Author Topic: What is a heaviest 'desktop' you ever own or work(-ing) on? (Read 9634 times)

olkipukki · « **on:** October 23, 2019, 09:39:14 pm »

subj?

I recently moved around an updated case with new components inside and thought it really heavy...

wait a minute, I thought, nothing can beat IBM IntelliStation Power 285 that used to be over 40 kg (!!!!!) and loud as

server stacks don't count

Updated:

Everything that fall in the following classification:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_computer

Code: [Select]

"A desktop computer is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk or table due to its size and power requirements. "

with amendments "personal computer designed" => "~~personal~~ computer (re-)designed"

NiHaoMike · « **Reply #1 on:** October 24, 2019, 01:27:13 am »

Haven't seen one in real life, but the multi CPU workstations with phase change cooling must weigh a lot.

Nominal Animal · « **Reply #2 on:** October 24, 2019, 03:02:32 am »

Funnily enough, I prefer large heavy wooden cases, as it is easier to keep them silent, even when turning a couple of hundred to a few hundred watts into waste heat.

It is particularly relevant with spinning disk drives, if you have any locally. (Use a large drive chassis with extra mass for dampening, and suspend that on foam and/or rubber, to isolate the noise they generate.) Typical DVD-RW drives are harder to quieten.

Black Phoenix · « **Reply #3 on:** October 24, 2019, 03:33:37 am »

Well some years ago, way back on 2008 my desktop was heavy as hell too:

Coolermaster Stacker 832;
Drive Caddy with 4x 146GB 10000RPM WD1500HLFS in Raid 10;
DVD Reader and DVD Writer Drives;
AMD Athlon FX-60 Skt 939 with a Zalman 9700 LED cooler;
Asus A8N32-SLI with 2x Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2, so basically 4 GPUs in 2 Slot PCI-e in SLI;
Corsair HX1000 Power Supply;

That thing would weight a ton, to be sincere, just the case was around 15kg, the CPU cooler close to 800g, the PSU 2kg, etc... More that 25Kg all the stuff on the tower.

I still kept the Tower for all this years, for some day a new build, with custom inside panels to modernise the tower itself for the current market trends.

mengfei · « **Reply #4 on:** October 24, 2019, 08:35:39 am »

I have a Gigabyte Poseidon case which is fully loaded, with bays filled with drives & is around 20KG+!
had this for like 10yrs now & my last cpu update was a Phenom which i should probably change to ryzen now

case alone is already 9KG! Lan Party anyone?lol

martin1454 · « **Reply #5 on:** October 24, 2019, 08:43:39 am »

I used to have a big-ass homemade PC.

It was taller than from the floor to my desk, weighed around 45-50kg and was not fun to move

It was a custom water cooled PC built in a Corsair 900D cabinet.
2x 480mm radiator
1x 240mm radiator
2L resivour

2x GTX780 with water block
I7 4770K
32GB ram
1,5TB SSD and then a shit ton of mixed HDD for a total of 9TB storrage.

zzattack · « **Reply #6 on:** October 24, 2019, 11:21:40 am »

Bought a coolermaster cosmos 2 many years back, because I thought it looked like a high quality build, with lots of room for upgrades, while being silent. Reviews great and all, couldn't go wrong with it. Except that the bare thing is 22kg, once stuffed with some hard disks and a massive CPU cooler we're nearing 30kg's.
Changing stuff on the inside is supposed to be super easy due to the swinging doors, but in my case this is purely a downside. The PC is next to my desk besides the wall, so there's nowhere for the doors to go. I have to unplug everything first so all in all... not the best purchase ever.

Rerouter · « **Reply #7 on:** October 24, 2019, 12:05:56 pm »

4x 2.5" SSD's = 0.3 kG
19x 3.5" Hard Drives = 12.4 Kg
Fractal design R5 Case = 12.8 Kg
Additional Drive Bays = 2 Kg
Noctura D14 Cpu Cooler = 1.1 Kg
PSU = 3 Kg
GPU = 2 Kg
Raid Card = 0.6 Kg
Fans = 1 Kg
Motherboard = 1 Kg
Sata Cables = 0.6Kg
PSU Cables = Something

So current workstation is at least 37 Kg, and yes you do need to to search long and hard for a short enough high end GPU to allow that many drive bays in that case.

Also quiet enough to sleep next to with the sides off.

Ampera · « **Reply #8 on:** October 24, 2019, 01:43:43 pm »

If you mean servers aren't allowed, then I suppose my heaviest desktop machine would be my iMac G3. Not fiercely impressive in weight, but CRTs aren't light either.

If servers /are/ allowed, then my IBM eServer 235 would win the heavy metal box game within my collection. It's a 4U server with dual 600W PSUs, Ultra320 SCA-80 hotswap bays for up to 6 drives (max capacity 300GB each). It's honestly my neatest system, with dual IA-32 P4-era Xeons, real PAE support up to 12GB of RAM, dual RS-485 and gigabit ethernet, lotsa PCI-X, and its most interesting party trick, hot-swappable PCI-X (which I believe not only requires the slot/controller to support it, but the card and OS to support it as well, restricting it primarily to NICs and maybe HBAs on Server 2003).

legacy · « **Reply #9 on:** October 24, 2019, 03:42:32 pm »

We don't have a lot of machines of our property, we have some but they are our customers' property, and the heaviest desktop we have is an HP C8K. It's weight is around 20Kg, and it's not too bad.

SiliconWizard · « **Reply #10 on:** October 24, 2019, 05:21:52 pm »

My current PC workstation is about 25kg. Which is already heavier than I'd like.
I don't think I have ever owned a computer than was actually heavier than this. Desktop PC components, with the exception of storage (SSDs are much lighter than HDDs), have not really decreased in weight. Rather the opposite in fact.

I've occasionally worked on servers much heavier than this overall, but they were all rack-mount, so technically, not desktop machines.

mc6800 · « **Reply #11 on:** February 11, 2020, 04:58:14 pm »

I'm not sure it counts as a desktop (it was floor standing), but in the late 70s I worked on a Sharp BA2700 "business computer". This beast had dual 8" disks, a 25"+ printer platen with two sets of tractor feeders, a magnetic card reader, keyboard, and a numeric display (no fancy CRT here!).

The usual approach was to boot-load via the card reader, and then continue reading code from one of the disk drives. Alternatively a small boot loader could be loaded using the numeric keypad and special purpose keys.

MarkF · « **Reply #12 on:** February 11, 2020, 06:39:06 pm »

SGI Octane2 @ 54 lbs

Also, the Onyx2

Cerebus · « **Reply #13 on:** February 11, 2020, 09:08:34 pm »

I used to have an Apollo dn3500 on my desk (along with an RS/6000 and a SparcStation 1+). The Apollo's system unit weighed 21.4 kg and the 19" monitor that came with it 38.6 kg for a grand total of 60 kg (132 lb).

reboots · « **Reply #14 on:** February 11, 2020, 10:51:07 pm »

The largest computer I've ever used for a personal desktop was an NCR 3434, a curious IBM PS/2 compatible server with a 486DX33, 32MB of RAM, a whole lot of Micro Channel slots, and six full-height SCSI drive bays. I substituted a 100MHz i486 OverDrive for a much-needed speed boost, installed several ~300MB Maxtor full-height SCSI drives, and made a cool mounting sled and harness for three third-height(!) 2x SCSI CD-ROM drives I found. For a time I was one of a few people in the world running MCA Linux, patched against the 2.0.29 kernel supplied with Slackware 3.2. It was a very reliable workstation, if extremely loud and warm.

I never weighed it, and it wasn't exactly a desktop, being designed to match the height and depth of a typical desk for use alongside. Someone else's pictures of a 3434 here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Computer_Systems#Partners

Halcyon · « **Reply #15 on:** February 11, 2020, 10:55:05 pm »

My HP ML350 - It's over 30 KG.

bsudbrink · « **Reply #16 on:** February 11, 2020, 11:07:53 pm »

Just so I'm clear here..
Desktop, all on top of one desk:

Altair 8800b (big linear power supply, heavy steel box)
Dual 8 in floppy drives (big linear power supply, heavy steel box)
10 inch 20 megabyte hard drive (big linear power supply, heavy steel box)
Teletype KSR33 (big and heavy, even without the paper tape punch/reader)
13 inch color TV set (for DAZZLER graphics)

Must be 200 pounds, easy... And, of course, fans everywhere.

pcmad · « **Reply #17 on:** February 12, 2020, 02:45:06 am »

2 full u36 rackmounts holding full san SCSI array (mostly hp msa 1000 each array had 14 3 1/3 10k drives each est total 200-400 drives) 18+ servers (mostly hp prolant servers) plus supporting hardware it took a estate car and trailer to transport it let just say car and trailer was on its ass

Cerebus · « **Reply #18 on:** February 12, 2020, 11:12:13 am »

People are stretching 'desktop system' to breaking point here: obvious desk-side boxes like the ML350, whole racks full of kit...

bd139 · « **Reply #19 on:** February 12, 2020, 11:30:37 am »

Sun SPARCserver 1000E. Was jammed with 4x XDbus cards with 2x 100MHz hyperSPARC processors on each. Fully stacked with 2Gb of RAM. This had an external SPARCstorage array of 2.1Gb SCSI disks. System unit was around 35kg and disk array was about the same!

I skip dived most of the unit which was 3 years old at the time and managed to get a keyboard and monitor off yahoo auctions for virtually nothing. It had cost the company just under £900,000 when they bought it (with disk arrays - not sure how populated it was as the arrays were empty when I got it and I only took one enclosure) and was worth £800 on the open market when I shifted it. Crazy depreciation around then!!!

And yes it departed pretty damn quickly when I got the electricity bill.

System unit and disk array:

Mine also had a 21" Trinitron (weighed enough on its own!) and the usual sun type 5 keyboard and mouse as well as a whole crate of manuals.

MarkF · « **Reply #20 on:** February 13, 2020, 12:26:56 am »

Quote from: Cerebus on February 12, 2020, 11:12:13 am

People are stretching 'desktop system' to breaking point here: obvious desk-side boxes like the ML350, whole racks full of kit...

Not at all...
This is stretching it!

And it doesn't even include the 2nd room.

nigelwright7557 · « **Reply #21 on:** February 13, 2020, 01:51:05 am »

I have a very light system, not even a plug in graphics card. Saves a fortune on electric bills.
A bit slower than a separate graphics card but usable.

The worst PC systems for weight usually have a built in monitor.

Halcyon · « **Reply #22 on:** February 13, 2020, 03:20:11 am »

Quote from: Cerebus on February 12, 2020, 11:12:13 am

People are stretching 'desktop system' to breaking point here: obvious desk-side boxes like the ML350, whole racks full of kit...

What's wrong with using an ML350 server as a "desktop" machine? It's extremely capable (albeit a bit noisy). Most people I know who have normal consumer mid-tower cases place them on the floor, does that mean they aren't desktops either?

jake111 · « **Reply #23 on:** February 13, 2020, 03:31:38 am »

I have a Leading Edge MP-1676L with the original keyboard and green screen TTL monitor all new in box. I've been working up the nerve to open it all but I kind of want to find someone who has a DC-2011E in good shape with EGA monitor who would trade. I don't know how much it all weighs but it must be more than 60lbs total.

george.b · « **Reply #24 on:** February 13, 2020, 06:10:39 am »

I have an HP9000/847 like this one:

I'm not sure how much it weighs, but I think it's in the vicinity of 50kg, especially with the full height 5.25" hard drives. Granted, it's a deskside, not a desktop. My heaviest real desktop is one like this:

According to the manual, it weights 18kg/40lb.

(None of the pics are mine, can't be arsed to go take them, found some on the internet for illustration purposes only).


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Author Topic: What is a heaviest 'desktop' you ever own or work(-ing) on? (Read 9634 times)

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