HP Z420 Workstation E5-1607 Quad Core 3Ghz 32GB 2TB Dual DVI No OS

Pros: Flexible powerhouse! Lots of ram expand-ability. Xeon options.
The Vendor dose an excellent job of packing these!

Cons: Bios is very sensitive to trying to activate UEFI bios settings with non UEFI video cards (it just so happens that these pc’s come with NON UEFI video cards. Any modern video card will fix that. (cheep Gforce 710)
These use Server RAM! ECC

Overall Review: Know what you are getting into when you buy one of these!

Pros: Like the other reviewer said, the company does an amazing job of packing these. They are put into a giant static bag that is securely taped. You will need scissors. the corners are wrapped in foam and the 2 sides are also foamed. The case was beautiful. The inside of the computer was pristine.

It came with everything listed. It had a terabyte drive 16 gigs of Ram, and it does have 2 DVIs. With that being said, it’s not a standard video card with 2 DVIs, and I looked up the card before I purchased. It should have had 2 DVIs in the card. Instead, it came with a weird port and a 2 DVI splitter. The seller includes that cord. It also contained the power cord, and I would recommend using it. I also think it has 2 displayports built into it. One in the front and one in the back.

The computer is FAST. I haven’t seen any lag yet, and I don’t expect to with 16 gigs of RAM.

Cons: I ordered it with no Operating system. Yes, I knew what I was getting into. I’m a long time linux user.

But I couldn’t get linux mint to install. After about 6 tries, the last one being the show me the code while you load, I realized I had a major problem. Everything was an error. I made a new disk with Ubuntu 20.something. That loaded from the CD entirely. When I went to install, it told me I had no harddrive. My eyes bugged out of my head, and I cracked open the case. There’s a harddrive in there. But what is this cable? The SATA! I tried to connect it. It was broken. It probably had a hairline crack when it shipped, and shipping probably finished it off. For those who don’t know, the SATA cable is the cable that tells your computer that you have a harddrive. Without it, you have a very heavy paperweight or desk ornament. I happened to have a broken computer laying around with a SATA cable in it, so I just swapped them out, but not everyone is going to have an extra SATA cable laying around. Not to mention, it took me about 2 hours to realize my problem was with a busted SATA cable, not with my linux CD or some incompatibility with the BIOS and hardware. I expect linux to be a PITA. I don’t expect my installation problem to be a broken internal cable. So the reason for 3 stars is that SATA cable. If the sata cable had been good, and I could have gotten this up and running in 20 to 30 minutes, it woulda been a 5-star.

Overall Review: Now that the computer is up and running, it looks like it’s going to be a good machine. I’ve only been running it for about 20 minutes, but quite honestly, my other machine would be lagging by this point. There’s no lag, and so far I have 11 browser tabs open, which is how I start my day.

If you’re wondering how you start a machine with no O/S.

Set it up and plug it in.
Turn it on.
Wait for the disk error
Insert your installation disk
Hit enter

For a machine with no broken internal components, getting this up and running should only take as long as it takes you to plug everything in, turn it on and install your operating system.