Looking for a pre-built red workstation. But it's a jungle out there.

[Thomas Koba]

Switching from Mac to PC. But it's a jungle out there, so I´m looking for some pre-built stuff. Is the HP Red Edition still a viable solution? It's more than a year old. How about Dell, Lenovo etc.?

Looking for something fast, Nvidia GFX, with PCI-space for Rocket, Blackmagic and some connection to some external raid (+9 TB).

Working in Premiere and After Effects. Want to use Resolve more.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

If you are looking for pre-built with support, the HP Z820 is probably the one to get.

I personally built my own based on the Asus Rampage IV mb and it runs fine.

 

[Thomas Koba]

Is the HP still an up to date machine? Or are they updating them constantly? (As you can tell, im totally out of the Intel processor race). Last time I checked on processors a Pentium was faster than a 486DX4

 

[Brian Merlen]

why no love for the unreleased trash can mac pro without pci slots or cuda for adobe lol? if your interested in maybe dual booting to both OS's I'd check out mediaworkstations.net. haven't gone myself but i probably will soon. also they always have the newest kits

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you want a dual Xeon system, the HP Z820 is a great option. It's as up to date as it gets, but at this point I would wait for the next round of Xeon processors to ship -- should see systems within 6 to 8 weeks at this point.

There are some other options out there, but for the most part everyone just takes off-the-shelf parts and throws them in a box and stamps their name on it. What you are really paying for, or looking for when choosing where to buy, is service and support. HP has pretty good service, so does Dell. If you want to step away from the mainstream vendors, then there are options like Origin and BOXX. IMO, they're no better and use the common parts that ANYONE can buy. But they offer some extreme configurations that most people are not going to put together on their own unless they have a good amount of experience doing so. And they seem to back these setups with decent support. I personally have not dealt with Origin, but know many who have. I have not purchased from BOXX, either, but have dealt with them in a round-about way -- back in the days when I ran a custom workstation shop and BOXX came onto the scene, I was one of their primary competitors. I sold my company and have been out of that game for a long while. I didn't get along with them back then, but they're still here with an active presence in the industry and in this community. They must be doing something right. Although, when I look at their offerings and pricing I tend to cringe a bit.

Mac Pro trash can? All I can say on that is don't knock it until you've tried it. Yes, I've had a glimpse or a taste or whatever you want to call it. In typical Apple fashion, their design is almost too forward-thinking. They have taken all the legacy stuff and drop-kicked it away. It is the system they need in their line up. For those who are finding it a difficult pill to swallow, you're probably looking at it from the wrong angle. The indie operator who has a decent '09 Mac Pro and wants to upgrade that tower to the new system while still keeping all his other hardware -- namely the internal and/ or external RAID, among other things, is setting himself up for both disappointment and failure. Another indie operator in the same boat, who elects to just add the new Mac Pro to his existing equipment is already on a more likely path to success. Best advice I can give re: the new Mac Pro is that Thunderbolt to PCIe expanders are not the answer. Plan on having one good one that supports Thunderbolt2 that can house a Rocket and maybe one other thing. Beyond that, everything else needs to connect natively via Thunderbolt or USB3. If you're trying to count up ways to support legacy PCIe cards that you may have or that you think you want to use, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Elsie N]

One suggestion I would make is that no matter what you end up with, be sure you get it in a full tower case. I spent yesterday afternoon removing HDDs and unplugging power and data cables in order to fit an AMD 7950 Graphics Card into my mid-sized computer case. I initially had three RAID 0s in my drive bays but in anticipation of the Rocket X being at least as big as the 7950, I'm going back in today and remove a second one, leaving only one onboard RAID 0. I'll compensate by adding USB 3.0 and eSATA RAID boxes.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Rocket-X is a single slot width 3/4-length PCIe card. Dual DisplayPort connectors on the rear with the ability to break out from those to anything you want --> HDMI, SDI, etc..

 

[Brian Merlen]

jeff for the record i'm joking, the specs rock on it...but at the end of the day, it is a very oddly shaped form factor and i like poking fun about it... i still think internal pci is the way to go with rocket x though...

 

[Elsie N]

Rocket-X is a single slot width 3/4-length PCIe card. Dual DisplayPort connectors on the rear with the ability to break out from those to anything you want --> HDMI, SDI, etc..

That's good to hear, especially the single slot width.. I was just going by the picture shown here on REDuser of somone holding a Rocket X and that thing looked really long. I much like the wide array of connectors since that pretty much future proofs for quite a while.

 

[David Kuhn]

I'd say waiting for next gen makes sense if you're looking for the hottest hardware and are willing to spend top dollar to get it... but the current gen Z820 is a decent performer (it's what I currently use as my primary workstation) and if you're price conscious (relatively... you're still knocking on $10k depending on configuration for a loaded machine) then a current gen Z820 won't incur the 'it's new' price penalty. Waiting is something to consider, though there's ALWAYS something great coming in 4-8 weeks, new cpu, mobo, graphics, etc ad nauseum. I've also used Boxx but as Jeff mentioned they use off the shelf components in their own case(nice boxes but you can build exactly the same systems yourself and save a few bucks, though the support provided is IMO worth the extra money). I used to be a big build it yourself guy when I was younger, but these days I'm more interested in saving my time - which means someone else fixing it when it breaks. The other machine I was thinking may be worth looking into was the Dell T610 with Quadro 6000... I've got a T610 for virtualization but have never tried one for workstation duty. It might be a good choice if you want to go with DAS, probably not as logical for you since you're planning to use NAS. My T610 has been running VMware for a couple years now without a hiccup.

 

[David Kuhn]

jeff for the record i'm joking, the specs rock on it...but at the end of the day, it is a very oddly shaped form factor and i like poking fun about it... i still think internal pci is the way to go with rocket x though...

I really like the thought process behind the design, looking forward to getting my greasy fingerprints all over it's shiny finish.