Looking for the best CPU upgrade for an old workstation

[Chokichi]

We got a "new" workstation with one of the new instruments in my lab, but it has a Xeon E3 1225 which just chugs through some of the data processing. We could just order a new computer, but I was wondering if I could just order a new CPU to swap in. I used

wmic baseboard get product,Manufacture,version,serialnumber

and found that it's an HP MOBO 802E SN: PESRK0WCYAS1ZD. I couldn't find any info about the chipset though. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

What model of system is this?

 

You can't get that much better than that cpu(small clock speed bump and HT)

 

Id just get something newer if possible. A e3 1280 is about as fast as you can get, but its probably still not worth it.

 

 

[Chokichi]

It's an HP Z240. I figured there wouldn't be much in the way of upgrades. I'm not very familiar with workstations. This is what I thought would be best for our use case from Dell (we have a contract there) do the prices seem reasonable? 

 

Intel® Xeon® Processor E-2186G (Six Core 3.8Ghz, 4.7GHz Turbo, 12MB w/ UHD Graphics 630) 16 GB ECC RAM (not sure on speed)

256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive

NVIDIA® Quadro® P400, 2GB, 3Mdp (Precision 3630) Total: $1907.75

[Electronics Wizardy]

13 minutes ago, Chokichi said:

It's an HP Z240. I figured there wouldn't be much in the way of upgrades. I'm not very familiar with workstations. This is what I thought would be best for our use case from Dell (we have a contract there) do the prices seem reasonable? 

Well then, that system doesn't use a e3 1225, you probably have a e3 1225 v5, a much different chip. Still not a huge upgrade path.

 

13 minutes ago, Chokichi said:

Dell (we have a contract there) do the prices seem reasonable? 

 

Intel® Xeon® Processor E-2186G (Six Core 3.8Ghz, 4.7GHz Turbo, 12MB w/ UHD Graphics 630) 16 GB ECC RAM (not sure on speed)

256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive

NVIDIA® Quadro® P400, 2GB, 3Mdp (Precision 3630) Total: $1907.75

How much ram do you need, id probalby get more.

 

WHat prograsm are you using? How well multi threaded, that will be better, but not a massive jump, id probably get something like a xeon w or xeon scaleable if you can use the cores.

[star_pilot475]

18 minutes ago, Chokichi said:

It's an HP Z240. I figured there wouldn't be much in the way of upgrades. I'm not very familiar with workstations. This is what I thought would be best for our use case from Dell (we have a contract there) do the prices seem reasonable? 

 

Intel® Xeon® Processor E-2186G (Six Core 3.8Ghz, 4.7GHz Turbo, 12MB w/ UHD Graphics 630) 16 GB ECC RAM (not sure on speed)

256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive

NVIDIA® Quadro® P400, 2GB, 3Mdp (Precision 3630) Total: $1907.75

Not so much. If the company would allow you to build a better workstation for the price, this could shred pretty much every task you throw at it. 

Spoiler

Before somebody actually good with "workstation-y" things looks at this, remember I am not an expert at this subject.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Xeon E5-2690 V3 2.6 GHz 12-Core Processor	$464.33 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler	$89.95 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Asus X99-WS/IPMI ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard	$548.11 @ Amazon
Memory	Crucial 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory	$163.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Sabrent Rocket 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$109.98 @ Amazon
Video Card	PNY Quadro K4200 4 GB Video Card	$268.99 @ Amazon
Case	Corsair 275Q ATX Mid Tower Case	$99.99 @ Best Buy
Power Supply	EVGA 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply	$93.88 @ OutletPC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1859.22
	Mail-in rebates	-$20.00
	Total	$1839.22
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-09-30 13:30 EDT-0400

 

 

[Chokichi]

We're using MassHunter which is for Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry. I can't find anything about how well multi-threaded it is. There's one obscure Agilent mention of getting higher core clocks rather than more cores. The program doesn't seem to be very RAM intensive; the current system only had 8 GB and it doesn't use above 70% although I haven't run any of the more data intense experiments yet.

 

I figured it wasn't a great deal, @star_pilot475, although if the PDF I found can be trusted I might swap out the CPU there for something with higher base clocks. Thanks for putting that together!