP Workstation toolless cases. I have four of the XW4600 systems. The ATX board is on a mainboard caddy. Two clips and the entire thing pulls out. Drop a new mainboard on the caddy, place it back in the case, brand new computer. The case is ATX compliant too, so replacing the power supply is just as easy. As a "full disclosure" type of thing, I am an Apple shareholder, and love OS X. Have a couple Macs in the house including a Mac Pro. The old school Pro case was really nice, but fairly proprietary as far as ease of upgrades are concerned. So the list has seen me talk about Macs too, but I can't get enough HPs, collect them like Kaleb collects broken Benz. However, that said, the HP consumer gear is *not* the same. Not the same quality, not the same grade of steel, not the same toolless features. I guess what I'm trying to say, is if you are going to look toward a new computing model, look to an HP Workstation. Whether older, XW Series or newer Z Series, the things are just insane. Every single person that ever complains about the prices of a new Mac Pro being astronomical and a new PC being Kia money has never seen the new spec HP Workstations. There is a *reason* they cost more, and it isn't always the name plate. Since I'm this deep in the pool anyway, just played around with the configuration tool for a brand new HP Z840 Workstation. Straight shoot, without even ticking all the boxes, Xeon E5 22 Core, 32 GB RAM, 6TB Spinning platters, AMD W2100, $11,117.00. Shoot, that's walkin' round money. Now I'm just being silly, the point is, Workstation grade gear is good stuff, that was very expensive, finding it from an auction or systems reseller for pennies on the dollar can see you net a *nice* system with bang for the buck for nearly nothing. Kind of like a solid, well maintained Mercedes, yeah? EdB. EdB On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 4:09 PM, Curt Raymond via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: Raspberry Pi 3? Depends on what you want really. I just got an HP xw8600 for Angie's office. With 10GB of RAM its pretty sweet with Windows 7 or even 10. Its the same machine we've got at home. Ex-video production machine was top of the line in 2009.The replacement for it was the Z800, the single processor version was the Z400, any would be an excellent choice for home use. The Z series are really quiet... -Curt From: OK Don via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> To: Mercedes Discussion List <Mercedes@okiebenz.com> Cc: OK Don <okd...@gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, May 5, 2016 2:47 PM Subject: [MBZ] OT - built a PC from scratch recently? My 8 year old HP is now spontaeously turning it's self off. Diagnostics said that the memory failed the test, so I bought new Kingston DIMMs and installed them. It's still doing the same thing, so I'm thinking the mother board has a bad chip or something. I'm thinking I'd rather build a new one from scratch to avoid all the bloatware that comes iwth a new PC. Any recommendations for hardware these days? I haven't bought such since mid 2000's. -- OK Don *“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”* – Mark Twain "There are three kinds of men: The ones that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves." WILL ROGERS, *The Manly Wisdom of Will Rogers* 2013 F150, 18 mpg 2012 Passat TDI DSG, 44 mpg 1957 C182A, 12 mpg - but at 150 mph! _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com -- "Das beste oder nichts." - Gottlieb Daimler _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com