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Service life - workstation vs home built

G

GMasonDragonDad

Member
Currently running an E8400 on a Gigabyte board with Antec Sonota III case. It has been powered on 24/7 for five years and runs stable. Looking to upgrade for stable, quiet machine that will house an SSD, several drives and two optical drives mostly for office type applications, videos and playing with virtual machines.

Saw a HP z220 CMT workstation (Core i7/8 Gigs) for about $900.

Was planning:
Asus Z87-PLUS system board
Corsair Carbide Series 330R case
SeaSonic G Series 550-Watt ATX12V/EPS12V
Core i5/i7 K from microcenter and use integrated graphics for now.


Question: after reading about quality solid Japanese capacitors and "mil spec" chokes and even an Asus TUF series mATX.. or gigabytes "Ultra Durable" marketing.. Which would provide the longest stable service life? Are they really equal?
 
Which would provide the longest stable service life is guesswork.

As you have discovered, there is a lot of marketing drivel mixed in with facts.

You can choose good components such as those on your list and have a horrible experience simply by the luck of the draw. And conversely have a great experience with an off-the-rack HP, where you have little control over components.

I'd make the decision based on factors other than "stable service life" (which is largely speculation)--such as total cost of ownership, relative importance of "quiet", support or lack of it, enjoyment of the building process, etc. And then make a leap of faith and don't look back.

I'd try to research just how "quiet" that particular Corsair case is. The Seasonic is a good PSU, but again I'm not sure how quiet it is relative to other Seasonics. The fans in some Seasonics don't spin at all under a low load.
 
Thanks for the reply.

I worked desktop support for six years in a large government office. I saw acres of Dell GX series Optiplex running without fuss for years. Only needing memory and drives. Then started replacing them with Compaq Evo and HP business desktop. Never had to fix them outside of an occasional bad drive. Even see them in hospital emergency rooms. They just don't have the marketing bling associated with them. Either system is serious overkill for my needs, but I am turning 50 in a few weeks, and want something new and shiny. I have built a few machines, and the first power-up is nerve racking as I think about cooking $400 worth or processor/motherboard. And I have killed a few machines in the past!
 
HP Z series workstations, Dell Optiplex desktops, and Precision workstations are generally extremely reliable. They're also sold by the tens or hundreds of thousands of identical configurations, meaning that they're much better validated than a random machine you might put together yourself.

Like sonic said, it's all statistical. It's certainly possible (even probable) to have a solid system built from enthusiast parts, just as its very possible to get a lemon workstation. However, I'd say the workstation is more likely to serve well for a long time is more likely to have parts available in 5 years if it does fail.
 
Arrived yesterday and put a new Samsung 940 SSD in it. I was happy it had full restore CDs that i used to build the new drive. machine started locking up, so I ran chkdsk which fixed something. also ran it on the original drive that also fixed something.

Machine is dead quiet and cpu ran cold. Good solid keyboard included. I went into the bios.. and it looked very old fashioned.. no "bling" whatsoever!
 
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