Thinkstation P500 - opinions

[mazzinia]

Hello,

I'm considering the option of getting one and I was wondering if anyone here would know possible issues , quirks , reasons to avoid , and so on.
One of my worries is the highly proprietary psu.

[slackie]

Bump! I see some of them going for quite reasonble prices on ebay.

[mazzinia]

hello,

thanks for bumping. I've ended going a totally different route, in the form of the so called 'offer you cannot refuse' (add your godfather voice there).
Dell Precision T7820 reasonably loaded ( dual silver 4110, 32gb, 1tb nvme pcie, quadro p600 ) with warranty until july 2021, for 750. Went over my personal decided budget but felt it was good to not let it go.
I've to say I like it, aside the sound of one fan.. and the way the quadro behaves with my monitors ( and the fact this quadro is nothing special ).

[slackie]

Wow, congrats to a good deal buddy. Did a quick google - are those caddies in the front hot swapable?

[mazzinia]

Thanks ( I think he may still have one or two to "dispose" of. This is one of those funny stories where some company boss got brainwashed somehow to swap to hp because they are sexier looking... )
Yes, that's correct.

4 hot swappable caddies, in dell flexbays. The caddies are plastic and made to accomodate both 3.5" and 2.5" drives (sas and sata, but to actually use sas, requires a raid controller. There's no basic sas option onboard like in an hp Z820/840), and I'm not sure how long lasting if inserting/reinserting a lot... the left one gets out without applying any force, but the right one ( next to the side panel ) requires force.
If they used metal caddies like in the servers I would think it would have been way better.

There's one caveat... if a nvme pcie is used, the 2 topmost bays are converted to Sas pcie ( connected to an U.2 intel controller on the mb ), and can accomodate only pcie m.2 if the adapter is installed in the bay ( the 2nd bay is left with the caddy but is not usable unless fitting the m.2 adapter or maybe using directly an optane u.2 intel drive in the caddy ).
So in this case you are down to 2 hdd bays, effectively.

Then there's a laptop sized bay for a dvd/smart card reader ( optional both ), and a 5 1/4 bay for a standard dvd or an adapter to install 1 extra hdd or 2 extra 2.5".
It's a bit unclear how easy it is to find and install/plug the cables if adding any of these options ( any video shows only how to install the hw, not the power / sata cables )

[slackie]

Thanks alot for the info! I will for sure expand my search to include Dell. Im currently browsing ebay and Swedish Tradera (part of ebay).

Are you running it as server or workstation?

[mazzinia]

Workstation.
Believe it or not, i'm still having data to move over because I keep not getting convinced what to buy as data hdd ( as brand / model and also as a good price bargain ).
Do you want me to ask if the seller has still those 2 identical units ? (warning, original price was 899, somehow he went himself down to 750 when I mentioned it was over my budget)

[slackie]

Thanks for being so kind - no need to go through the hassle. I am located in Sweden and I assume the seller is not listed on ebay?

[mazzinia]

No, the seller is in Berlin and not on ebay. He was briefly on a classified sites ( germany ) and that's how I got mine... I took a risk (but he accepted paypal goods, so no real risk) and it paid off. After I received it, i started chatting by email and that's how I found out why they got changed, and that he had still 2 more.
Company specific data was provided so the warranty got regularly transferred to me in 2 days.