Yeah Bryan. Keep up with the potatoe reviews. We still use the HP Z230 PC's in the office. Good workstation. You could use your one for VR too. Cheers, Mon from Brisbane
In my area we have been seeing alot of the HP Prodesk 400 G3 MT's with the 6th gen intels going for $50 to $60 USD.I picked up one recently with the I3 6100 and 8 gigs of ddr 4 for $40 USD. I threw in an SSD and an RX550 for my Step Daughter to use for playing the Sims.
Love this channel, so humble you talk about things people can actually afford. Can't stand UA-camrs building 10 000 dollar builds as if viewers can afford such builds. Your channel actually helps viewers not just showing off ridiculous builds.
Haswell is an amazing platform. Bought my 4770K in my main system brand new years ago. Overclocking only gives a marginal improvement, but these chips are so strong as is. Runs easy with a 1070 and sits about 60 FPS at 3440x1440 - save for the most demanding titles. I've been able to find a few of these i7's and Xeons for under $50 and get them in killer budget systems with RX580s for under $175/ea all in - sent most of them to family and friends. Heavily debating on an upgrade with 4th gen Ryzen coming soon, but 7+ years on the same chip in 4 different GPU configurations is a testament to how great this platform is.
Worked for a vendor of these in the past with several different clients, including medical and construction. We would drop in a Quartto card for use with things like CAD or reading Xrays. Great machines and built like a tank. Like what you did with it. Great vid.
Thanks! I have Z420 with E5-1650 (600w PSU 2x6 pin) and Z400 with X5670 (475w with 1x 6 pin) ! Always wondered if the PSU in Z200s were good enough. I use molex to 6-pin and then 2x6 pin to 1x8 pin adapters to power the GDPU... Love it!! XEON INSIDE!
I recently picked up a SFF Optiplex for a family member and was tickled when I found out about the in-built speaker. Real 90's blast from the past. Also solved a problem because they had no speakers ready.
A few weeks ago I got an HP Z420 with a Xeon E5 1603, 16GB of ram (4x4gb), and a FirePro V3900 on eBay for $52 US including shipping. Not a bad deal if I do say so myself. I stuck a 240gb Adata ssd ($25 amazon), a 1tb and a 2tb hdd (found at thrift store $10 each) , and an R9 270 (pulled from an old rig from thrift store $20) all in it. Very happy the performance I got for the price but plan to upgrade the cpu soon and further upgrade the gpu in the future.
Great deal. I too got a great deal on a company decommissioned Dell T5600 (basically it was free), based on SandyBridge CPU architecture. These OEM workstations are not optimal for overclocking, and with a dual system, they are also locked at the Intel CPU level. Unless you have a motherboard (VRM) and BIOS that can handle overclocking, the locked E5-26XX's with 8+ cores are IMO more interesting. The E5-2687W, 2689, and 2690 all have decent turbo's. The E5-2689 is not listed on ark.intel because it was an OEM special/custom CPU. Seems to be undervalued versus the 2690. I upgraded to dual E5-2689's which can all core turbo to 3.3Ghz. Plenty enough for my needs. This system can handle GTX 970 OC and 1080P med to hi settings without issue.
@@youriardon8006 Thanks for the tip. I knew about that and yes it does have a 2013 boot block date. I even updated to the latest BIOS version as well. Now I just need to make a decision on whether to get to the 1620 V2 or spend more cash and get the 1650 V2. I'm leaning more toward spending the extra cash to get the 1650 V2. 😁
I've worked on workstations for years and I can honestly say the difference between the quality of a PC at the same time is Chalk and Cheese. They always have the best processors, the best (certified) graphics cards, proper ECC memory, Completely over engineered cooling and the very fastest hard drives available. They are built to deliver 100% performance for 100% of the time and do it for years. The purpose of a workstation is to do the heavy lifting of computing tasks like cad and video editing and even Finite element analysis. Really brutal workloads where the CPU and memory and disk will be maxed out for sometimes days at a time. And do that in the fastest time possible in the current technology. Money no object. They are built to take that load. As games machines they are typically exceptional even 10 years after release with a GPU swap out and passable without. The Nvidia Quadro cars are as capable as the similar gaming cards of the same era but they tend to have more conservative drivers and also the ram is configured differently. They have a ton of space for complex models. Tons and Tons but less for textures so they can be a bit stuttery in games with high textures. Best thing to do is to swap out the graphics card and put a new one in. You're gonna have to try hard to bottleneck 2 Xeons with 8 cores each in an XW8400. they run at 3.4ghz which is respectable. And it's a ten year old computer. Some games have compatibility issues which is why after 10 years of loyal service I'm retiring my son's HP XW8400 Dual Xeon 3.4ghz with 32mb of ECC ram in favour of an I7 3770K with 16mb. I'm hoping to reuse the XW8400 case. Not sure if it will be compatible but it's a project. HP workstations are the absolute Bomb. I originally worked with old HP-UX machines and they were awesome too... Just the best quality and clearly made by engineers with no care for the bottom line only reliability. Props to them. Luv and Peace.
Totally agree. Bought a HP Z240 SFF 4+ years ago. It's run perfectly since. The K1200 video card is starting to get hot (when 0-1% in task manager) and make noise, but I think that's just a dust issue as I've never had the back off since I bought it.
GreenPCGamers have a great channel with info and how to's when turning common old workstations into gaming PCs. Great info on upgrades too. I like finding good deals on the hp z400 with the w3680 6 core at 3.30Ghz. It's pretty cheap and common
I actually have one of these with the 4770 that old work was gonna donate. Paired it with an RX580 and a new power supply, it worked well for a year but I just moved on to a used Ryzen 3600 system, still with the RX580, and finding the cpu was really bottlenecking that card in a lot of ways. There were some other quality of life issues with the z230, namely there are only two USB 3 ports on the backside and the unit lacks Bluetooth. That said I’ll be keeping mine to build into a NAS and it is a great value option to start with, assuming one can get a graphics card at a decent price as well.
I rewatched this video and finally got myself motivated to working on my HPZ 230 and made some upgrades. It now has the HP Turbo PCIE card with a hard to find Samsung SM 951 AHCI M.2 and an I7-4790 that I took out of an Elite 800 G1 SFF. 32GB of ram and taking the OE 400W PSU into consideration instead of hassling with a new ATX PSU, I went with a reasonably priced lower powered EVGA GTX 1060 and purchased some games that I totally suck at playing at the moment lol. Now I'm on to the HPZ 620 with an older GTX 770 card which is a power hog that requires 2 power cables but the 620"s 800W PSU should handle it. It was fun and I learned alot from this video, thanks.
Thanks for showing us the way of "The potato hunter." We students will also hone thy skillz, and nay we will get thy best potatoes Or should we search for the elusive... ultimate potato....
As someone who has worked on and owned a few z230's... They have their quirks. 1. Hard to get these things to boot with more than 16GB of ram. 2. They are picky with what sorts of ram they will run at the full 1600mhz speed. 3. Upgrading the PSU IS possible BUT the original one is a non-standard size so mounting can be difficult and HP uses a proprietary connector for power on the motherboard. (You can buy adapters on Amazon and Ebay). 4. The BIOS updates for Spectre & MD as mentioned take a bite out of the performance. I have found it hard to roll back the bios on many systems. 5. Limited fan headers = you will only be able to throw in 1 more fan unless you plan on putting in a fan controller into one of the 5.25" bays. Aside from that, they are a decent bang for your buck!
Are the Z230s 100% compatible with Win XP? I have a Creative Titanium X-Fi lying around, I'd like to use it for some EAX retro goodness. And this seems an excellent multi-boot system (although quite expensive in my region).
@@JonnyHatSwag i could get a 7600 with 64gb ram, 3x2tb hdd, and a radeon graphics card for 400$, but now with the corona situation going on, i had to pass on it.
@@xbyxenos3200 yes, a used radeon graphics card, togheter with the computer, but not installed, since the owner told me the card has some problems, like flikkering screen, or no output at all.
I got a HP z230 free from a convience store, and it was used for security cameras footage storing. After 2 months I have done alot of upgrades, like bought a Gtx 1070 ti for it. It is a gaming beast
Watching this on my z230! Awesome computer, gold star ebay sell was nice enough to sell me a 16gb ram, i5-4570 for $150 free shipping. 75$ dollars later the used rx 570 is running great in it! :)
I picked up a HP z230 for $170. I cant believe how well it works. It has a zeon processor, 16 gb of ram, a 500 gb sata drive, a 256 SSD and quadro graphics card. I plan to add a 2tb WD blue hard drive which I bought for $20. When graphic cards come down I will upgrade that. I have been watching your videos and that has helped me find good deals. The best deals are the deals you find for free.
The z line of hp is my favorite used pc. I have personally had like three and sold probbaly 10 of them. I had a z800 as a dual x5650 render server and a z400 as a file server and then evually had to sell the z800 because its power supply died so sad. The z400 are great when you buy a power supply adapter and can put any psu in it plus the mobo replacment is like 40 bucks and supports those 6 core xeons
Although these OEM workstations do not lend themselves to RGB bling very well, you might want to consider "sporterizing" them with some carbon vinyl (with self-adhesive) designed for car exteriors. I used some glossy black 3D carbon pattern on the exterior side panel and it really made the box look cool. Plenty of choice on eBay for this decor.Just a thought.
When I upgraded from my 775 rig, I got a T3610 for $200. It has a 675w PSU, Ivy Bridge E5 1650v2 6 core CPU and 32 GB if ram. It's been a great PC for me the past year and a half.
These HP Z series workstations are tremendous value for money. I picked up 10 of them for $200 about a month ago. A couple of them were scrappers but the rest are all solid systems with good power supplies that are ready for a graphics card and ready to sell on for a good price.
I have an HP Z800 and a Z820 and i got these for $400 each with 2 6-core and 2 8 core xeons respectively, i even got them with a quadro fx5800...anyway, the point being that the HP Z800 and Z820 are really good systems. I think the Z800 is better tho because the Z820's are still too high end in price to be worth it.
I may have misunderstood, but how can a Haswell Xeon be released in 2010? Anyway, I built a HP Z400 (the version with 6 ram slots), straight off eBay, It came with the X5650 6 core 12 thread, and looks identical to that Z230 I bought a nice XFX RX 580 8GB 500GB MX500 Crucial SSD 4 extra GB of ECC DDR3 (2x2GB) for a total of 12GB (6 x 2GB) extra fan Rosewill 650w PSU (didn't actually NEED to do this) Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste $375 USD total, all parts to my door. It plays absolutely everything at over 60 FPS at 1080p, and most games will run 1440p 60+ FPS, and those 1440p games will usually Vsync at 60 FPS full 4k if I tweak a few settings down from Ultra. I've been very impressed with how powerful this PC is when compared to an Xbox One X, or what $375 would've built with newer parts a year ago.
@@brianv3ntura I ran the stock PSU by hacking the cables for the 6 pin and bringing power from another connector to make it an 8 pin.. When it would really need extra power, it would crash the computer lol.. I figured I did it wrong, but it could've been hitting a power limit. My X5650 isn't overclocked or anything, and the RX 580 pulls somewhere between 150 and 180 watts at it's peak, in my setup at 1430mhz core/2100mhz memory. Edit: I forgot, I could avoid computer crashes if I lowered the power limit of the RX 580 on the slider to -50%.. That's kind of how I knew I needed a new PSU.
I like using Dell Precisions for budget gaming rigs. You can usually get them pretty cheap on the used market if you know where to look. I got two for $100 in a municipal asset liquidation auction. All I had to add was Ram, Storage, and a GPU. Since they have Xeons, I was able to get a 64GB kit of ECC DDR3 for like $80 which brought both machines up to 32GB. Storage was just some SSDs I had on-hand. The GPU is a RX-570 that I got for $50, only thing I had to do was get a 2x6 to 8-Pin adapter.
i put a low profile 1050 ti, gigabyte model in the z230 sff 4770 version i just bought today. i went to buy a dell 9020 and the seller pulled it for me as i drove there and he told me that the ones he had were apparently the uber tiny ones without an option for a graphic card of any type and he showed me this one and i was able to fit my 1050ti in it. I do have to close the graphic tab while putting on the sidepanel to lock it down but works fine
I just picked up a HP ProDesk 400 G1 mid-tower with an i5-4590, 4GB RAM, and 250GB HDD off eBay for only $68 USD (including tax & shipping). Spent $35-40 USD on a used 650w Seasonic PSU, $90 for a used Biostar RX580 4GB, $25 for a 240GB SSD, and put in 16GB of DDR3 and a 1TB hard drive pulled from my previous gaming rig. This little tower is quiet, yet runs fast. It even a mono speaker like the Z230! Only complaints I have are that it has no USB 3.0 ports in the back (only 2 in the front), and the GPU blocked 2 of the SATA ports, so I had to unplug the DVD drive.
You should keep an eye open for a Z420. The E5-Xeons in there support cheap Registered ECC RAM (while E3 Xeons don't). Plus it's Quad Channel RAM (8 DIMM slots). At least in Germany, prices are going down right now. Models with 6-Core 12-Thread E5-1650 are now 185€ including 1 year guarantee and shipping. HP M.2 NVME adaptors are available as well (booting not supported unless messing with the UEFI).
This is why I love this channel content like this not content with the most expensive stuff day in day out there hasn't been a video I haven't liked 100% 5he best channel out there
Been running a Z220 on an i7 3770 with a 1650 for years. Great price / performance and solid as a rock. I swear by these z-series workstations. Had the Z210 with a 2600 in it for years and sold that privately for what I paid for it - never had a single issue with it. Just ordered a Z240 and can't wait to put it through its paces. Xeon with 32GB this time.
Hardly any troubles using my e-cycled Precision T5500 and it was so cheap I could get a rx5700-xt and 1440p 144hz monitor instead of just a new desktop. Thanks for the great tips!
I have 3 different Dell Precision workstations now. My main rig being a T5610 with dual Xeon E5-2650 V2s and 128 GB of ECC RAM with a Zotac 1070 Amp Extreme.
I picked one up from a scrap yard for $10. Came with 32gb of ram, 2 quad core 5350 Xeon (I think), a quadro 4000 2gb GPU, 2 1tb hdd, and a 128gb SSD. Absolute steal. Just needed a new psu which I grabbed for $35 and threw my rx550 to replace the quadro. Deal hunting success
I bought one of these with a i7 4770, 2tb hdd, 128gb boot ssd and 16gb of ram for £180 and it was a steal brilliant value and handles a gtx 1070 : ). Having tool-free installation means it was easy to install a decent gpu too!!
Nice , informative videos. HP Z series are amazing. And yes, as you mentioned the BIOS is locked very well. I really wish to find some unlocked BIOS for the Z230 or even Z400 and Z440. Unlocked CPUs are available for each LGA sockets in these Z workstations. However, OC is not that easy. I could OC the Z440 but it is too complicated. Another option maybe the UEFI BIOS editing/hacking.
I have a z230 with an i7 at work for emails, printing construction drawings. Always thought it would be better suited at home with a fat graphic card and some steam games!
I'm running 4 potatoes to do the work of a single system. Primary use for them are security system monitor/recorder (4 camera), Plex server, local media server, and general purpose system (photo edit, video edit mostly). The market around here isn't very good for used systems (Southern Ontario, Canada). There are a lot of them, but there are also a lot of people willing to over pay for used systems, so a good deal is hard to come by. Instead, I'm thinking I'm just going to bite the bullet and build my first brand new, top spec system in nearly 25 years. That's going to be very interesting because the last time I had a top spec system, the word "Pentium" was in it, and the 486 DX series was still common
I can get a Dell PowerEdge with 8 *vertical* caddies in the front, a Xeon 6 cores and 24 gigs of RAM for a tiny bit over 600 bucks. This basically can do triple duty as a server, gaming and workstation rig, has dual PSU if you're hosting your own website or cloud on it (so that you can hook up a non-interruptible PSU to the second one for smooth running even if the electricity is down and you're away!!!) and you can even add a dual 10gb ethernet card for 160 bucks. Those older workstation/tower-server builds are just way too OP for me too handle :O Just thinking at all I could do... run my own cloud, run my own website, dedicated server for jamming, dedicated Minecraft servers, storing all my movies and games and streaming them all around the house at full-speed...!!!!
I have a z230 and I went to upgrade my graphics card to a zotac 1660 super and my pc couldn’t run it. It told me I needed to connect the Pcie cables. The pin connector on the psu was 6 pin and the graphics card needed 8. So I upgraded my psu to a 650w full modular Thermaltake tough power GF1 80+ gold and I can’t get my pc to power on at all... and idea what the issue might be?
This was my first pc, had a i7 4770, 8gb of ram and a gtx 770, it has a 1060 now but I use it as a streaming pc and a gaming rig for when my friends come over(not atm lol).
I bought 3 months ago an HP Elite 7500 microtower Z75 formosa motherboard, (was £40) and paired it with an i5 3570k (£25) and managed to even overclock the cpu without any a hassle.The bios was indeed a little short compared to other manufracturers, but it had all the necessary options.
Thanks for posting the video I picked up a z240 with the i7 6700 and I just installed 32 GB of ram :D. I have a question for you, do you think I would have to get a new power supply if I were to get the nvidia 1660 ti/super gpu? any help or pointing me in the right direction would help out a lot. Have a good one!
i am watching this on a Xeon Z420 / E5-1680v2 8 cores-12threads@ 4.4 Ghz , Noctua NH-UDX i4 CPU air cooler, custom made air cooling with dedicated fan controller (extra intake fan, VRM fan and rear Noctua fans), 32 Gb quad channel ECC RAM, 1Tb Samsung EVO SSD , GTX 1070 8Gb VRAM . I do everything on it successfully , browsing, video editing and games . I do play with it on 4k only with a 60Hz Vsync just fine any of modern games . Was no cheap to put it together , I mean the 32Gb DDR3 ECC RAM was not cheap , the CPU is definitely the best for X79 platform and even used it's not cheap . But in the end I've got quite a good RAW power here for the money and a solid build. (some are saying you can have the same going on the AMD road , yes , possible ...) .
I have been looking for a good Z series in my area since February at a nice price. If I had found one at about $200 (USD) I would have purchased it the same day. One of these would be my main PC for the next 10 years.
I bought an old HP Z 440 on eBay Australia for $230. It's running NTLite windows 11. E5 1620 V3, 32 gb ddr4 and a K 2200 GPU. Comes with a 525 watt psu and a 870 Samsung SSD. I only use it for basic video editing, watching UA-cam. It's quite fast for an older PC.
You can run GTX 1080ti or RTX 2080ti if you upgrade PSU to an aftermarket PSU of higher capacity. But only issue is ATX PSU have 24 pin MB connector while HP MB connector is 18 pin. You can use a adapter like www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074G12LT5/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B074G12LT5&linkCode=as2&tag=greenpcgamers-20&linkId=77b9185463f18af66f258a43a46b0b1f Couple it with Xeon E3-1280 V3 to be bought from Ali Express. . Add max RAM to 32 GB. Add a 500 GB SSD. Since it has lots of PCIE expansion slot , you can go with NVME SSD instead of SATA SSD via $10 PCIE-NVME adapter and use DUET on RIFND to boot Windows from NVME-SSD. But then you wont be able to call it a POTATO.
As for PSU testers... I should probably grab one. I just had an old freebie Cooler Master 800W PSU kill the HDD I connected to it. One of the chips on the HDD's PCB actually caught fire! The system didn't shut down, so it's only when I smelled it that I turned it off.
Same here, Z420 for 50€, 64GB Ram for 39€, 6c/12t 3.2Ghz, my old GTX 1070, 500gb samsung SSD (for free from dumbster), 3TB HDD. and a wlan card for 39€, and i have gaming monster for this price :)
I got a z220 workstation with an i3-3220 free from my old job when they upgraded. Its not bad at all once you stick an SSD and a bit more RAM in there. It makes a good tertiary build for a place in the house where I just want to use the internet and some occasional youtube.
@@Delamorth Oh, nothing special. I found some cheap DDR3 1666 memory at a 2nd hand computer store cheap and just threw it in. No point in spending alot on a system like this.
I have a z230 w/i7 4790 and my daughter has a Dell 7010 w/i7 3770. Great value for money! 4790, 8gb ddr3 1600, 500gb hdd, 240 gb ssd, Zotac GTX 1060 6gb PAID $200 USD. The 3770 I won in a contest from OzTalksHW!
Hi, thanks for this vidéo. I use HP 8200 i3-2100 with 8 gb RAM 128 SSD will I see a big difference. I have problem on multi-tasking with web browser and Office ...
Hey mate I live in the UK and I found a Z240 with i7-6700 and 1TB nvme for £160. I have an old Gigabyte GTX960 that I want to put inside. It has 2x6pin connector. I have only one 6pin connector from the PSU and I can see only one molex, rest are sata and the molex adaptors that I can find on amazon are dual molex to 6pin. Is there a molex and sata to 6pin adaptor? What should I do? I heard sata (even dual sata) to 6pin is not recommended. Any advice? Thanks!
Yall want more potato hunter? I can have started honing the skill of hunting thy potato.
Potatoes are good. We will have a problem if we have a potato famine.
In italy on ebay the Z230 starts at 230€+ =(
YES POTAYTOEEEEES
Yeah Bryan. Keep up with the potatoe reviews.
We still use the HP Z230 PC's in the office. Good workstation. You could use your one for VR too.
Cheers, Mon from Brisbane
YES? POTATOES? Used parts hunting cape is on.
In my area we have been seeing alot of the HP Prodesk 400 G3 MT's with the 6th gen intels going for $50 to $60 USD.I picked up one recently with the I3 6100 and 8 gigs of ddr 4 for $40 USD. I threw in an SSD and an RX550 for my Step Daughter to use for playing the Sims.
Ddr 4 ?
For sims
8:15 "*You still get really good gpu on this fps...*"
I agree, it's a beautiful mistake ;)
beautiful mistake indeed
@@Brandon-uy1uv indeed
Love this channel, so humble you talk about things people can actually afford. Can't stand UA-camrs building 10 000 dollar builds as if viewers can afford such builds. Your channel actually helps viewers not just showing off ridiculous builds.
Haswell is an amazing platform. Bought my 4770K in my main system brand new years ago. Overclocking only gives a marginal improvement, but these chips are so strong as is. Runs easy with a 1070 and sits about 60 FPS at 3440x1440 - save for the most demanding titles.
I've been able to find a few of these i7's and Xeons for under $50 and get them in killer budget systems with RX580s for under $175/ea all in - sent most of them to family and friends.
Heavily debating on an upgrade with 4th gen Ryzen coming soon, but 7+ years on the same chip in 4 different GPU configurations is a testament to how great this platform is.
Worked for a vendor of these in the past with several different clients, including medical and construction. We would drop in a Quartto card for use with things like CAD or reading Xrays. Great machines and built like a tank. Like what you did with it. Great vid.
Thanks! I have Z420 with E5-1650 (600w PSU 2x6 pin) and Z400 with X5670 (475w with 1x 6 pin) ! Always wondered if the PSU in Z200s were good enough. I use molex to 6-pin and then 2x6 pin to 1x8 pin adapters to power the GDPU... Love it!! XEON INSIDE!
I am ready for some Tech Yes Earlysquad.
This man is getting me through the red death.
Salute!
In regards to your first question, yes that is exactly what I have on my Fractal Design Define R6, blue LED in all.
My Define R5 Blackout Edition has white power LED and blue HDD LED
@@Pasi123 I think I'd prefer the white led, and no hdd led
you're the ultimate tech recycle king! love everything you do, keep it up! it will definitely help people not to throw away computers.
Thanks for keeping on posting your content during this difficult times appreciate your hard work !! Stay safe!!!
I once said "I don't want to get any socks on my leaves." My family still reminds me. Your gaff is just as beautiful.
I recently picked up a SFF Optiplex for a family member and was tickled when I found out about the in-built speaker. Real 90's blast from the past. Also solved a problem because they had no speakers ready.
A few weeks ago I got an HP Z420 with a Xeon E5 1603, 16GB of ram (4x4gb), and a FirePro V3900 on eBay for $52 US including shipping. Not a bad deal if I do say so myself. I stuck a 240gb Adata ssd ($25 amazon), a 1tb and a 2tb hdd (found at thrift store $10 each) , and an R9 270 (pulled from an old rig from thrift store $20) all in it. Very happy the performance I got for the price but plan to upgrade the cpu soon and further upgrade the gpu in the future.
Awesome buy 👌
Great deal!
Great deal. I too got a great deal on a company decommissioned Dell T5600 (basically it was free), based on SandyBridge CPU architecture. These OEM workstations are not optimal for overclocking, and with a dual system, they are also locked at the Intel CPU level. Unless you have a motherboard (VRM) and BIOS that can handle overclocking, the locked E5-26XX's with 8+ cores are IMO more interesting. The E5-2687W, 2689, and 2690 all have decent turbo's. The E5-2689 is not listed on ark.intel because it was an OEM special/custom CPU. Seems to be undervalued versus the 2690.
I upgraded to dual E5-2689's which can all core turbo to 3.3Ghz. Plenty enough for my needs. This system can handle GTX 970 OC and 1080P med to hi settings without issue.
Look in the Bios if it has a 2013 bootblock, if yes, you can easily put in a very cheap E5 1620 V2 in it which is just a I7-3770 with ECC support.
@@youriardon8006 Thanks for the tip. I knew about that and yes it does have a 2013 boot block date. I even updated to the latest BIOS version as well. Now I just need to make a decision on whether to get to the 1620 V2 or spend more cash and get the 1650 V2. I'm leaning more toward spending the extra cash to get the 1650 V2. 😁
I have a small form-factor one of these and it's great! Thanks for sharing info about it.
5:08 No. My RGB PC does not potato as well as that potato!
No way!
tech y+es traitor back bitch
how to us rgb in z230
plz foto
I've worked on workstations for years and I can honestly say the difference between the quality of a PC at the same time is Chalk and Cheese. They always have the best processors, the best (certified) graphics cards, proper ECC memory, Completely over engineered cooling and the very fastest hard drives available. They are built to deliver 100% performance for 100% of the time and do it for years.
The purpose of a workstation is to do the heavy lifting of computing tasks like cad and video editing and even Finite element analysis.
Really brutal workloads where the CPU and memory and disk will be maxed out for sometimes days at a time. And do that in the fastest time possible in the current technology. Money no object.
They are built to take that load.
As games machines they are typically exceptional even 10 years after release with a GPU swap out and passable without. The Nvidia Quadro cars are as capable as the similar gaming cards of the same era but they tend to have more conservative drivers and also the ram is configured differently. They have a ton of space for complex models.
Tons and Tons but less for textures so they can be a bit stuttery in games with high textures.
Best thing to do is to swap out the graphics card and put a new one in.
You're gonna have to try hard to bottleneck 2 Xeons with 8 cores each in an XW8400. they run at 3.4ghz which is respectable.
And it's a ten year old computer.
Some games have compatibility issues which is why after 10 years of loyal service I'm retiring my son's HP XW8400 Dual Xeon 3.4ghz with 32mb of ECC ram in favour of an I7 3770K with 16mb.
I'm hoping to reuse the XW8400 case. Not sure if it will be compatible but it's a project.
HP workstations are the absolute Bomb.
I originally worked with old HP-UX machines and they were awesome too...
Just the best quality and clearly made by engineers with no care for the bottom line only reliability.
Props to them.
Luv and Peace.
Totally agree. Bought a HP Z240 SFF 4+ years ago. It's run perfectly since. The K1200 video card is starting to get hot (when 0-1% in task manager) and make noise, but I think that's just a dust issue as I've never had the back off since I bought it.
GreenPCGamers have a great channel with info and how to's when turning common old workstations into gaming PCs. Great info on upgrades too. I like finding good deals on the hp z400 with the w3680 6 core at 3.30Ghz. It's pretty cheap and common
I actually have one of these with the 4770 that old work was gonna donate. Paired it with an RX580 and a new power supply, it worked well for a year but I just moved on to a used Ryzen 3600 system, still with the RX580, and finding the cpu was really bottlenecking that card in a lot of ways. There were some other quality of life issues with the z230, namely there are only two USB 3 ports on the backside and the unit lacks Bluetooth. That said I’ll be keeping mine to build into a NAS and it is a great value option to start with, assuming one can get a graphics card at a decent price as well.
I rewatched this video and finally got myself motivated to working on my HPZ 230 and made some upgrades. It now has the HP Turbo PCIE card with a hard to find Samsung SM 951 AHCI M.2 and an I7-4790 that I took out of an Elite 800 G1 SFF. 32GB of ram and taking the OE 400W PSU into consideration instead of hassling with a new ATX PSU, I went with a reasonably priced lower powered EVGA GTX 1060 and purchased some games that I totally suck at playing at the moment lol. Now I'm on to the HPZ 620 with an older GTX 770 card which is a power hog that requires 2 power cables but the 620"s 800W PSU should handle it. It was fun and I learned alot from this video, thanks.
I just bought this machine with core i5 4th gen with 16 gb ddr3 for editing videos for my UA-cam channel. Thank you for this video
Another great vid and welcome distraction, you Guys are a godsend in the current climate, thanks form the U of K!
"Beautiful mistake" that's what my parents called me
My parents just call me a "mistake"
OOF
Well thats certainly better than "Condom Split"
Thanks for showing us the way of "The potato hunter." We students will also hone thy skillz, and nay we will get thy best potatoes Or should we search for the elusive... ultimate potato....
I knew it was a Xeon again.
As someone who has worked on and owned a few z230's... They have their quirks. 1. Hard to get these things to boot with more than 16GB of ram. 2. They are picky with what sorts of ram they will run at the full 1600mhz speed. 3. Upgrading the PSU IS possible BUT the original one is a non-standard size so mounting can be difficult and HP uses a proprietary connector for power on the motherboard. (You can buy adapters on Amazon and Ebay). 4. The BIOS updates for Spectre & MD as mentioned take a bite out of the performance. I have found it hard to roll back the bios on many systems. 5. Limited fan headers = you will only be able to throw in 1 more fan unless you plan on putting in a fan controller into one of the 5.25" bays. Aside from that, they are a decent bang for your buck!
Are the Z230s 100% compatible with Win XP? I have a Creative Titanium X-Fi lying around, I'd like to use it for some EAX retro goodness. And this seems an excellent multi-boot system (although quite expensive in my region).
@@НиколаГеоргиев-ш2б It should work, but driver compatibility may lead to some issues.
There's a website, can't remember which one, they custom build those adapter cables, I ordered one for my Z400
Currently working on maxing out an HP Compaq Elite 8100 SFF, love pushing these little prebuilts to their absolute limits!
I should steal one from school 😂
Cyka blyat
Best time for stealing is now when everyone is wearing masks.
You should TOTALLY TRY MODDING THE CASE!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEAASSSEEE! WE NEED IT!!!!
I have a Z230 workstation and I love it great budget friendly pc
do you use a graphic card with it? does it work fine?
Imagine finding a Xeon server for less than 10$
Got a Z600 for 37€😂🔥
@@JonnyHatSwag i could get a 7600 with 64gb ram, 3x2tb hdd, and a radeon graphics card for 400$, but now with the corona situation going on, i had to pass on it.
@@arnorobinwerkman gpu?
I just for a z600 for $25. For a total of $85 I have a Gtx 960,24gb ram and dual xeon x5667s.
@@xbyxenos3200 yes, a used radeon graphics card, togheter with the computer, but not installed, since the owner told me the card has some problems, like flikkering screen, or no output at all.
I got a HP z230 free from a convience store, and it was used for security cameras footage storing. After 2 months I have done alot of upgrades, like bought a Gtx 1070 ti for it. It is a gaming beast
Watching this on my z230! Awesome computer, gold star ebay sell was nice enough to sell me a 16gb ram, i5-4570 for $150 free shipping. 75$ dollars later the used rx 570 is running great in it! :)
Got lots of them at work (Z200 to Z230) And to my knowledge NONE of them had issue with reliability ! Great base components and unkillable !
And the most important - "The Xeon Inside" sticker !!!!
These HP workstations are awesome, I have a Z820 and I love it. I need to put something better than a GTX 770 though 🤔
Yay Marco and tyc the best duo on yt ever
Yay!
I picked up a HP z230 for $170. I cant believe how well it works. It has a zeon processor, 16 gb of ram, a 500 gb sata drive, a 256 SSD and quadro graphics card. I plan to add a 2tb WD blue hard drive which I bought for $20. When graphic cards come down I will upgrade that. I have been watching your videos and that has helped me find good deals. The best deals are the deals you find for free.
The z line of hp is my favorite used pc. I have personally had like three and sold probbaly 10 of them. I had a z800 as a dual x5650 render server and a z400 as a file server and then evually had to sell the z800 because its power supply died so sad. The z400 are great when you buy a power supply adapter and can put any psu in it plus the mobo replacment is like 40 bucks and supports those 6 core xeons
I should grab one of those! Will be interesting to compare it to my Z400 and Dell T3500
z230, z420, and z440 are the most bang for the buck right now. Dell t5810, socket 2011-3 like the z440, can occasionally be found dirt cheap too.
Although these OEM workstations do not lend themselves to RGB bling very well, you might want to consider "sporterizing" them with some carbon vinyl (with self-adhesive) designed for car exteriors. I used some glossy black 3D carbon pattern on the exterior side panel and it really made the box look cool. Plenty of choice on eBay for this decor.Just a thought.
plzz picture for this rgb
Thanks hope you're staying safe see you on the flip side.
love the hp z's. son has a z200 and i upgraded my z400 to z600 dual xeons..
When I upgraded from my 775 rig, I got a T3610 for $200. It has a 675w PSU, Ivy Bridge E5 1650v2 6 core CPU and 32 GB if ram. It's been a great PC for me the past year and a half.
These HP Z series workstations are tremendous value for money. I picked up 10 of them for $200 about a month ago. A couple of them were scrappers but the rest are all solid systems with good power supplies that are ready for a graphics card and ready to sell on for a good price.
"Really good GPU, on this FPS". I LOVE IT! That should be on a Tech YES City T-Shirt, LOL! TYC MERCH BABY! Get your BANK ON BROTHER, you've earned it.
I have an HP Z800 and a Z820 and i got these for $400 each with 2 6-core and 2 8 core xeons respectively, i even got them with a quadro fx5800...anyway, the point being that the HP Z800 and Z820 are really good systems. I think the Z800 is better tho because the Z820's are still too high end in price to be worth it.
I may have misunderstood, but how can a Haswell Xeon be released in 2010?
Anyway, I built a HP Z400 (the version with 6 ram slots), straight off eBay,
It came with the X5650 6 core 12 thread, and looks identical to that Z230
I bought a nice XFX RX 580 8GB
500GB MX500 Crucial SSD
4 extra GB of ECC DDR3 (2x2GB) for a total of 12GB (6 x 2GB)
extra fan
Rosewill 650w PSU (didn't actually NEED to do this)
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste
$375 USD total, all parts to my door.
It plays absolutely everything at over 60 FPS at 1080p, and most games will run 1440p 60+ FPS, and those 1440p games will usually Vsync at 60 FPS full 4k if I tweak a few settings down from Ultra.
I've been very impressed with how powerful this PC is when compared to an Xbox One X, or what $375 would've built with newer parts a year ago.
Wouldnt the stock psu be too unsafe to run a rx 580 in it anyways? It's rated at abt 475 watts
@@brianv3ntura I ran the stock PSU by hacking the cables for the 6 pin and bringing power from another connector to make it an 8 pin..
When it would really need extra power, it would crash the computer lol..
I figured I did it wrong, but it could've been hitting a power limit. My X5650 isn't overclocked or anything, and the RX 580 pulls somewhere between 150 and 180 watts at it's peak, in my setup at 1430mhz core/2100mhz memory.
Edit: I forgot, I could avoid computer crashes if I lowered the power limit of the RX 580 on the slider to -50%..
That's kind of how I knew I needed a new PSU.
The equivalent Dell T5500 has a much more potent PSU.
I like using Dell Precisions for budget gaming rigs. You can usually get them pretty cheap on the used market if you know where to look. I got two for $100 in a municipal asset liquidation auction. All I had to add was Ram, Storage, and a GPU. Since they have Xeons, I was able to get a 64GB kit of ECC DDR3 for like $80 which brought both machines up to 32GB. Storage was just some SSDs I had on-hand. The GPU is a RX-570 that I got for $50, only thing I had to do was get a 2x6 to 8-Pin adapter.
i put a low profile 1050 ti, gigabyte model in the z230 sff 4770 version i just bought today. i went to buy a dell 9020 and the seller pulled it for me as i drove there and he told me that the ones he had were apparently the uber tiny ones without an option for a graphic card of any type and he showed me this one and i was able to fit my 1050ti in it. I do have to close the graphic tab while putting on the sidepanel to lock it down but works fine
i think i got a decent deal, 275 usd, had the i7 4770, 16gig ram, 500gig ssd had a nividia 310 in it low profile i replaced with the 1050ti
I just picked up a HP ProDesk 400 G1 mid-tower with an i5-4590, 4GB RAM, and 250GB HDD off eBay for only $68 USD (including tax & shipping). Spent $35-40 USD on a used 650w Seasonic PSU, $90 for a used Biostar RX580 4GB, $25 for a 240GB SSD, and put in 16GB of DDR3 and a 1TB hard drive pulled from my previous gaming rig. This little tower is quiet, yet runs fast. It even a mono speaker like the Z230! Only complaints I have are that it has no USB 3.0 ports in the back (only 2 in the front), and the GPU blocked 2 of the SATA ports, so I had to unplug the DVD drive.
You should keep an eye open for a Z420. The E5-Xeons in there support cheap Registered ECC RAM (while E3 Xeons don't). Plus it's Quad Channel RAM (8 DIMM slots). At least in Germany, prices are going down right now. Models with 6-Core 12-Thread E5-1650 are now 185€ including 1 year guarantee and shipping. HP M.2 NVME adaptors are available as well (booting not supported unless messing with the UEFI).
Can the Z230 with the 400W stock PSU really run the RTX 2060 Super (175W)?
Tech Yes City - this is something you have to answer!
Very nice video 😀
HP Z230 with i7 4790, RAM 4x8GB 1600Mhz, nVidia Quadro K5000 here 😉 ... she still runs 😝
Speaking of nice hps, im still running mine from 2010! Planning on upgrading cpu soon though, this athon just aint cutting it anymore.
This is why I love this channel content like this not content with the most expensive stuff day in day out there hasn't been a video I haven't liked 100% 5he best channel out there
Got lucky on some parts and put together a dell t3500 Xeon x5650 and a Rx570 8gb from another buyer for a total of $206 working great so far
Been running a Z220 on an i7 3770 with a 1650 for years. Great price / performance and solid as a rock. I swear by these z-series workstations. Had the Z210 with a 2600 in it for years and sold that privately for what I paid for it - never had a single issue with it. Just ordered a Z240 and can't wait to put it through its paces. Xeon with 32GB this time.
hey can we upgrade higher graphic card in the z230
Hardly any troubles using my e-cycled Precision T5500 and it was so cheap I could get a rx5700-xt and 1440p 144hz monitor instead of just a new desktop. Thanks for the great tips!
T3500 is also worth checking.
Cheap 6/12 CPU support
-- I have a T3500 works great then bought my son a T5500 both rock in performance
"Shadow of the Tomb Ramifier" ... um...whut?
Tech Yes City: Another Xeon video.
Xeon: Ah, sh*t. Here we go again.
I have 3 different Dell Precision workstations now. My main rig being a T5610 with dual Xeon E5-2650 V2s and 128 GB of ECC RAM with a Zotac 1070 Amp Extreme.
The SFF version of the z230 is VERY good and I've used one before
Wish theyre available here. Need these kinds of OEM stuff.
i am using xeon e3 1245 v2 it performs similer to i7 3770.Great performance on budget.
Yeah These Workstations Have Rock Solid Reliability And reat 80 Plus Gold PSU's, In Between I Am Also Using HP Z220 With i5 3470
My favorite tech UA-camr
I picked one up from a scrap yard for $10. Came with 32gb of ram, 2 quad core 5350 Xeon (I think), a quadro 4000 2gb GPU, 2 1tb hdd, and a 128gb SSD. Absolute steal. Just needed a new psu which I grabbed for $35 and threw my rx550 to replace the quadro. Deal hunting success
Stay safe out there Bryan!
What do you do with all of the spare boxers, power splitters, screws, etc that you have leftover with flipping hardware?
I bought one of these with a i7 4770, 2tb hdd, 128gb boot ssd and 16gb of ram for £180 and it was a steal brilliant value and handles a gtx 1070 : ). Having tool-free installation means it was easy to install a decent gpu too!!
Did you have to change the power supply or the power supply cables for the 1070?
@@christ77 no I left it how it was
@@Sickofsoupp But isn't a 1070 a 8 pin?
@@christ77 used an adapte
@@Sickofsoupp 6 pin to 8 pin?
I vinyl wrap cases like this to get a better look without breaking the budget!!
Nice , informative videos. HP Z series are amazing. And yes, as you mentioned the BIOS is locked very well. I really wish to find some unlocked BIOS for the Z230 or even Z400 and Z440. Unlocked CPUs are available for each LGA sockets in these Z workstations. However, OC is not that easy. I could OC the Z440 but it is too complicated. Another option maybe the UEFI BIOS editing/hacking.
I have a z230 with an i7 at work for emails, printing construction drawings. Always thought it would be better suited at home with a fat graphic card and some steam games!
I'm running 4 potatoes to do the work of a single system. Primary use for them are security system monitor/recorder (4 camera), Plex server, local media server, and general purpose system (photo edit, video edit mostly). The market around here isn't very good for used systems (Southern Ontario, Canada). There are a lot of them, but there are also a lot of people willing to over pay for used systems, so a good deal is hard to come by. Instead, I'm thinking I'm just going to bite the bullet and build my first brand new, top spec system in nearly 25 years. That's going to be very interesting because the last time I had a top spec system, the word "Pentium" was in it, and the 486 DX series was still common
I can get a Dell PowerEdge with 8 *vertical* caddies in the front, a Xeon 6 cores and 24 gigs of RAM for a tiny bit over 600 bucks. This basically can do triple duty as a server, gaming and workstation rig, has dual PSU if you're hosting your own website or cloud on it (so that you can hook up a non-interruptible PSU to the second one for smooth running even if the electricity is down and you're away!!!) and you can even add a dual 10gb ethernet card for 160 bucks. Those older workstation/tower-server builds are just way too OP for me too handle :O Just thinking at all I could do... run my own cloud, run my own website, dedicated server for jamming, dedicated Minecraft servers, storing all my movies and games and streaming them all around the house at full-speed...!!!!
Thank bro , i had one of PC the game working excellent
I just picked up one of these for 280 bucks. Will upgrade the psu and graphics card and have a next gen system for 5 years for under a 1000
I have a z230 and I went to upgrade my graphics card to a zotac 1660 super and my pc couldn’t run it. It told me I needed to connect the Pcie cables. The pin connector on the psu was 6 pin and the graphics card needed 8. So I upgraded my psu to a 650w full modular Thermaltake tough power GF1 80+ gold and I can’t get my pc to power on at all... and idea what the issue might be?
What did you discover?
This was my first pc, had a i7 4770, 8gb of ram and a gtx 770, it has a 1060 now but I use it as a streaming pc and a gaming rig for when my friends come over(not atm lol).
I bought 3 months ago an HP Elite 7500 microtower Z75 formosa motherboard, (was £40) and paired it with an i5 3570k (£25) and managed to even overclock the cpu without any a hassle.The bios was indeed a little short compared to other manufracturers, but it had all the necessary options.
Thanks for posting the video I picked up a z240 with the i7 6700 and I just installed 32 GB of ram :D. I have a question for you, do you think I would have to get a new power supply if I were to get the nvidia 1660 ti/super gpu? any help or pointing me in the right direction would help out a lot. Have a good one!
i am watching this on a Xeon Z420 / E5-1680v2 8 cores-12threads@ 4.4 Ghz , Noctua NH-UDX i4 CPU air cooler, custom made air cooling with dedicated fan controller (extra intake fan, VRM fan and rear Noctua fans), 32 Gb quad channel ECC RAM, 1Tb Samsung EVO SSD , GTX 1070 8Gb VRAM . I do everything on it successfully , browsing, video editing and games . I do play with it on 4k only with a 60Hz Vsync just fine any of modern games . Was no cheap to put it together , I mean the 32Gb DDR3 ECC RAM was not cheap , the CPU is definitely the best for X79 platform and even used it's not cheap . But in the end I've got quite a good RAW power here for the money and a solid build. (some are saying you can have the same going on the AMD road , yes , possible ...) .
Had E3 1275 V3 coupled with R9 Fury. Ran almost every game at 1080p high-ultra settings @ 60fps no issue. Still a great CPU in 2020.
bro im trying to run an rx480 on this system, it restarts everytime I start a game
I've upgraded this Workstation with a 1660 Super OC. Can I now switch to a 1440P 27" monitor? Will I be able to play games at high settings?
I have been looking for a good Z series in my area since February at a nice price. If I had found one at about $200 (USD) I would have purchased it the same day. One of these would be my main PC for the next 10 years.
I bought an old HP Z 440 on eBay Australia for $230. It's running NTLite windows 11. E5 1620 V3, 32 gb ddr4 and a K 2200 GPU. Comes with a 525 watt psu and a 870 Samsung SSD. I only use it for basic video editing, watching UA-cam. It's quite fast for an older PC.
My PC has a glass side panel and RGB. How'd you know?
The Z8xx workstations also decent, I a number of z800 running 24/7 for the past 6-7 years they are very reliable.
I have the z600, with the highest spec xeons, 32gb ddr3 and a amd 380x 4gb. Flys through everything
This was is my secondary PC, E3-1270v3 32gb of eec r5500XT dual boot Mac OS and windows 10
You can run GTX 1080ti or RTX 2080ti if you upgrade PSU to an aftermarket PSU of higher capacity. But only issue is ATX PSU have 24 pin MB connector while HP MB connector is 18 pin. You can use a adapter like www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074G12LT5/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B074G12LT5&linkCode=as2&tag=greenpcgamers-20&linkId=77b9185463f18af66f258a43a46b0b1f Couple it with Xeon E3-1280 V3 to be bought from Ali Express. . Add max RAM to 32 GB. Add a 500 GB SSD. Since it has lots of PCIE expansion slot , you can go with NVME SSD instead of SATA SSD via $10 PCIE-NVME adapter and use DUET on RIFND to boot Windows from NVME-SSD. But then you wont be able to call it a POTATO.
As for PSU testers... I should probably grab one. I just had an old freebie Cooler Master 800W PSU kill the HDD I connected to it.
One of the chips on the HDD's PCB actually caught fire! The system didn't shut down, so it's only when I smelled it that I turned it off.
Same here, Z420 for 50€, 64GB Ram for 39€, 6c/12t 3.2Ghz, my old GTX 1070, 500gb samsung SSD (for free from dumbster), 3TB HDD. and a wlan card for 39€, and i have gaming monster for this price :)
What kind of memory and how much of it did you put in it? Cheers! Always great content;
I got a z220 workstation with an i3-3220 free from my old job when they upgraded. Its not bad at all once you stick an SSD and a bit more RAM in there. It makes a good tertiary build for a place in the house where I just want to use the internet and some occasional youtube.
What ram did you upgrade with?
@@Delamorth Oh, nothing special. I found some cheap DDR3 1666 memory at a 2nd hand computer store cheap and just threw it in. No point in spending alot on a system like this.
@@SuperNorstShow I was thinking of buying 2x8 gb ddr 1600 corsairs/ripjaws. Do they work, or I need some strange server/funky ram
@@Delamorth My error. 1600 speed is correct. Its very common and easy to get. 1333 isn't heinous either if thats all you find.
I have a z230 w/i7 4790 and my daughter has a Dell 7010 w/i7 3770. Great value for money! 4790, 8gb ddr3 1600, 500gb hdd, 240 gb ssd, Zotac GTX 1060 6gb PAID $200 USD. The 3770 I won in a contest from OzTalksHW!
Found one of these on ebay for 70$ so I'm thinking of buying it
Hi, thanks for this vidéo. I use HP 8200 i3-2100 with 8 gb RAM 128 SSD will I see a big difference. I have problem on multi-tasking with web browser and Office ...
Hey mate I live in the UK and I found a Z240 with i7-6700 and 1TB nvme for £160. I have an old Gigabyte GTX960 that I want to put inside. It has 2x6pin connector. I have only one 6pin connector from the PSU and I can see only one molex, rest are sata and the molex adaptors that I can find on amazon are dual molex to 6pin. Is there a molex and sata to 6pin adaptor? What should I do? I heard sata (even dual sata) to 6pin is not recommended. Any advice? Thanks!