New PC Time
 

Just thought I'd woohoo about a new PC I'm ordering.

Xeon 4 core 3.6GHz, 2 x 32 GB RAM with room to go to 128 GB total, 1 SSD for OS/apps and two RAID 1 HDDs for files, iGPU plus dual Quadro GPUs (will be able to drive 8 x 4K monitors).

I've bought three PCs in the past few months. Two Thinkpad P1 mobile workstations, now this Thinkstation desktop workstation.

Man they are inexpensive - compared to Macs.

That said, I will be buying a new MacBook soon too.

OMG. What's the damage on this one if I may ask?

Gotta think $4K but I am out of touch with prices.

$1600 with 3 year on-site warranty service.

Inexpensive, I tell you!

a 4 coreZ is the current low end chip from intel in the Z lineup

my i7 has 6 cores and 12 threads and is a generation behind the new chips

My new computer says it has an 8th Gen Intel Core i7+processor 8700.

Don't know how many threads but it hasn't unraveled yet so I guess it's OK.

I can step up to the 6 core Xeon for an extra $300 ish.

The more cores the better I have found. I have an AMD 8 core and when doing video editing and book format changing and grading school papers I can assign a particular number of cores to each program which prevents one such as video editing from using 95% or more of the total CPU power. I found assigning 3 or 4 cores to one program results in little to no reduction in total ability to get work done.

Number of cores is not the whole story.

Xeons = error correcting memory, more stable and far less prone to introducing errors into data. It’s why they are most commonly found in server class systems. They excel at large compute sets.

i7/i9 class can be overclocked for performance improvements and they are more budget friendly. Few consumers are using their PCs for tasks that require Xeon class chips.

It’s less about which architecture is better, it’s more about what kind of data are you working with.

I don't think my usage needs a Xeon, but I wanted to try one just for the heckuvit.

The most demanding thing I can see doing is a 500,000 cell Excel worksheet with live data feeds (prices, volumes) into 10,000 cells and rest of cells recalculating live and running looping macros to trigger alerts.

haha....I'm grinning over poaching the innerds our of my son's upgrade from Santa! Beats the crap outa the 6 yr-old laptop POS that lived in the kitchen, all I had to do was get a box and monitor and I'm only one-year behind!!! Even if the keybord drops an "a" from time to time :):)

I'm very small time compared with you guys. But yesterday I ordered/paid for a HP ProOne G4 16Gb and 512GB SSD to go with my new fiber optic connection. I don't do much other than look at cars and t1ts.

got RAID?

Yeah. I upgraded to SSD for the RAID 1 array.