Hello All
I have a Z400 (rescued from being decommissioned nonetheless) that works just fine.. Installed Win10 and voila! New PC.
Thanks to the Info here confirmed I have the Rev.1 version with 6 RAM slots
Current Config
Xeon W3505 (Dual Core, not even Hyper Threading)
12 GB 1333Mhz RAM (2gb x 6) running at 1066Mhz thanx to CPU
2x Quadro FX580 cards
PCI-e LSI SAS3041E Raid Card
3x 300gb SAS drives connected to LSI card
PCI-e NIC card
475w PSU
The SAS HDDs are slow (at 15k RPM?) and loud... First thing I did was buy a Samsung 500gb 850 Evo SSD (on Prime day at Amazon with $30 discount!!) I checked and with the new BiOS installed (3.60) I confirmed I have AHCI support so I'm hoping the new SSD will bring me a big change even if only running at sata2 instead of sata3 speeds...When the drive gets here I plan on removing the raid card and sas drives and install an extra 2TB sata drive for storage instead.. Also thinking of getting a sata3 pci-e card. Do you think it's worth it over just going straight to motherboard? I also read that booting from a pci-e card slows up startup vs just runnig drive straight to the mobo sata port even if running speed is slower... What do you guys think.?
Next thing I'm looking at is the processor. Thinking of on either the w3680 or w3690... Depending on price to get the ram running at 1333Mhz.
Any other CPU suggestions? Perhaps other supported that are not specified in the quick sheet.
the current cpu cooler is rated for 130w cpu so I think I should be fine ...unless you guys have a suggestion for a better option.
I worry about the cpu power draw. Even though I will eliminate 3 loud and power.hungry sas drives, I wonder if the current PSU will be enough for this and possibly a new graphics card. Perhaps the new RX480 from AMD? What do you think of it.
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