Is the HP Z820 Workstation Class Machine…

[Joseph W. bourke]

Duke –

That was just the price I paid. I wanted the fastest clock speed dual Xeons available at the time, and the 48GB of RAM. I run all of the Adobe products, plus 3D Studio Max.

If you look at what’s on *bay, you’ll see that they can be had starting in the $400. range for a dual Xeon machine. The trick is to find a good seller, plus the most RAM you think you’ll need. I say the minimum should be 16 – 24GB. The beauty of this type of buy is that the machine can be upgraded whenever you want, and easily.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Duke Sweden]

Yikes, my head is spinning here, guys. I have a feeling you didn’t watch my retro masterpiece “Blinky & Noodles Go To Woodstock” 😉

I will look into both options, Chris and Joseph’s. As always I’ll report back my final decision.

Thanks AGAIN, guys!

[Duke Sweden]

Hey Joe, quick question. Does the Z800 have HDMI out?

[Joseph W. bourke]

That’s dependent on the graphics card you put in it. The Nvidia Quadro 4000 card in my Z800 has Displayport and DVI outputs, but it’s easy to throw an HDMI adapter on the Displayport output. Of course if you want, you can throw whatever graphics card you want in there, there’s lot’s of room on the motherboard:

https://h20331.https://www2.hp.com/Hpsub/downloads/Optimizing_PCI-Express_on_Z800_3-18-09.pdf

A number of the Nvidia GeForce cards have HDMI ports.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Duke Sweden]

Hey Joe (or any of you guys), I can get this one for $699.00, currently trying to get him down to $685.00. Worth it at either price?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/161745839788?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Duke –

That looks like a good machine, and the processors appear to be a newer model than mine, and are also the fastest Xeon offered in that generation of Z800. One thing I noticed is that I think the seller got the processor speed wrong (by .3Mhz – nothing you’d notice). I would double check with him and make sure that all of the internal housings are included (4 drive sleds, and all of the airflow cowlings – there are two major ones), and that if anything is missing, he will provide them. If his photos are accurate, all the drive sleds and airflow cowlings are there. This is just a double check – when I bought my Z800, there was one drive sled missing, and one cowling didn’t have a proper connector to the chassis. The seller, in my case, made good on it, and quickly.

Here’s a list of the varying specs on that model:

https://h20564.https://www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01709724

You’ve also got room to double your RAM, and you could do that pretty cheaply. There are currently six RAM slots open. But I would see how performance is before jumping into that. I would suggest you go to an SSD drive for your OS, but since the media isn’t provided for Win7, you’d probably have to spring for a license. My current setup has an SSD OS drive, an Apps drive (all installed apps), and two 2TB media drives. I also added an Orico dock in the front of the machine, which allows me to slide in an internal hard drive for client backups. I also have an 8TB Drobo for regular backups. You shouldn’t need any of that stuff off the bat – I didn’t add that stuff until a few months down the road. I’m still adding stuff, and there are lots of inexpensive possibilities available, such as adding a USB 3.0 board (for about 20 bucks or so), since the machine comes with USB 2.0 ports. I haven’t had a speed problem, since my Drobo is connected via FireWire (there are two FW ports, front and back). You might want to ask which power supply is in the machine – there are two options, an 850w and an 1110w. You’d only run into the need for an 1110w PS if you’re going to run multiple high-end Nvidia cards.

Here’s the page for the motherload of HP Z800 documents. Anything you’d ever want to know is there, plus more:

https://h20566.https://www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/public/psi/manualsResults?sp4ts.oid=3718645&ac.admitted=1457894446537.1123376534.199480143

Let me know if you have any questions. Walter Soyka is also a good source of info on the Z800 and later machines, since he owns at least one of them, and is technically way ahead of my knowledge.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Duke Sweden]

Yikes, I don’t think I have any room left in my brain for Walter Soyko! Thanks so much Joe. So, considering what I would use it for, as is it’s got everything I need? That was my main question. It’s not missing any necessary parts as far as you can see? Remember, the one I was bidding on had no hard drives. That’s what I’m talking about. I’ve got spare keyboards and mousii 😉

Assuming everything is as he says it is I can just plug it in and start editing (after installing my software, of course)?

[Duke Sweden]

Hey Joe, the guy accepted my offer of $685.00 plus shipping (45 bucks). Good deal? I sent him a message asking about the sleds and that other stuff. I should hear back from him soon, so I hope you see this in time to get back to me.
Thanks for all your help.

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Duke –

If you’re comfortable with having your apps installed on one drive, you’re good to go. I know that Adobe suggests that you have your cache files on a separate drive from the app, but, that said, you can get away with having it all on one drive. It may not be optimally fast, but I’m sure that with the sheer horsepower and RAM, you’re going to be way ahead of where you are now.

If that photo is the actual machine, it appears that all the drive sleds are there (bottom right internal photo), and the airflow cowlings as well. I think I saw that he had a 90 day warranty on everything, so you should be good to go.

It would be nice if you had a drive for your apps and cache files, and for future reference, B&H sells what they call “used” hard drives, but they’re really just returns. You can get a 500GB internal drive for under 50 bucks. I just bought a 2TB replacement drive “used” for my Drobo, and it’s just like new!

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/801241167-USE/wd_wd5000aakx_500_gb_caviar_blue.html

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Duke Sweden]

Hey Joe, can I use my current computer as a separate hard drive? Or possibly my 500 gig external drive? I did write the guy and he confirmed the sleds were included. He also seems to be a good seller as he has 100% rating, has been with ebay since 1999, and has answered both my messages to him on a Sunday night.

I’m hesitant to pull the trigger. It seems like a great deal but it’s more of a want than a need and I hate having my savings dip below a certain amount. I guess I’ll sleep on it. Anyway, if you could answer my question about using either of those as an alternate second hard drive that would be great.