Artifacts on old Xeon / Quadro workstation

[InertiaSelling]

I recently got my hands on a few old workstations, and one of them caught my attention.

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It's an HP z400 (proprietary motherboard) that boots correctly and seems to run fine, but I get some weird artifacts:

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At first, I thought it was the OS, because I had no idea what it was (I'd like to know, if you can tell), but I get a similar issue when running windows 7:

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This thing was a probably a beast at the time (I think it was built around 2010). It has:

 

• A Xeon W35xx (it's late and I don't want to boot it again to check which exact model it is, just tell me if it's relevant and I'll update)

• Some bulky CPU cooler that could be from Cooler Master

• A Quadro 4000

• Some 450w 80+ bronze PSU from Delta

• A 7200rpm 250gb HDD from Seagate

• 4gb of DDR3 1333 RAM

 

It might be worth mentioning that:

• The quadro has two displayports and a DVI-I dual link port. Since I have no displayport cable, I used a DVI-D single link to HDMI cable.

• The quadro got toasty, I would have burnt my fingers if I had touched it.

• The quadro has an extra 4 pin connector on the side, similar to what is found on HDDs next to the sata ports, with nothing plugged in, and I have no idea what it is.

• I have lots of parts of the same generation lying around, such as extra DDR3 sticks, similar PSUs, another quadro 4000 (as well as a few lower-end nvidia cards), more HDDs, etc.

 

If the quadro is fried, then why is it able to display anything at all, let alone a stable, usable, snappy GUI ? If it is underpowered, then why isn't the whole system just shutting off ? Did I miss something ?

 

Thanks in advance.

[grimreeper132]

might be an issue with the quadro try a different GPU or onboard maybe if that doesn't work then I dunno, it's late for me too, so yea canny help more than that

[grimreeper132]

3 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

HP Z400 workstations were built on x58 and do not have onboard video out. Op will have to source another video card to test that system. 

 

Also OP, that HP z400 workstation can be quite easily turned into a gaming PC with a xeon x5670 but $40-50 on ebay.

oh do they not ah fuck (my old server does, which is LGA 771 (which I assume you know is older) so I assumed this would have too) so yea get a test GPU even one out your current PC (assuming you have one in it) and use it to test it

[InertiaSelling]

Update:

 

• I run into the same issue after replacing the card with another quadro 4000.

• I can't see either GPU in the bios.

• (the OS is an old version of xubuntu)

• (the CPU is a w3565)

 

I don't think it's a driver issue, as the artifacts would probably not affect the entire picture in that case. How likely is it that both cards would be out of order ?

 

Since the CPU really isn't that weak, I could probably throw in a 1050 / 1050ti / 460 / 560 as well as some extra ram, then give it to my younger brother as a first gaming rig. But first, I'd need to know whether or not any graphics card would work at all with this workstation. Is there any way I could know ?

[InertiaSelling]

Update 2: No more artifacts after replacing the (likely defective) quadro 4000 with an older quadro fx4600. The performance is not half as good, but it's about the same as that of a gt 820m, which will be just fine for basic stuff. I already upgraded it to 12gb of RAM, I'll replace the HDD with a brand new one, and I'll probably add a 1050 or 1050ti later as well. That should make it a decent gaming rig, but I'd like to give the last word to you @CUDA_Cores, since you made a whole tutorial on this exact subject. Do you think I'd need to do anything else ?