Dell Precision T5400 for transcoding & general use?

[technogeekery]

Hi all - would like your expert advice & comments on the following please:

Have been wanting to build or buy a desktop machine to replace an aging and struggling laptop that we use as our family PC (Dell Inspiron 1720 C2D) We are building up a decent video collection, and I do quite a bit of ripping, transcoding etc for different playback formats (HD, Nook Color etc). I also do a lot of music mixing, a little video editing, so its really a moderate processing requirement - but the C2D machien struggles and I hate waiting. I'm not much of a PC gamer (got a PS3 for that) but wouldn't mind being able to play some games, and watch HD movies from it. So I'd been looking at building or buying a Core i5/i7 machine with a few TB of storage to be my workhorse for the next 3-4 years, and coming out at the $1200-1500 mark.

Then I was offered a T5400 for a ridiculously cheap price ($400) and I reckon this will do everything I'm after with a tweak or two:

2x Xeon X5460 quad core @ 3.16 Ghz (1333 FSB, 12Mb L2 cache)
16Gb RAM (8x 2Gb FB-DIMM DDR2 SD RAM (ECC) @ 667Mhz)
DVD-ROM
2x 1TB Hitachi Ultrastar Sata 3 7200RPM HDD
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 440 256MB PCIe Graphics Card (for multi-monitor use)
PCI card with 2x IEEE1394
Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP monitor
875 W PSU
Vista Pro (I have upgrade version of Win7)

It is in great condition, and with addition of a BluRay reader I reckon it will make a good all-round workhorse for a few years yet - PassMark shows these processors still pack a punch compared to i5/i7. Do you agree / disagree? Any suggestions for upgrades & mods?

Thanks!

What do you think - reckon this will meet my needs

 

[noonin]

First of all, that sounds like a hell of a deal with the hardware that's in it ;-). I'm sure you'll be very happy with the upgrade over the Inspiron and it seems crazy to spend an $800+ to build one at this point.

 

[technogeekery]

Thanks, I think you are right

 

[raulizahi]

Recently I have been benchmarking Transcoding PCs/Servers.
There is no competition to the new Sandy Bridge processors for real-time Video Transcoding. The most powerful Westmere-EP, even with custom SW, cannot do more than 1.5 HD streams. Of the new Sandy Bridge-based machines even the lowly i3-2100 can do 3+ HD streams with MediaExpresso or Badaboom.
So the machine above sounds awesome but Intel's Sandy Bridge has the most amazing video transcoding capabilities ever.
I was able to put together an awesome video transcoding machine for less than $600.
In PCs, for video transcoding there is nothing better in the market than Sandy Bridge-based systems.

RAUL

Hi all - would like your expert advice & comments on the following please:

Have been wanting to build or buy a desktop machine to replace an aging and struggling laptop that we use as our family PC (Dell Inspiron 1720 C2D) We are building up a decent video collection, and I do quite a bit of ripping, transcoding etc for different playback formats (HD, Nook Color etc). I also do a lot of music mixing, a little video editing, so its really a moderate processing requirement - but the C2D machien struggles and I hate waiting. I'm not much of a PC gamer (got a PS3 for that) but wouldn't mind being able to play some games, and watch HD movies from it. So I'd been looking at building or buying a Core i5/i7 machine with a few TB of storage to be my workhorse for the next 3-4 years, and coming out at the $1200-1500 mark.

Then I was offered a T5400 for a ridiculously cheap price ($400) and I reckon this will do everything I'm after with a tweak or two:

2x Xeon X5460 quad core @ 3.16 Ghz (1333 FSB, 12Mb L2 cache)
16Gb RAM (8x 2Gb FB-DIMM DDR2 SD RAM (ECC) @ 667Mhz)
DVD-ROM
2x 1TB Hitachi Ultrastar Sata 3 7200RPM HDD
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 440 256MB PCIe Graphics Card (for multi-monitor use)
PCI card with 2x IEEE1394
Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP monitor
875 W PSU
Vista Pro (I have upgrade version of Win7)

It is in great condition, and with addition of a BluRay reader I reckon it will make a good all-round workhorse for a few years yet - PassMark shows these processors still pack a punch compared to i5/i7. Do you agree / disagree? Any suggestions for upgrades & mods?

Thanks!

What do you think - reckon this will meet my needs

 

[technogeekery]

Thanks for that Raul - I'm sure you are right, I'd prefer an i7 machine, but can't come out anywhere near the price you mention, so I've gone for this deal - I think it will be a major improvement for me at an unbeatable price. Cheers