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HP Unveils Mini Workstation

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Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#121

Post by gregmac »

Sephr wrote: post #79
noja wrote: post #62

What's a turbo Z drive? Can I swap it for a Samsung 860 Pro M.2? Can I have two M.2 devices to raid it? I don't want to lose my work. Edit: Liliputing says "There’s a 2.5 inch drive bay for a hard drive or SSD and an M.2 SATA SSD slot." ( https://liliputing.com/2016/11/msi-trident-compact-vr-ready-... )

It's a 4-way M.2 NVMe raid card, which HP has ignorantly decided to populate with seemingly mediocre SSDs instead of the current gen flagships from Samsung or Intel. You can remove the included SSDs and populate it with up to 4 960 Pro SSDs for what I imagine would be 14/8 GB/s sequential read/write performance. Unfortunately there's no way to buy it without the included SSDs, so you're better off with the unpopulate…

> Unfortunately there's no way to buy it without the included SSDs

Ah, brings back memories of buying HP servers several years ago. The only way to get the servers we needed was to buy servers pre-shipped with inadequate RAM and drives, rip it all out, and then install new drives and new RAM (purchased at the same time from HP, for an inflated price of course). We were left with a pile of essentially useless SAS drives and ECC RAM, and still had to do all the assembly in-house.

I've never had so much trouble getting a company to accept several tens of thousands of dollars before.. or since.

That project explicitly specified HP hardware, and as far as I know we never bought HP servers again after that experience.

Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#122

Post by revelation »

croon wrote: post #23

By pre-defining specs for the device, you can obviously create a sleak box for it with no wasted space, but I would claim it will always be impossible to create something as powerful as something 4 times its size, given the larger components are still produced, just going off physics. Otherwise no one would still build towers and just use laptops. (Of course more people use laptops, but it's not because of performanc…

It's a mobile GPU and a 40 odd Watt Xeon. It's not really Workstation hardware.

Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#123

Post by intrasight »

djrogers wrote: post #114
intrasight wrote: post #82

I don't understand why they didn't use a Xeon e3-1545m, which is a 35-45 TDP part and has adequate graphics for the intended market. If it doesn't support ECC, there's no benefit vs the Intel Skull Canyon. I am in the market for a new dev machine, and I want Xeon and ECC. Just not enough good options currently (unless you build from scratch).

> If it doesn't support ECC, there's no benefit vs the Intel Skull Canyon. It does support ECC - right there on the product page.

I don't see that

Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#124

Post by jsjohnst »

Bud wrote: post #90
xlayn wrote: post #61

HP Mac Mini. This is actually interesting, when Apple switched to max 16 Gb of ram on their PRO line, HP throws something with PRO graphics and Xeon.

Apples and oranges. Intel's mobile Skylake processors don't support more than 16GB of low-power RAM; Apple didn't have anything to do with that limitation. This is a boxy desktop, not a mobile machine.

I up voted your response as it's correct, but for anyone who doesn't want to believe, here's a fully referenced post I made a while back with specific references in the Intel documentation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12900834

Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#125

Post by rch »

intrasight wrote: post #104
rch wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Colfax International. They have some nice workstations that are relatively easy to configure.

I had really meant to say "not enough good mini/laptop options"

Fair enough. My main ergonomic requirement for a workstation is zero noise at rest, and reasonable otherwise. I'm interested in seeing what I can get in form factor though.

Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#126

Post by jpt4 »

daxorid wrote: post #45
ChuckMcM wrote: post #41

See also the Intel NUC thing: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc6i7kyk... What really astonishes me though is how you can have these really nice machines and Apple doesn't bother to update the Mac mini. Seriously, an Apple version of this would be a nice desktop.

I have the Skullcanyon NUC, and this is not comparable. I've been waiting for someone to offer me ECC in a small form factor. This is the first time I've ever seen it.

I also have the Skullcanyon, as a laptop replacement machine. None of my previous personal computers have had ECC RAM, but none have had more than 16GB either. What is your use case that benefits from error-correction, if you please?

Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#127

Post by 0x0 »

jasonmp85 wrote: post #64
Tempest1981 wrote: post #25

Tangent: I'm curious about HP's hostname taxonomy. I.e. What products or content live under www8 vs www2 or www7. http://www8.hp.com/.. .

This is an anecdotal story from a Daring Fireball reader, but the claim is it was initially to help locate servers? http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/09/hp-license-plate...

That doesn't even make sense. What happens if a server goes down and needs to be replaced? Do you have to wait for someone to remove the old box and insert a new box in the rack? Obviously there needs to be a handoff of the same name because everyone in the world is linking to the "license-plate" URL....

Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#129

Post by andrewmcwatters »

digler999 wrote: post #83
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #15

Seeing stuff like this on HN brings excitement back into tech for me. New hardware and debatably a challenger to the Mac mini and Intel NUC? Very cool stuff.

Mac mini ? How come nobody has mentioned the mac pro[1] (aka the traschcan-shaped mac workstation) which is much more closely related to this [1] http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

Solid point. Mac Pro competitor in mini form factor. If only Apple had something like that, that would be crazy.

Re: HP Unveils Mini Workstation

#130

Post by jsjohnst »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #119
jsjohnst wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USB hub? Many monitors have them these days built in. If yours doesn't, Amazon sells them for barely more than the cost of shipping these days.

Still, there's room on the case for additional front and back ports, and all the hubs I've used have had problems. It also defeats the clean look of the machine.

anecdata: I've bought more hubs than I care to count for multiple employers and not had issues. Also, the monitor hub route wouldn't affect the "clean look" of the machine any more than having a dozen cables sticking out of it every which way.
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