New PC for BI - HDD size limit

OK guys, I concede and acknowledge. To use the phrase sebastiontoms mentioned above, I need to make loads and loads of “tweaks” - it’s a continuous process to get the best out of my new system. I have a couple of headline problems, one of which (a new quad network card) I will put to the forum for help but think it’s best to start a new post.

Thanks again for taking the time to to give me the support I need!
 
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Re: HP EliteDesk G4 800 i5-8500.... I got an email that my "offer" of 304.99 was not responded or accepted. ( It was a feeler to see if he'd respond to the attached note.)
I pulled the trigger on that "too good to be true" price offer of $300 from the ebay seller.
I put it on a credit card thru Paypal. I'm slighty wary of his seller rating not showing. And somewhat suspicious that his buyers rating are over a year old. Might be ok, never can tell 100% for sure,
So while I have 99% decent transactions, It pays to research the seller a little bit.
Once I bought a 1TB SSD a number of years ago....turned out to be a fraudulent listing. Price was too good to be true....4 years ago...But Paypal/Ebay got my money back.
 
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I got my HP G2 from eBay, think it was around £105 but can’t remember, as it was an ex business machine I just installed W10 and it just activated.

Only had an i5-6500 CPU but got it over a year ago now so was a decent enough deal at the time but you do have to keep scanning eBay, think it took me over a month, at the time the average price for the same was well over £150.

All the refurbs I've seen have been over £300 for an i5-2400 or similar low end card. I'm also not keen on Dell and HP and the like because they use their own custom motherboards making updating stuff at a later date impossible. I suppose you could buy another machine, but it depends on getting one again at the right price. Issue I've had is all the ebay refurbs seem to be low end for high price as mentioned previously.
 
Are you sure an i5-2400 is £300, I sold my old i5-2600 for around £80 back in May.

If you’re happy with the CPU then things like RAM and HDD can be easily upgraded. I like the corporate desktops as they are just a complete PC and very efficient and come with corporate tools/utilities so for example I updated and changed BIOS settings remotely as the desktop is on the loft and runs headless.
 
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Just out of curiosity I just had a quick look on eBay, this is the same desktop that I have for £150 or best offer, there are others that are cheaper?

 
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There are dell optiplex i7-6700, with an SSD for around £300 on the UK EBAY , you just need to take your time and look. It took me a little less than a month to find my BI computer on EBAY, a few years ago. I have installed a number of BI system for friends. I have never had a business system mother board fail, memory failures do occur, disk failures do occur.

If you build your own system it will cost more, also you will need to buy windows 10 . Most business computers have windows 10 Pro license available.
Windows 10 clean install use "Microsoft media creation tool"
 
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Yeah, they keep shrinking the PC. I kinda like the Tower size back in the Optiplex 7020/9020 days. But as far as Blue iris, you don't need that Tower size if your trying to use lower amounts of energy. It looks like the HP elite Desk has the right amount of expansion for a NIC and and a 3.5HDD (or 2?) and appears to have 4 ram slots.
I bought a Dell Optiplex 3050 Mini-Tower (MT) on Ebay for $249 i5-6500 for my buddy for his work recently. But I was dissappointed that a tower (MT) format would only have 1 3.5" bay built in. The more they shrink the PC the more I want to build one. It's not even about saving money. I just want some Fn room to put my Fn hands in the GD thing to add/remove hardware. and I wanna cool blue LED fan that glows in the dark :).....ha...
 
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Just out of curiosity I just had a quick look on eBay, this is the same desktop that I have for £150 or best offer, there are others that are cheaper?


Trouble is buying private you have no comeback if the system has issues. I'm personally not going to risk buying others problems. You don't know how much use the system has had and if it's slow and worn out. The answer is refurbs and companies selling refurbs are expensive in the UK. So expensive, I could build a system for around the same price as they're asking for a refurb. I personally hate business machines. Had too much experience of them. They're cut down, made with cheap parts, many parts, eg PSU, Motherboard etc are custom so if they go, you're looking at junking the system or resorting to expnsive OEM sparees depts who'll usualy only repair your pc not sell you the parts or 2nd hand ebay where again you dn't know what you're getting. At least when you build something, everything is off the shelf and easily replaceable. You mention SSD's but SSD's are £20 now, memory, I happen to have 16gb of DDR4 lying around but if I didn't it's still not expenisve. PC case, less than £30 for a straight black case., around £40 for a top branded PSU eg BeQuiet, motherboard around £90 for a good one or £60 for a cheap. You get the point though. CPU Around £169 for a 10400 or less if you go lower. It's not expensive to build. The two expensive items are OS and Surveillance drive. The latter you still need to buy even if you buy 2nd hand / refurb. The former, yep that's the only issue although some people report being able to get a free copy of win 10 still by using the upgrade .exe from MS. It's a gamble on OS.

I take your point that, if you buy 2nd hand and gamble on it being ok, you can pick a machine up privately for very little. However, I'm not prepared to gamble a £few hundred on getting a good machine instead of someone's junk, and as soon as we're in the refurb category, I can build a much better machine with a 10th gen instead of 2nd gen cpu for around the same price, OS aside.
 
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Apart from maybe offering a very limited warranty what do you think the refurb companies actually do? All they do is dust it out, give it a wipe, check that it powers up and then if you’re lucky they might install Windows 10 on it.

With eBay/PayPal, even with a private sale you do have some comeback. When I got my PCs I bench tested them all for 24hrs and then stress tested them for 2-3 hours to make sure that what I had didn’t have problems.
 
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Apart from maybe offering a very limited warranty what do you think the refurb companies actually do? All they do is dust it out, give it a wipe, check that it powers up and then if you’re lucky they might install Windows 10 on it.

With eBay/PayPal, even with a private sale you do have some comeback. When I got my PCs I bench tested them all for 24hrs and then stress tested them for 2-3 hours to make sure that what I had didn’t have problems.

You're relying on ebay for goodwill. You have no legal rights unless it's misdecribed. If it has issues, you have no right to return it. At least with a refurb there's usually some warranty.

I think it's each to their own and before certainly it was ridiculously expensive to build vs buy. Recently parts prices have fallen espeically SSD's and low end PSU. Given the arrival of m.2 and the requirement of large psu's for most gaming GPU based rigs these days. LIke I said personally don't like gambling with my money in buying someone else's problems, I hate business pc's because they're often made with cheap and nasty components that aren't made to last and aren't upgradeable. I undersatnd it's more expensive to build, but that gap is much narrower now to the point where the only real issue is the OS not the parts.

To give you a good example of why I hate business machines, I know 2 brothers who were starting separate businesses. One spent £1.5K on a pc. The other bought a £300 well known brand. 10 yrs later, the 1st was still on his £1.5K pc and it was still fast. The other one's was so slow you could make a cup of tea whilst waiting for it to boot. In terms of productivity, the 1st one could do anythign he wanted instantly. The 2nd one, was stood around waiting for his pc to repsond it was so slow often wasting minutes waiting for it to work, swearing and storming around the office. So the 2nd was £700 in pocket though (disregarging how many thousands of £'s in profits he'd lost whilst waiting for his machine to boot / work). Well no. He was on his 4th well known machine. Every single one had slowed to a crawl within 18-24 months of buying it. That's why I don't like business machines. Open one up and look at what's inside. It's usually not very impressive. Barebones MB's that are ofen custom in size and features making replacement impossible. Poor psu stages and cheap components. A very nasty case. Often a cheap PSU with very marginal power delivery stressing the PSU every day it's on and making upgrades impossible evn if you could which you can't. Memory usually the cheapest possible oem possible at the slowest speed, often 2600 with no xmp. It's each their own but given the almost identical price of buy vs build, OS aside, I know which I'd rather do now parts prices have fallen. The OS remains the bone of contention unless you can buy a junk pc and retreive and the OS key.
 
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Trouble is buying private you have no comeback if the system has issues. I'm personally not going to risk buying others problems. You don't know how much use the system has had and if it's slow and worn out. The answer is refurbs and companies selling refurbs are expensive in the UK. So expensive, I could build a system for around the same price as they're asking for a refurb. I personally hate business machines. Had too much experience of them. They're cut down, made with cheap parts, many parts, eg PSU, Motherboard etc are custom so if they go, you're looking at junking the system or resorting to expnsive OEM sparees depts who'll usualy only repair your pc not sell you the parts or 2nd hand ebay where again you dn't know what you're getting. At least when you build something, everything is off the shelf and easily replaceable. You mention SSD's but SSD's are £20 now, memory, I happen to have 16gb of DDR4 lying around but if I didn't it's still not expenisve. PC case, less than £30 for a straight black case., around £40 for a top branded PSU eg BeQuiet, motherboard around £90 for a good one or £60 for a cheap. You get the point though. CPU Around £169 for a 10400 or less if you go lower. It's not expensive to build. The two expensive items are OS and Surveillance drive. The latter you still need to buy even if you buy 2nd hand / refurb. The former, yep that's the only issue although some people report being able to get a free copy of win 10 still by using the upgrade .exe from MS. It's a gamble on OS.

I take your point that, if you buy 2nd hand and gamble on it being ok, you can pick a machine up privately for very little. However, I'm not prepared to gamble a £few hundred on getting a good machine instead of someone's junk, and as soon as we're in the refurb category, I can build a much better machine with a 10th gen instead of 2nd gen cpu for around the same price, OS aside.
You do have a comeback if it’s a system less than 3 years old. In the us hp offers a 3 year next business day onsite warranty. I have purchased at least 100 of these from eBay over the years never had a single issue. Only a fool would overpay to waste time building. Your prices in the uk are either out of wack or you are not searching properly. No way you could build a machine in the us for anything close. The hp elitedesks are fantastic.
A i5-6500 can be had for 120 with 8gb of memory.
 
I don’t agree re your comments on Corp PSUs. This is one area where they certainly do not skimp and most rate their PSUs to a more true/accurate rating which is why don’t have 750w emblazoned on them.

In your example it’s not clear if the PCs were of the same spec or even how they were used, managed or controlled. I could let my wife loose onto one of my desktops, disable the protection and it’s guaranteed that she’d kill it within a week.
 
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I hate business pc's because they're often made with cheap and nasty components that aren't made to last and aren't upgradeable.
That's just not so. Where do you get that idea?
If it was - the makers of such PCs would soon go out of business as the Corporates would switch to a more reliable source.
 
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As the family and Friends PC support person, I find it easier to manage the Precision laptops, and the Optiplex desktops over the Consumer level PC's with graphics and CPUs and ram welded to the MoBo. It's just the Rabbit hole I went down by chance. Im sure If I got into Hp, I would find the same support i need as a tech. The pleasant thing about Optiplex is the toolless design for adding/removing components. They were designed to be modular for replacing components in IT Support roles, managing large numbers of machines. But the world continues to change. Business PC's have shrunk. sales of PC's are down, profitability is down, and it reflects in the build of the desktop Pc's. I've worked at Microcenter, Circuit City, Office Depot, and watched the machines change over the years.
I have to say, I like building my own pc's, but as for managing other peoples problems it's easier to get them into a business PC rather than a Consumer PC. because I can find a lot of the modular components on the web. As for Blue Iris, the optiplex or Elitedesk is a good way to go if Camera's are part of your Job and not a hobby. Which is how I started out.
I can get the OS up and running and get all the drivers from dells FTP site if somebody bricks a HDD with nasty infections. etc.
If your a moderate gamer you probably built your own PC or upgraded a consumer level box.
Some people enjoy building up their Blue Iris machines, and that fine. But I have 101 other things to do at work, so Security systems have to just work. Which almost makes the case for me to use an NVR and call it a day.
Ultimately the deterrance of just having Camera's hanging off the sides of the building and in the Common areas, has done more for property damage than the hardware going on behind them.
To each his own...
 
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You do have a comeback if it’s a system less than 3 years old. In the us hp offers a 3 year next business day onsite warranty. I have purchased at least 100 of these from eBay over the years never had a single issue. Only a fool would overpay to waste time building. Your prices in the uk are either out of wack or you are not searching properly. No way you could build a machine in the us for anything close. The hp elitedesks are fantastic.
A i5-6500 can be had for 120 with 8gb of memory.

We always get ripped of in the UK. We were paying £100 for trainers you could buy in the US for $30 (around £20 at the exchange rate then), years ago.

Here's what I could price out new: Antec VSK-400B case: £34, BeQuiet Power 11 300W PSU: £42, Gigabyte 120GB SSD: £15, Gigabyte Ultra Durable H460 MB: £84, I5 10400: £170, 8gb 3200mhz memory (added to make it fair, I have some spare personally) Kingston Hyper Fury X £50 - Total= £395 + OS if you can't get it for free / don't have a spare copy on an old pc.

Here are a few UK ebay refurb companies re-sell deals for corporate pc's:

Searching for an i5 8500, bearing in mind it's 2 generations behind the i5 10400 specc'ed above, the refurbed ones range in the £300-400 price range in the majority:


I find it hard to justfiy a potentially well worn 2nd hand machine for only a few £'s difference from new, although I admittedly probably would spend another £10 on a better motherboard such as an MSI Bazooka if building myself. It will take me a long time to save to buy either, but I'd rather buy the spec for only slightly more.


That's just not so. Where do you get that idea?
If it was - the makers of such PCs would soon go out of business as the Corporates would switch to a more reliable source.

I've never known a fast good business machine, at least at the price range the companies I've worked for used to buy. Many companies buy in the £300-400 range and the reason why they're cheap is because the spec is cut right down compared to a home built gaming style pc. I build a home pc and it lasts usually around 10 years and never slows. I never have a problem or have to replace any component (apart from occcassional software glitch) once successfully built. The one I'm typing on now I built in Jan 2012 although it is beginning to show signs of it's age but after 9 years and 16hrs a day 7 days a week, for most of it's life, it owes me nothing. All the office pc's I've ever used including some good brands have been slow, frustrating and had to have repairs. I don't know why you think an office machine would be more reliable than a home built pc using quality components as the price alone prohibits the use of the same quality components such as a motherboard with 105 degree Jap Caps instead of Malaysian etc. and many business machines use custom designed motherboards as a result which are cut down to the bare bones in features and price. They're also often custom sized making any kind of upgrade impossible in the same chassis.

In 2012, as I had more money back then, I bought myself a £750 Dell Laptop with an i5 brand new at the same time as I built my desktop i7. My i7 used all the time as detailed above is still good albeit starting to fade after 9 very hard years. My i5 Dell Laptop, went from fast to slow in 12 months, despite hardly ever being out of the bag being used maybe a dozen times (no viurses or malware). I've wiped it and replaced the OS, put in an SSD but nothing I do makes it quick again, it's painful to wait for it to boot. Everything in it passes hardware / softwware tests. I mention above the experience above of the 2 brothers I knew who went in different directions - gaming vs business pc.

If you want to see inside a Dell, there's a memory replacement video here:



You can see the really cut down motherboard with CPU looking as if it's soldered directly and barebones memory. I doubt it runs xmp either which makes a noticeable difference as you stuck to 2600 no matter what speed you fit without xmp.

At the end of the day each to their own. If there was a massive price difference as there was until recently, then yes I'd say it might be worth buying a refurbed business machine pc as you don't need a gaming spec pc for running BI. However, with the drop in memory and SSD prices, in the UK with refurbs running in the £300-400 bracket for a 2 gen slower cpu than what you can build with for virtually the same price, I see no virtue in buying a cut down business machine, when for almost the same price plus an extra £10 on the motherboard I mentioned above, I can build with a top class Motherboard with quality power stage including Jap Caps, quality PSU, higher quality case etc and more upgradeability due to the use of standard sized replaceable parts. Each to their own choice though. I'm not saying my direction is the right one, just that price for price there's more of a choice now as refurbs aren't anywhere the same value as a year ago.
 
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