What Ed says. As a certified HP Desktop and Laptop technician, I can attest to the beauty of their toolless cases. You can pretty much tear the whole thing down with your bare hands, and it’s clearly identified how to do it (all those green tabs!)
There are all sorts of enterprise HP machines out there for cheap. Great way to get a really nice case and a pretty decent machine. Dan > 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 _______________________________________ 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