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pastrychef's testing machine - HP Elite 8300 SFF - i7-3770 - GT 630

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For anyone in the UK there are a few on eBay UK. Both the SFF and the Tower. I am highly tempted to get one but hoping for Sierra support confirmation before pulling the trigger.

If you're planning on running 10.12 on this machine you will most likely need to replace the CPU. Recommend going with a Core 2 Quad Q9400 and higher.
 
If you're planning on running 10.12 on this machine you will most likely need to replace the CPU. Recommend going with a Core 2 Quad Q9400 and higher.

If that is the case then I will have to build my own rig as per the custom builds. I was hoping to have the speedier i7 for video editing and encoding.
 
If that is the case then I will have to build my own rig as per the custom builds. I was hoping to have the speedier i7 for video editing and encoding.

If you're going to use a hack for Video editing like i do then i recommend using a i7. Core 2 Quad will be slow but will do render and exporting just fine.
 
If you're going to use a hack for Video editing like i do then i recommend using a i7. Core 2 Quad will be slow but will do render and exporting just fine.

Yes I will be sticking with an i7. Is there any reason the HP will not work with Sierra 10.12? Is it the system or the CPU itself? I should therefore avoid any 3770 builds?
 
Yes I will be sticking with an i7. Is there any reason the HP will not work with Sierra 10.12? Is it the system or the CPU itself? I should therefore avoid any 3770 builds?

Some older Core 2 CPUs don't have SSE 4.1 like newer CPUs. 10.12 requires SSE 4.1 CPUs. The Elite 8300 is Ivy Bridge which will be fine.
 
Some older Core 2 CPUs don't have SSE 4.1 like newer CPUs. 10.12 requires SSE 4.1 CPUs. The Elite 8300 is Ivy Bridge which will be fine.

Similar to the OP I was looking at this HP Elite 8300 which comes with I7 3770 3.4 3RD GEN. Add a SSD and a second hand GTX 750 and this machine should fly with 10.11 and 10.12! You probably couldn't build something close to this as the OP has mentioned. The link was for any other UK enthusiasts who wanted something similar.
 
Similar to the OP I was looking at this HP Elite 8300 which comes with I7 3770 3.4 3RD GEN. Add a SSD and a second hand GTX 750 and this machine should fly with 10.11 and 10.12! You probably couldn't build something close to this as the OP has mentioned. The link was for any other UK enthusiasts who wanted something similar.
Looks like a reasonable deal. The pics on Ebay show a single 8GB DIMM of ram installed. If that is the actual one you receive, replace it with a 16 GB kit of Crucial Ballistix Sport 1600 MHz so you can run in dual channel mode, important for CustoMacs. You also have the option to use a GTX 950 GPU. There a a few manufacturers that have a version that gets all it's power from the PCI-E slot. No 6 Pin connector is needed for supplemental power.
 
I tried running a Q9550S CPU on a PC that I found in the trash. I successfully installed El Capitan on it and it worked fine but performance was less than desirable. Everything just felt a bit sluggish.

In contrast, the i7-3770 feels very snappy especially with a good SSD. The leaps in CPU generations is easily noticeable even just in Finder. In my opinion, using the system with i7-3770 is pleasant, whereas using the system with Q9550S isn't.
 
I tried running a Q9550S CPU on a PC that I found in the trash. I successfully installed El Capitan on it and it worked fine but performance was less than desirable. Everything just felt a bit sluggish.

In contrast, the i7-3770 feels very snappy especially with a good SSD. The leaps in CPU generations is easily noticeable even just in Finder. In my opinion, using the system with i7-3770 is pleasant, whereas using the system with Q9550S isn't.

Most likely because you have no Powermanagement.
 
I would assume that without power management, the Q9550S would operate at full speed all the time which would in turn give me every bit of horsepower it has to offer. Yet, it still feels vastly inferior when compared to an i7-3770.
 
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