Xeon Work Station Value (X58)

[TravisTea]

I recently picked up an HP Z400 work station from a guy off of FB market place for pretty darn cheap (actually got 3 towers total from him). The system didn't have a hard drive, ram, or a gpu. I put 6gb of ddr3 (trip channel), a 1tb hdd, and a gtx 570 1.2gb (system has a 475 watt 80 plus bronze psu). The cpu in this system is a Xeon W3530 4c/8t cpu and 2.8 Ghz. My question is, what should I market this at price wise? I got everything installed and put a fresh install of Windows 10 so everything is ready to go on it but I honestly don't know what the value is. I'm sure it's not much, but surely it's worth something?

[Fasauceome]

list this for about $350, unless you put in ECC ram. It's got a pretty slow CPU, a pretty old GPU, and no SSD. The PSU also seems a little weak, and what make and model is it? I think windows 7 would have been better for this system, less ram requirements,

[TravisTea]

2 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

list this for about $350, unless you put in ECC ram. It's got a pretty slow CPU, a pretty old GPU, and no SSD. The PSU also seems a little weak, and what make and model is it? I think windows 7 would have been better for this system, less ram requirements,

Yeah, I understand it's older tech. I debated going with Windows 7 but already had my flash drive loaded with W10. HP Z400 is the make and model of the pc. I am slightly tempted to put in a x5650 since it's only $20 on ebay and would provide 2 more cores and 4 more threads..

[Fasauceome]

9 minutes ago, LordSlimJimm said:

Yeah, I understand it's older tech. I debated going with Windows 7 but already had my flash drive loaded with W10. HP Z400 is the make and model of the pc. I am slightly tempted to put in a x5650 since it's only $20 on ebay and would provide 2 more cores and 4 more threads..

That's a good move. consider more ram too.

[TravisTea]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

That's a good move. consider more ram too.

My only thing is I don't want to invest too much more money into this pc than I'll get back out of it, if that makes sense?

[Razor Blade]

Value-wise really would depend on your market, location, and if there is interest. I wouldn't pay more than $200 for it but that's me. Only upgrade it if 

 

1. if it generates more interest
2. you can add the price of upgrade

If you're in it more than you can get out of it you could consider parting it out to minimize loss. I don't know how much you have in it so I want to cover as many scenarios as I can.

[TravisTea]

1 minute ago, Razor Blade said:

Value-wise really would depend on your market, location, and if there is interest. I wouldn't pay more than $200 for it but that's me. Only upgrade it if 

 

1. if it generates more interest
2. you can add the price of upgrade

If you're in it more than you can get out of it you could consider parting it out to minimize loss. I don't know how much you have in it so I want to cover as many scenarios as I can.

I paid $20 for the tower, had the ram, hard drive, and gpu sitting around. I could put more ram into it (about $40, and that other xeon would be around $20-$30). That'd put me around $100 total invested in this system, but frankly I don't think it'd be worth it. I'm in the US (midewest to be more specific) and the market is kind of hit or miss.

[Fasauceome]

23 minutes ago, LordSlimJimm said:

I paid $20 for the tower, had the ram, hard drive, and gpu sitting around. I could put more ram into it (about $40, and that other xeon would be around $20-$30). That'd put me around $100 total invested in this system, but frankly I don't think it'd be worth it. I'm in the US (midewest to be more specific) and the market is kind of hit or miss.

I'd say if you throw in the xeon and more ram, it'd be worth around $500, and sell faster.

[TravisTea]

25 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

I'd say if you throw in the xeon and more ram, it'd be worth around $500, and sell faster.

You think so?

[Fasauceome]

7 minutes ago, LordSlimJimm said:

You think so?

x58 systems are more popular with faster clocked CPUs. can you get your hands on a xeon above 3.3 GHz?

[TravisTea]

3 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

x58 systems are more popular with faster clocked CPUs. can you get your hands on a xeon above 3.3 GHz?

The best I could find with these specs was an x5690 but they're running around $90-$100 each on ebay.. I ended up ordering an x5650 to put in this system. I guess it runs cooler that the W3530 that's in this system currently which will definitely help with noise too.. I'm trying to get my hands on some ram now. If I can find a cheap ssd I may do that too..

[Fasauceome]

Just now, LordSlimJimm said:

The best I could find with these specs was an x5690 but they're running around $90-$100 each on ebay.. I ended up ordering an x5650 to put in this system. I guess it runs cooler that the W3530 that's in this system currently which will definitely help with noise too.. I'm trying to get my hands on some ram now. If I can find a cheap ssd I may do that too..

an ssd is what sells the system. Those fast boot times are what people crave. I don't recommend anything fancy since you've got a lot of old tech in the PC, so you don't want to put the value out of balance.

[TravisTea]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

an ssd is what sells the system. Those fast boot times are what people crave. I don't recommend anything fancy since you've got a lot of old tech in the PC, so you don't want to put the value out of balance.

Right. Yeah I'm trying to avoid off balancing the system and money invested vs what I'll get out of it. Sadly on this board I cannot overclock. My thought is putting that x5650 in here, 12gb of ram, put the OS on a 120gb ssd and keep the 1tb hdd in this system. If I leave the gtx 570 in this at least people would have enough reason to buy it for maybe a few hundred and replace the gpu down the road. I mean it runs Fortnite above 60 fps as it is along with some other titles.. Should be a reasonable selling point I'd think?