On 5/30/25 10:20, Russell L. Harris wrote:
On Fri, May 30, 2025 at 02:18:06AM -0700, David Christensen wrote:
Perhaps you could take Debian Live
media to Blair and test before purchase?
Regrettably, no. Blair is in Kentucky; I am in Texas.
Okay. Reading ahead, Debian should work fine on an HP Z420 workstation.
If the computer is going to have graphic cards, sound cards, network
cards, PCIe drive cards, disk drives, etc., it would be better to
start with a full tower case, vibration isolated internal drive bays,
sound absorbing liner, big power supply, large fans, and suitable
motherboard/ CPU/ memory. This is how I built my SOHO servers.
Thanks, David, but way beyond my budget.
Yes, a new case and PSU alone can cost more than an entire used or
refurbished workstation or server. These are what I use for my SOHO
file and backup servers:
https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/define/define-r5/black/
https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/define/define-r5/black/
I ended up ordering from Blair a HP tower. Under $250 (free
shipping), but it is newer and likely much better than anything I
currently am running (Several hand-me-down Dell machines; some
very reliable, others troublesome).
EMacs & LaTeX with Debian do not require much, so my only real concern
is reliability.
https://blairtech.com/hp-z420-workstation-pc-intel-xeon-e5-1650-6-
core-3-2-ghz-nvidia-quadro-k2000-16gb-ddr3-ram-256gb-ssd-1tb-hdd-
windows-10-professional-wifi-bluetooth/
That workstation should be plenty fast. The video card does not match
your OP, but I expect Debian will support the NVIDIA Quadro K2000.
My only concern is that the workstation does not appear to have ECC memory.
I suggest that you remove the 2.5" SATA SSD and 3.5" SATA HDD, install a
3.5" to 5.25" Front Bay Mounting Bracket, install a 2 Drive 2.5in
Trayless Hot Swap SATA Mobile Rack Backplane, install a Black Aluminum
5.25in Rugged SATA Hard Drive Mobile Rack Drawer, connect the dual 2.5"
mobile rack to the first and second motherboard HBA ports, connect the
3.5" mobile rack to the third motherboard HBA port, insert a wiped 2.5"
SSD into the rack connected to the first HBA port, and do a fresh
install of Debian:
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/bracketfdbk
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/hsb220sat25b
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/drw150satbk
You can run either Windows or Debian by powering down, swapping SSD's,
and booting.
Assuming the HDD has NTFS, Debian may complain that the filesystem was
not properly closed by Windows. One work-around is to format the HDD
with FAT32 or exFAT. I prefer to keep my bulk data on a file server,
and would use the HDD for something else (OS drive images). If you
really need fast local storage, get a PCIe SSD.
David
