Hi everyone! An acquaintance retired and had a relatively unused spare HP workstation that they gifted to me on top of billed hours, not wanting to deal with a last minute liquidation (yay).
At home I run a couple of Ryzen 3000 and 5000 systems for video production and broadcast gigs and my to-do list has a storage NAS as a high priority (video streaming and backup) and a home server/networking lab as a lower priority (mostly to stay current with Cisco and Nokia). I have not had a need for anything more than the consumer 16c/32t offerings from the Ryzen 3000 and 5000 series for my workflow and as such never was in the market for workstation grade hardware.
Aside from the PCI lanes and Intel AMT, the 16c/32t 4216 seems overkill for a storage NAS. What use cases could I use to justify building off of the 4216 for my home office, knowing my current to-do list? Power efficiency is somewhat a concern for me (the home NAS currently has a Ryzen 3600 set aside for it) and at a glance, I do not think the 4216 would enhance my video production workflow. Am I better off selling the workstation otherwise?
Consider distributed computing. Add a decent GPU to the workstation and have it run in parallel to your regular video rendering system(s). As such, it doesn’t need to be on all the time, so using the WoL function (perhaps it has an IPMI onboard? If so, use that) you can wake it remotely when you need it and put it back to sleep (off, actually) when the renderings are done.
It’ll improve your render times, but does come at the cost of a change to your workflow. How much you’re prepared to accept these changes is up to you
Thanks for chiming in! I haven’t gotten to the point where I have enough projects on bench that require another machine on top of what I already have (4 Ryzen based systems on hand). Even if I did, this workstation’s value seems too expensive vs building another consumer machine or looking at a Zen 2 threadripper system. If a 4216 is somewhat liquid below what I’m seeing it at from server equipment outlets, I’d rather sell and build a new machine if and when it’s needed.
I’m more inquiring if there’s anything interesting I can do with a 4216-based machine over a Ryzen-based machine that isn’t energy or budget inefficient, knowing that I’m largely looking to build a NAS in the near future but am also open to homelab projects beyond networking.
For starters, Ryzen is much more (energy) efficient then a comparable Intel machine. That said, Intel does have the raw clock-speed advantage and as many programs are optimised for Intel CPU’s you may (or not) save a bit of time. How much depends on the intensity of the job, especially core counts. Which is where AMD shines
