Is the HP XW9400 a good PC for my needs?

Hi there.

I’m looking for some opinions on a PC I have been offered.

After slowing adding upgrades onto my old PC, I’ve now decided to get a brand new, high spec rig for both work and gaming. I work with audio, so require a PC with good processing power to run large quantities of effects and to play video smoothly with audio. I also require large amounts of ram so that I can work with a large number of tracks. I have already looked at macs, but having worked with them for 3 years, I have decided that for my own computer, I’d like a PC – especially because I am a gamer.

I don’t have the exact specs of my old PC and can’t check because it sadly broke down and isn’t repairable. However, they included:

Intel Quad Core Processor @ 2.4 GHz (4 CPUs)
4GB Ram
600W Arctic Jeantech PSU
AMD Radeon 6870 Hawk Graphics Card
360GB HD

This rig ran fairly well, but had some trouble running video smoothly as my audio projects increased in size. When recording, I had to keep my audio buffer size at around 90 – 200 samples.

Originally, I was going to spend £1000+ on this new build, however, after visiting a computer repair shop, I’ve been given another option. I’ve been offered an HP XW9400 workstation. Again, apologies that these are slightly rough – The rig has slightly different specs to what is listed online, but is roughly:

2 X Dual-Core AMD Opteron™ Processors 2200 @ 2.8GHz (Also Hyper Threaded) + water cooling
1000W PSU
16GB Ram
400GB HD

This rig apparently cost about £5000 when it was first released. This one is being sold for £450 and is in very good condition. I was told it would handle anything I could throw at it audio wise. It also meant I had a larger budget to buy a good Graphics card and a larger HD (probably 1TB).

My concern is that the reviews for this rig are 6 years old. What do you guys think? Is this a good rig and could it match more recently technology? If I were to add a high end Graphics card would there be any danger of bottle necks? Obviously this is a rig I want to last me – would this do the job?