Brian1965,
You have a quite refined system. The external drive is a very good idea. I've looked at a number of enclosures but only have a USB 3.0 / 3.5"drive enclosure which houses the WD Blue 1TB that arrived with the z420 when new. That one is an Aluminum Startech and has a cooling fan- looks quite like a book. But, I have a Dell Precision T3500, the two z420's, a Precision T5400, and the T5500 all with two writers and I have used these as duplicators.
I make quite a lot of CD's as I record live and with MIDI (Yamaha S90) but is baby home stuff compared to your productions, which I'm listening to while typing. Fantastic sound quality, balance, and love the music. The Tascam Us-1641 is aerious gear. I used to use a pair of Tascam DAT players at the radio station and their stuff if really good. At home I simply run a pair of Neumann KM184's to a Peavey VMP2 valve microphone preamp to an M-Audio 192 "Audiophile" PCI card which is 2in/2out plus MIDI I/O. This is in an HP Elite m9426f with a Core2 Quad Q6600- 2.4. Editing is Cakewalk Essentials - baby Sonar. That setup never missed a beat as two channel audio is not hardware demanding. I had a radio program for in Los Angeles and made quite a few broadcast recordings on it. I have three of the M-Audio cards and use them everywhere as they occupy the pesky PCI slots and leave the PCIe to devices that need those. These run M-Audio 2.1 computer audio systems and the Z2300 works quite well. In my old loft office I had a McIntosh MR67 tuner and Cambridge Audio 640 CDP to Audio Research LS3 to an Audio Research D130 to Vandersteen 3A's, but the speaker placement was terrible and I actually have a better stereo image with the little M-Audio satellites just behind the left Dell Ultrasharp 27". The z620 however will only have an M-Audio z313 system- they're only $30! with a little subwoofer, and HP 2711x monitor. I run a television off a Dell E520 and there's an M-Audio 192 and z313 for the sound. the useful feature of these is that they have wired remotes with volume controls, and the z2300 remote has a subwoofer control and headphone jack. What do you use for playback monitoring in you audio work and for computer sound?
On the subject of the z620, have you ever used remote desktop? In 2010 I had a Dell Precison T5400 and Optiplex 740 on a KVM switch and that was convenient as I could with one button change from one system to the other. I'm thinking that I could be using that to simplify running both systems from the single K/B mouse and monitors. I could set up simulation, analysis , and rendering files on the z420 and then send them to the z620 to sit in the corner and work on. It's possible too if the sysem is on, to use the system from anywhere via the Internet. These use passwords but there must be an increased security risk. Then I could include the HP 2711x in with the Dell Ultrasharps and have three monitors.
Last year, for the Precisions T3500 and T5500 which have PERC H310 6GB/s RAID cards, I looked into USB 3.0 cards and SATA add-onbut could never find one for which the user reviews gave me any confidence. It appeared quite a few users went through three or so experiements. The reason is obscure to me, but as USB ( I think) works on PCIe lanes in the way of the antique IRQ interrrupts and shares them. It may be that there is a reason the number of USB 3 ports is limited- using too many causes some latency as it's sharing PCIe lanes. Still, that should be solved with dual Xeon E5's as each CPU contributes 40 PCIe lanes. I see the X99 motherboards offer more SATA III and USB 3 or 3.1
Thank you for the information re: the 2nd CPU assembly bracket. I called HP parts and they had no listing for that part seperately nor is it listed in the contents of the 2nd processor riser package. They suggested that was sort of optional, and I don't like the idea of that assembly lacking support at the back, but I went ahead and installed the assmebly and it seems reasonably secure. I'll keep my eyes open for the bracket.
With the 2nd CPU and the Quadro K2200, the z620 is starting to come into focus:
Yesterday: Passmark System Rating= 2304 / CPU= 14532 / 2D= 723 / 3D = 1665/ Mem =2709 / Disk = 538
Today: Passmark System Rating= 2468 / CPU= 20083 / 2D= 731 / 3D = 3535 / Mem =2278 / Disk = 541
All the scores are a bit low, the CPU score average for two E5-2690's is 20826. Such is the importance of the disk score.
What is suprising is that my $53 Precision T3500 still has a higher system rating: Rating = 2567, CPU = 7303 / 2D= 680 / 3D=2022 / Mem= 1939 / Disk=921.
thanks for the screen shot of BIOS. I'm wondering though what is your BIOS version? It's possible that with an earlier BIOS, the SM951 is not able to take advantage of the MLC memory controller. Perhaps you have inwhich case never mind, but if not just to eliminate that as a possibility, you might consider update to the latest which is 3.88. See:
It's slightly fussy, but I'm doing that tommorrow.
The final upgrade - for now- will be transferring the Intel 730 when the z420 has the HP Z Turbo, plus changing the plastic exterior parts that are damaged. HP very usefully sells a kit of all the case plastic parts for only $56. so it wasn't worth buying only the two damaged ones (lower front panel and left runner (skid on the bottom) for $58. Later, I'll continue with the 64GB total RAM and sort the GPU's in the two main systems.
I very much appreciate your comments and suggestion concerning coming up to speed on Solidworks. I've looked at sample files, read some, watched some YouTube, and played with the buttons a bit and have actually made some silly objects, but I'm far from a methodical approach and able to do a complex project. My problem is that I spend a couple months only writing, then back to drawing in 2D, then writing, then graphic design, then 3D in a hurry which means bodged together Sketchup. Sketchup is really infuriating - angles are accurate only to .1 degree and when the file has any size, it barely runs on a 4GHz Xeon and Quadro K4200. With small stuff it's fast, and useful for feasibility studies, but does not produce high quality finshed results. I would love to have done the building in Solidworks as it's quite machine-like anyway, intended to resemble a speed boat, aircraft, and F1 car all at once. I'd like to learn 3ds, Maya, and After Effects properly too, but will I?
A friend is a CATIA user- draws submarine interiors of all things and he thinks Solidworks is still the best industrial design/ rendering software and that comparitively it runs well on less than top end systems. My local accelerator facility uses Siemens NX and that is becoming the industry standard for cars. They run NX on Precision T3500's with a Quadro K6000! AutoCad also runs well on medium-level systems and I think is a sign of very high quality software.
It seems your son has quite a lot of great capabilities and studying a good se of applications, useful in a lot of fields industrial, commerical, and academic. Have you had any first thoughts as to the uni system that might be done? I suppose a z620 or a z420 with a single 8-core could be reasonable if there is GPU-based rendering involved or did you intend to build a system? The good feature with the z620 of course is that the 2nd CPU can be added later.
A niece went off to study animation at the Pratt Institute in New York (no, it doesn't mean that in the US) but was not up to the pace of CAD modeling required and had to take a year off and come up to speed technically. When I studied architecture ( in the UK) CAD was something only used by aircraft companies. My first computer was a 1993 IBM 486 running DOS6 with Windows 3.1 at 50Mhz with 2MB of RAM and an 85MB HD. That system cost $2,800, the 14" CRT monitor was $850, and the printer was $750. When I changed the 85MB for the largest one made then-540MB, it cost $527 or $.98 /MB. In those terms, a 1TB drive would cost, $980,000. The good old days of personal computers is now.
Cheers,
BambiBoomZ