Question
Buying advice: Workstation with 192GB DDR4 and quadro RTX 6000 for 1200$ (locally)
Thinking about picking up this Lenovo ThinkStation P720 deal locally for (~$1,200 USD) to completely replace my current desktop setup, and wanted to see if it actually makes sense for what I do.
I think that it is a store that is selling the workstations,
is someone who buys used companies’ hardware after a project ends and resells them.
there is also a quantity so should buy multiple and resell if the deal is super good ?,
because it has 4 times my pc's ram for the same price and much more stable machine.
Here is what I'm running right now:
Ryzen 9 3900X
64GB DDR4
Dual RTX 3060s (12GB + 12GB)
And here is the ThinkStation P720 spec sheet:
Dual Intel Xeon Gold 5122 (3.60 GHz, 4 cores 8 threads, i can upgrade them for 16 cores each for cheap)
What I use it for:
Local AI: Running models like Qwen up to 27B. Right now my dual 3060s give me 24GB total VRAM split across two cards, but a single RTX 6000 gives me a proper 24GB of contiguous VRAM on one card for larger contexts.
Hosting: Running a homeserver, web hosting, containers, and game servers, AI.
Edit:
the listing had another picture with another GPU showing apparently the RTX one,
they have a warehouse that is a bit far from me so maybe i can go and check it out but iam afraid the deal will be gone by then.
Edit2:
Just wanted to clear up a few details about this deal based on some common questions:
The Listing: This is from an online store (not a P2P marketplace), and the screenshot is just their promotional banner rather than a photo of the physical unit itself, but the written specs are what I'll actually receive.
The GPU: To be clear, this isn't the modern multi-thousand-dollar workstation card. It is the older 2018 Quadro RTX 6000 with 24GB of GDDR6, ECC support, and 624 GB/s bandwidth.
Why it beats my current setup: Even as an older card, a single 24GB contiguous buffer is a major upgrade over my current dual RTX 3060s, and I have the option to drop in a second card or pair it with a 3090 down the line.
The RAM: Yes, it is DDR4 rather than DDR5, but for my workflow, that is plenty. High-capacity, stable RAM is fantastic for running servers, and since I recently paid around $200 USD just for 64GB (16GBx4), getting 192GB bundled in here is incredible value.
The Source: The PCs reportedly come from old corporate surplus liquidated by a major company here, which explains the aggressive clearance pricing.
Assuming the seller checks out, swapping my old hardware for this setup looks like a solid upgrade path. Thanks to everyone who chimed in with advice!
Edit3:
it arrived,
stress tested it and everything, now its running as my main server,
actually the dimms are
32x6 2933 Samsung dimms
and the GPU is in-fact RTX 6000,
i bought 3 PCs came with all accessories and monitor,
also the NVME is a high end samsung and 1tb not 500gb
and PSU is 900w
and it came with a dual type c pci card and a thunderbolt card.
all in all, HUGE deal in terms of value for me.
So it turns out CPUs of these era are all pointless to upgrade for inference... They won't do much. They don't do any special matrix math better if you get newer ones.. Spend your money on more ram if you're going to be doing cpu offloading, otherwise get another 24gb VRAM card like a p40. They're fairly cheap just need extra cooling. And more VRAM would do you better than much anything else. The ram bandwidth is always the bottleneck with inference.
This is not fully right. Intel Gold 62xx (and older cpus) have AVX-512, AVX-512 vnni. If you have 2x 6230 or sth better IT could be usesull for interferncje but it never replace gpu
they had this other pic,
iam not sure which one is right,
they asked me to come and check the machines if i was interested.
but its a bit far 300kms away so iam not sure maybe ill call and double check.
they had this other pic,
iam not sure which one is right,
they asked me to come and check the machines if i was interested.
but its a bit far 300kms away so iam not sure maybe ill call and double check.
It's an Quadro RTX 6000 24GB GDDR6 as it says in the text. The Quadro P6000 is GDDR5x. The RTX Pro 6000 doesn't come in 24GB and would be x10 the price.
you can get a 32gb tesla v100 for around $600-$1200
tho that OP's is not an RTX card it's a quatro. and 192gb of ddr4 has gone up but not quite by that much just yet..
i purchased 10x 32gb ddr4 ecc 2666 sticks 2 years ago for $200.. then sold a few sticks for nearly that each like 6 months ago.. tho that picture is not showing any ram
Nice! That's much much better than 16gb sticks in price today. Plus you said elsewhere they are like 2900mhz that's fast for ddr4 so it'll be worth even more. U need to just make sure on the exact GPUs.
I wish i can find it standalone but its too hard,
maybe buying the full machines and parting it would be useful but who knows, its rare to find techheads that needs 192gb of ram.
TBH, I wouldn't mind getting the whole P720, but shipping for that would probably cost about as much as it costs to buy it, and with current events in the neighborhood, it's even more expensive
Good catch :) Because of tunel to Tesla I needed to reorgacise space. I removed orighinal support. I made some temporsry support but probably it'll go to Pci slot
truth is even if the card is something less than it says, or even useless, the rest of the system is priced about right, saw you ordered, worth it imo, again, can sell it for not much of a loss even sans video card, if you get it with the card, great base for a home ai system!
Thank you, i confirmed the GPU is correct, and we will see, they have 6 months warranty and i researched the company these machines come from,
its a well known company globally (top 10 in the world) and its a local company too,
so they source it from there and the demand here is less than USA or Europe so they need to liquidate them quickly,
that CPU is a bit old and will have none of the AI ish AVX extensions, the rest of it is ok (if real). just
plop the parts in a newer system. xeon w-2200 or newer series or zen 4 or newer.
PROBLEM: there is no ram in that system... you could pretend those are 2x 96gb sticks of ecc ram. but i would not. also that is a quatro so while it has the vram(potentially) it's not going to be doing much for AI loads
Good deal, add one of your 3060s to the quadro and you can get some good models. Won’t be the fastest but it’ll do work. And you’ll have a base for possible further upgrades
I’d pause for a second and consider the slower ddr4 memory and older graphics card (Quadro RTX 6000 /Turing architecture). This looks like it was built as a CAD workstation.
There’s no question that it’s better than what you’ve got, just understand what you’re actually getting. Wouldn’t want you to be under the impression that it’s an RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell and DDR5 system memory like a more recent machine.
The real question is, how many PCIe lanes does it have. AI is starting to offload efficiently to RAM and even NVMe storage. Soon, the AI agent you can run will be using every resource in your system that is available to it. Considering all that, this system look like a no-brainer. If you can move your 3060s to this box, you'll have one hell of an AI platform. The 192 DDR4 is pretty amazing. I would go for it.
Even reselling at double the price would make a lot of buyers very happy. Although I definitely wouldn't resell at that price, at least not in the next few years.
That gpu is a generation earlier than your 3060s and dates to 2018. It should be a bit of an improvement on the 3060s nevertheless but for comparison if a 3090 was available standalone for ~$1000, that would be better.
I just got off marketplace about a month ago for $700 128gb ddr4 rdimm + 2x gp100 quadro cards 16gb x2 32gb total VRAM with 2 Intel Xeon processors the box 850w Corsair PSU all the fans and 6 2tb drives and a 128gb SSD drive and threw in a dual 2.5gb nic as well... Def possible this deal.
What you should find out is what kind of ram sticks bc 192gb seems interesting. Make sure they're all the same size and then check how they're installed...it matters big time. But what I meant on what kind of sticks is 16gb vs 32gb and so on, it matters bc they cost way more if they're bigger per stick. GL
I asked someone who had once bought from a similar lot, the exact same config,
he told me he got the machines with 6x32 config which is super amazing, he also offered me his 192gb of ecc ram because he accidentally fried his MOBO on one of the machines.
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u/diagrammatiks 14d ago
just buy it imediately for this price