Dermot Shane wrote:ever looked inside a z800/820/840?
they really are built like jewels, tanklike jewels... server class everything...
so if i start media manageing a feature from client supplied USB2 drives it takes about 3 days, and if it fails at any point, i have to start over from zero... relibality trumps speed on this file
and i'll bet the infratructure most folks who run z800/820/840 have behind the machine is substaintial; NAS, local SAS arrays, conditioned power, mutiple redundant machines, all that good stuff....
i can see a standalone consumer / gameing machine making some sense for non time sensitive, non paying gigs, hobyist, artist and such workflows, no NAS, no external local disk array.. yea, sure.. why not? there's not as much to lose, not as much to fish out of the fire when the machine overheats on a heavy render at 3am, no FedX driver at the door to pick up a master
As I said earlier we are an HP reseller so I have seen what they are like.
I find your arguments without merit, there's no reason why you can't have all that same infrastructure using a modern system, in the end they are both just computers, we have clients who use all that and don't use old HP systems, they want reliability and speed which is what they get even on the cheaper end systems.
The HP systems are no more reliable on transfer from USB 2 drives than any modern motherboard.
There's no reason why you can't attach an external array to the systems either.
As to overheating you obviously have never used a modern system. The modern CPU's are designed to throttle on the off chance you don't have enough cooling in your system, but I've yet to see that happen on any systems I've dealt with, feels like you are grasping at straws with this one. I bench test system leaving the CPU and GPU on full rendering for 48-72 hours and they never overheat nor do they throttle.
The HP system is just as likely to fail at 3AM as any other system, the difference being it's much easier to go round to the local PC store the next morning and buy replacement parts for a modern system and carry on working than one that uses bespoke parts and that have been discontinued for 4 years.
Any halfway decent modern system should be just as reliable if not more so as modern systems use much better components in them than systems from 6 years ago.
As I said earlier, each to their own, but you've yet to give a good reason why buying an old system using 6 year old tech that has SATA and PCI-e controllers that run at around half the modern speed, is no more reliable, and has no warranty is worth it, and being a 'jewel' or a 'tank' isn't a good enough reason to me. any halfway sturdy case with good cable routing is just as good.
I build systems every day using these modern components that you seem to consider for hobbyists etc, and our clients use them for TV shows, adverts, and movies, all of which are time critical and they have no problems with them