2 weeks ago I finally bought a workstation to do some crazy renderings and make a play station. I was initially planning to build a system and started with ordering an AMD A12-9800 CPU1. However, I then realized building a PC going to be expensive.
I decided to buy a complete solution–like a desktop. On eBay, there are hundreds of 5-10 years old computers selling under $500 price range. I also looked at Apple Mac but because of the branding and the operating system, I couldn’t find great deals.
Many of my friends know that I have love-hate releationship with
Lenovo! I also worked with Dell workstations and HP
workstations/servers. However, I couldn’t find myself into buying a
Dell workstation even tough I already managed 1 in the office. I didn’t
like their BIOS or driver/update delivery method. HP BIOS/driver
updates was always “looks easy but actually hard”, so I ordered this,
ThinkStation S30, beauty.
The machine came with
- Intel Xeon E5 2609
- 4x 4 GB DDR3 ECC RAM
- Nvidia Quadro 400
- 610W Gold Power Supplier
Of course, you first ask yourself how much would this setup be and where is the harddrive. I only paid $126 (of course +10% tax) with free shipping and I also ordered 1 TB Seagate Barracuda, thermal paste (because the machine is 7 years old), Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 470.
I tried to run the system with K400 for a few days but can’t handle normal games like CS: GO, League of Legends but was OK in Blender3D. The interesting anecdote I’d like to share is that the device is hotter than hell. It can easily reach to 70°C.
I don’t like to say, but you should also try this 7-year old machine. It still wants to run 24-hour render on it! Worth to mention that I bought machine type 05692. This means I have limited CPU options and plan to have a 8 core Xeon E5-2670. It’s just $40 range on eBay and, funnily enough, I can sell the old one in the same range.