HP Z820 2x E5-2680 (8 core each) 128GB RAM - up for auction ending at 5pm! HELP ME decide!!

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This unit is up for sale from a local university and I need to decide by 5pm today (I know, found out a little late). Current price was under $400 so that is good at least. I'm expecting it to go higher.

I need a machine where I can use some of the 40-60 SAS drives I have and get the data off of them, so this machine will allow that. A decent RAID capable SAS card alone is about $300+ so that is a big incentive for looking at this machine.

I currently have an I7 3770K w/ 32GB ram that is showing it's age. I often run 3-6 VM's at a time and I'm thinking that switching to this machine will free up my ability to use those machines as well as do some more intensive video rendering at the same time. I haven't bought a "factory" machine other than used servers in about 20 years, always built mine.

I'd like to get some input on what you think of these "workstations". It seems to have plenty of power and can walk/sprint away from what I'm currently using. So what do you think?

I usually run 4-6 monitors and have a nice 1070TI graphics card but IDK if it will play well with the NVidia Quadro 2000. My monitors are wide screen 1920/1080's so nothing special.

A local university is selling this system
2 x Xeon E5-2680 @ 2.70 GHz
128 GB ECC RAM @ 1600 MHz (4 x32GB)
2 TB Hard Drive
16 DIMM slots (4 used)
NVidia Quadro 2000 Graphics Card

Each processor has 8 cores - 16 threads, 20MB cache 1600Mhz bus, QPI Speed (GT/s) 8.0, Hyperthreading, Intel VPro, Intel Turbo Boost Tech 4,8
2 6Gbps Sata
4 3Gbps Sata
8 6Gb SAS
USB3, 1394A, USB2

2 PCI Express Gen3 x16 slots
1 PCI Express Gen3 x16 slot - Available ONLY when 2nd CPU is installed.
1 PCI Express Gen3 x8 slot - with x16 connector. - Available ONLY when 2nd CPU is installed.
1 PCI Express Gen3 x4 slot - with x8 connector
1 PCI Express Gen2 x4 slot - with x8 connector
1 PCI 32bit/33MHz slot
1 Mechanical-only slot, supporting cards which mount only to the I/O bulkhead and not the motherboard (half-length, full-height)
The PCIe x8 connectors are open ended, allowing a PCIe x16 card to be seated in the slot.

Here is a link to the Specs:
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04111526.pdf?ver=33


From what I have read, this video card isn't the best, there are faster ones available for this system and adding a "tesla" card to work in conjunction of the quadro 2000 supposedly gives about as best performance as possible for least additional pricing.


Any thoughts on this before I decide to bid?
 
My primary thought is you ought to think of "two" hosts. One for VMs (because you need more than usual) and one for gaming. I recently bought a similar host with a reseller warranty. Mine came with 13TB hardware RAID as well, paid almost $2K USD for it. No graphics card of course (since mine was primarily to be used as a hypervisor and staging area (backup) for my Plex. I do like the memory layout in yours (though surprising, because I didn't it could take DIMMs that large).

So... great hypervisor host. If you're into high end media editing, probably well suited for that as well (including somewhat aged card). I'd keep your gaming separate. Just my two cents.
 
My primary thought is you ought to think of "two" hosts. One for VMs (because you need more than usual) and one for gaming. I recently bought a similar host with a reseller warranty. Mine came with 13TB hardware RAID as well, paid almost $2K USD for it. No graphics card of course (since mine was primarily to be used as a hypervisor and staging area (backup) for my Plex. I do like the memory layout in yours (though surprising, because I didn't it could take DIMMs that large).

So... great hypervisor host. If you're into high end media editing, probably well suited for that as well (including somewhat aged card). I'd keep your gaming separate. Just my two cents.


Thanks for the quick reply!
I also have 12 Dell 1950's and 2950's all w/ 32GB ram and quad 2.66 or dual core 3.0's.

The 128GB is EEC btw, which as well as all the ram on the 1950's and 2950's.

I thought I could use my existing 3770K as my standard deskop, maybe one VM (Oh, I run Linux on all machines and then VM Windows, BSD, Linux and Hackintosh).

Well I don't game. I'm looking at getting into video archiving - moving "analogue" video's onto a digital format. I figured that the desktop (and other servers) could be used to rip the analoge in RAW form, then use the Z820 to render them into a managable size with good quality. That way I can spend a little $$ on a better graphics card on the Z820 and use that as that as the workhorse for rendering. Since most of the time is the actual ripping from the original soucre, I can use the 3370 and other servers (IDK if the servers will be useable or not for this).
 
yes... good choice for rendering as well... I think you're good to go. I just figured since you mentioned the 1070 card, that you were in to windows gaming or something. For transcode/CUDA stuff I'd go cheap with a 1050 and the hacks to unlock the number of sessions Linux wise. That way you don't have to worry so much about power stuff.
 
this gives me the idea for a local business. Open a computer center with some gaming systems that are in truth VDI desktops so thin clients with one larger server and charge by the time interval like normal Lan centers do. But ALSO offer a slightly higher rate for users that want to game from home. Due to connection needs and such. Get a burstable internet connection from your provider so you can go up to 1 gig if needed upstream. Get a solid server built out using some NVME storage and a couple M100 or better class cards in it to do the game running.

But also have a quiet room people can use for doing video editing on the same sort of setups. Slightly more per hour because they will actually be consuming more resources.

You could use a Mac MINI with the 10 gb network card in it as your 'workstations' that are offloading the actual deep rendering and scaling to your multi core host on the back end.

I think it might be TOO Nitch market right now... but I wonder just how nitch market it really is.
 
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