Hey, every one. I decided to upgrade my Home Office Work Station / Computer Lab for 2020. It was definitely time for an upgrade for productivity and down right sanity running some of these newer O.S.’s as bloated as they are. The use cases would be as a DAW(Digital Audio Work Station),DVW(Digital Video Work Station), crypto trading box., along with image editing, etc..
I decided to go with an HP z800 Work Station box for my upgrade path. I know this a 9 year old system but I think it can still hang today in 2020 for what I need done. For under $500. This thing is less then half the price of a HP z840 work station and should be perfectly capable for what I need done for now.
BUILD SPECS:
HP z800
6-Core 3.33GHz Intel Xeon “Westmere” X5680 [6-cores / 12-threads] x2
48 GB DDR 3 Ram
- 1TB mech HD
- Old ass AMD Firepro
I scored a Hp z800 with dual x5680 Cpu’s, 48 GB of Ram, 1TB mechanical Hard Drive, AMD Fire Pro for around $320 on Ebay . Well under $500 for a home office / computer lab upgrade in 2020. I also bought Dual 19″ NEC monitors for $50 with cabling. Sniped a Nividia Tesla M 2075 6GB GPU accelerator card for $30 and a dual monitor stand too.
With the x5680’s 6 core x2 @ 3.4 ghz , as far as i know this is the second fastest processor for this socket. The x5690’s having a much higher premium. With a modern video card and possibly a GPU accelerator [NVIDIA M2075] card this thing should still be a beast for a while to come in 2020.
I got the old Nvidia M2075 just because. i also wanted to play around with GPU acceleration a little before i plunked down some serious coin on something more modern.
These things are built like a tank and mine still had all the shrouding inside. I have a few older 120gb SSD’s I have to dig up that I will most likely use for the boot drive and use the 1 TB mechanical drive for storage. For now though I just installed Windows 10 and Ubuntu Studio in a dual boot configuration with GRUB on the mechanical HD to get this thing up and running.
There are tons of benchmarks in various configurations for this HP Z800. So, I’m just giving my impressions. I might do some actual benchmarks when I get this thing configured how I want it [NIVIDA MAXIMUS BUILD lol]
Ubuntu Studio runs decently fast enough. As I’ve said previously all consumer level OS’s seem to be getting so bloated now though. Thought Ubuntu Studio would boot a little faster, but It’s understandable, though in this case. With the mechanical HD. There are just so many preinstalled software / apps in Ubuntu Studio: for Digital Audio Editing / creation, digital video (DV) editing, image editing (GIMP), 3d modeling (Blender ), etc..
Once initialized and running Ubuntu Studio is decently quick. Again There would be much improvement with a SSD.
Honestly why even use Windows any more?
I do have Windows 10 installed though, as mentioned previously. I do use 3d studio maxx and Maya some times. Also Space Engineers is a pretty cool game. Windows 10 ran well for a minute. I needed to update .net so I did that. Then I was prompted for a restart , which I did. Then half an hour later watching a blue screen with spinning white dots. Windows finally updated itself, I think. Gee, Microsoft I hope people arent actually trying to get work done on Windows anymore.. I’m hoping it’s semi sandboxed as I have it in “airplane mode” now. To not have internet access to endlessly update itself and run my computer hot all night. Also theres no built in WIFI in the Z800 ( Big +) that I know of. So, I can always just firewall it from the internet if I ever (Big Mistake) wanted to let Windows on the internet again.
[Editors Note: So hey, why not use the Tesla M2075 GPU accelerator for one x16 slot and a Quadro 6000 for the other? Turn the thing into a vintage circa 2011 Nvidia Maximus build? That’s down the road though some what and another story all together. I might just get a more modern GPU accelerator like a k40 for cheap in a few. ]
HP Z Home Office / Computer Lab Upgrade 2020 for Under $500 HP Z 800
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