XW8200 vs XW8400

I have owned both of these rather chunky HP desktop computers, both of which would be certainly capable of being used as a server, they both can take 4 internal hard drives, and run dual processors. They both have 3 full length 5.25" drive bay at the front end.

But from there on in they are rather different.

Feature	XW8200	XW8400
Processors	2 x Xeon	2 x Xeon
FSB	800	1066 / 1333
Processor Tech	Hyper Threading	Cores
Max Freq	3.8	3.0
Max Cores	2 (4 Threads)	8
SATA Ports	2	4
SCSI	Yes	No
SAS	No	Yes
IDE	Yes	Yes
PSU	650 W	900 W
PCI	4	4
PCI x 8	1	1
PCI x 16	1	3

XW8200 Pros / For

might have a vote for its quietness (so long as you swap out the rear fan).
wide choice of storage controllers

XW8200 Cons / Against

The old style xeons run soooooo hot, which heats the room (seriously) annoying in summer.
Limited to 2 cores all be it with HT (4 threads).

XW8400 Pros / For

Pretty quick.

Up to 8 cores.

true 64 bit

masses of SATA storage up to 8 drives using SAS controller.

processors run nice and cool

XW8400 Cons / Against

noisy

memory runs hot and will need a RAM fan (comes supplied with one of these)

Power Consumption running 2 processors, SSD and 1 TB store is around 200W.

VERDICT

XW8400 every time, unless you have some older drives you would like to use.


More details on XW8200

More details on XW8400


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