[geeks] Multi-Core on the cheap

[Mark Benson]

I ended up going for a HP Z400 with a Xeon L5640. It's a B Grade refurb so
the chassis is likely a bit beaten up but I figure replacement parts
shouldn't be too hard to find and I can invest longer term in those. As
long as the damn thing works reliably it's a start!!

What it gets me is a 6 core (12 thread) CPU with Speedstep and extensive
Virtualization features. It's only 2.26GHz but Turbo Boost will push it up
to 2.80 GHz. It's 60W TDP ticks the boxes for power consumption and it
should be cool and quiet.

Bought it pretty bare bones as I have all the stuff from the current
project, including a SSD, 2x 1TB Disk, SAS card and bay, and optical drive.

Next project is to sling the 5320s in the Mac Pro, while finding some way
to jury rig the RAM boards and rear fan so I don't have to keep stripping
it down, and see if that works with them ;)

Never give up, never surrender!! ;o)

-- 
Mark Benson

http://markbenson.org/blog
http://twitter.com/mdbenson
http://twitter.com/dectecinfo


On 24 Feb 2018 10:29 pm, "Joshua D. Boyd" <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:

> On 2/23/2018 7:53 PM, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>
>> I delayed responding until I was able to confirm I what I have. I have a
>> Dell
>> Precision t3500 and t5500, both fairly maxed out with riser cards as I
>> recall.
>>
>> The T5500 is virtually, but not actually, silent. Mine is stuffed with 36
>> Gigs
>> (?) 9x 4 Gig Dimms IIRC, and 4x SATA HDs. I use the video card that came
>> with
>> mine, and it runs Windows 10 great, including Hyper-V.
>>
>> It is my main desktop since I acquired it a couple years ago from
>> dellrefurbished.com.
>>
>> Very pleased with them, I'd be certain to get one with lots of RAM and I'd
>> locate a populated riser card before committing to the purchase.
>>
>> The T3500 is also nice, but not as expandable as I recall.
>>
>> I have never laid hands on a T7500.
>>
>
> The T7500 I used to have at $prior_job was definitely not virtually
> silent.B  That one didn't have the riser card for the second CPU, and I
> don't know why you would bother with a T7500 unless actually occupying dual
> sockets.
>
> To my recall, T7500s didn't offer any more CPU performance over T5500s,
> but they did offer more RAM (192GB versus 72GB), more PCIe slots, more PSU
> power, integrated SAS controller, and more internal storage (5 drivers
> versus 2 drives). Also, the chassis is much larger.B  One feature in favor
> of the T5500 over the T7500 is that the chassis has a rackmount option.
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