Recommendations for suitable computer for ME?!

[talksr]

Good morning,

My trusty HP desktop computer is sadly on the way out and also not Windows 11 compatible. It is time for an upgrade - it is about 8 years old and has done well considering it has been on that entire time, only rebooting for updates:).

I need a new powerful workhorse work computer.

I had been looking at the HP Z series and in particular the HP Z2 G8 with i9 processor.

 

The system is used on a daily basis quite heavily and would need four NICs and quite a lot of storage for virtualisation.

 

I have had issues in the past with unreliable DELL hardware and can’t afford to have this system out of action for any amount of time as I look after a number of schools from it.

As I use this system every day, sometimes remotely, I just need it to work and have excellent reliability and warranty, hence my thinking of going for an HP Z.

 

Does anyone else have any experiences recommendations? The only downside as far as I can see is the Z2 G8 only has room for two conventional sized HDDs and one 2.5inch SSD. But I was thinking of getting 2 x 6tb or 2 x8tb HDDs which should give me more than enough for virtualisation etc.

 

Any suggestions or recommendations would be very much appreciated.

[CHiLL]

What's your budget range? Presumably, since you're looking at an i9/workstation range, it's not minimal? Though obviously, the semiconductor industry still hasn't recovered from the pandemic and high demand, so prices are still relatively high in comparison.

 

Do you want the latest CPU models, such as Intel's 12th gen? If you do, I'm wondering if it's worth waiting for AMD's 7000 series later this year (autumn-ish). Both Intel and AMD are making huge strides in performance with their latest architectures, as opposed to the small incremental bumps each generation we've been used to for the past 15 years. Both Intel's 12th gen and AMD's 7000 series will support PCIe 5.0 for graphics and storage, as well as DDR5.

 

Is pre-built your preference, or would you consider building your own? As then you aren't limited to things such as cases and drive bay limits.

[Jamman960]

To be honest it sounds like you should be looking at a couple of machines for what you're doing, one for day to day work and remote management and another for what I assume is a lab environment?

 

I use a mid range laptop for my day to day work and then VM's on our VMware hosts to run other bits/testing etc

[hallb15]

Give @ICTDirect_Dave a shout.

 

This is similar to the spec you mentioned.

Refurbished HP Z6 G4 Workstation with Xeon Gold - ICT Direct

[ICTDirect_Dave]

We can definitely build you an awesome Z-series machine with more cores and memory than you can count!