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If the prices of one of these new are a bit out of your budget, but you still want a relatively powerful workstation, take a look at used machines from a few of
by lucaspiller 9y ago
If the prices of one of these new are a bit out of your budget, but you still want a relatively powerful workstation, take a look at used machines from a few of generations ago.
Last year I picked up a Dell T3600 with a Xeon E5-2670 (V1 - 8C/16T) and 32GB ECC RAM for €400 delivered. It's not completely silent (maybe HP are better in that regard based on comments here?), but it doesn't make much noise - at least compared to what you'd expect from the power it gives.
I now work from home, and having previously primarily used laptops, this thing feels like a beast.
- dis-sys 9y ago> a Xeon E5-2670 (V1 - 8C/16T) and 32GB ECC RAM for €400 delivered. that stuff was $150-200 delivered if you buy from taobao.com. people also need to realize that dual e5-2670v1 has a cinebench score of 2,000, that is just slightly highly than a single ryzen 1800x.
- zokier 9y agoAnd last I checked there isn't a single Ryzen based workstation on the market, something I wouldn't expect to change anytime soon.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lucaspiller 9y agoYes if you want something that needs the fastest CPU you probably don't want this machine, but in that case you are probably willing to spend a lot more. The laptop I upgraded from had a score of 250, so for me it's a big difference. I checked prices for sourcing my own hardware on the same platform, but it would have been a lot more expensive. The problem here in Europe is there is less second hand enterprise hardware available (if I remember correctly, a compatible motherboard alone would have been ~€200, and the RAM was about the same) and importing something from outside Europe means you need to pay customs fees, which in my country adds ~30% to the price.
- lebonapartiste 9y agoIs there anywhere in particular you looked for used workstations, or is it just a matter of just finding the right deal at the right time?
- user5994461 9y agoebay has bazillions of them.
- lucaspiller 9y agoExactly. In Europe, the UK seems to be the biggest market for used enterprise hardware, so take a look at ebay.co.uk. Usually they will ship to the continent for not too much (~£20), and if you have a VAT number you can get that taken off (20%).
- nga911 9y agoLenovo's Thinkstations are even cheaper, the older stuff is pretty much IBM and is pretty good! Not sure about the new stuff but It's competitive.
- muro 9y agoSame here, picked a z440 with a 8 core e5-1680v3 last year: https://hardwareisboring.blogspot.com/2016/06/hp-z440.htm https://hardwareisboring.blogspot.com/2016/06/hp-z440.htm And yes, completely silent. Only hear the GPU (upgraded to 1070gtx) when playing demanding games.
- kungito 9y agoHave you considered connecting to a VM with your laptop? Now that you have the huge thing in your home the latency would be minimal and you can stash it in you garage.
- lucaspiller 9y agoI have it under my desk, it's quiet compared to desktops from a couple of generations ago, but loud compared to modern laptops (i.e. that are usually silent). I like the ability to run dual 4K displays which my laptop can't :)