My undergrad is selling a few old HP Z420 workstations for $20. Vitals are: Quad Core Xeon E5-1607 @3.0GHz, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD and a Quadro K600 with 1GB RAM. Is this good for BOINC tasks and is it worth the money?

The cpu is usable. The gpu is not. HP workstation power supplies are proprietary and don't have that much spare power to support a modern gpu. But for $20, I guess the price is right.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Thanks.

My school has a bunch of quad core i5’s and i7 desktops that they’re looking to sell off for similar prices. What kind of GPU should I be looking for?

I would say something that is only a couple of years old or only maybe two generations older than current. Also pick a gpu that has power consumption within the capability of the host system. Modern gpus are more power efficient than older models for the equivalent production. Depends on your operating system choice also. There are advantages to running Linux over Windows for Seti for example because of the available applications. For AMD gpus I would buy anything within the RX4x0 or RX5x0 families.
Avoid the newest Navi cards of the 5700 family as they don't work correctly yet.

For Nvidia cards, use anything from Maxwell families on up, preferably from Pascal or newer because of the energy savings.

You should refer to this list of the cards used on Seti for their power consumption and production capabilities produced by volunteer cruncher Shaggie76.

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=81962&postid=1997116#1997116

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

My undergrad is selling a few old HP Z420 workstations for $20. Vitals are: Quad Core Xeon E5-1607 @3.0GHz, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD and a Quadro K600 with 1GB RAM. Is this good for BOINC tasks and is it worth the money?

The basic box is "worth the money". I bought a Z400 "several" years ago. And while the cpu wasn't the fastest cruncher, it was utterly reliable.

Gtx 750ti's and higher (avoiding the 1030) will provide good crunching performance. I was able to run two gtx 1060 3GB on my box after buying after market wiring conversion for a 2nd 6 pin plug.

As mentioned in another post Linxux plus Tbars All-in-One will maximize your crunching on both the cpu (at least it did on my Z400) and gpu's that are late enough models.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Thanks. I'll look into those cards.

Where can I find T-bars all-in-one? Is it another client similar to BOINC (sorry for the dumb questions)?

TBar's AIO or All-in-One is just a package of the current master BOINC release which is 7.14.2 and all the best cpu and gpu applications for both Multiband and Astropulse. It is an Anonymous platform and the app_info is already configured. You don't have to do anything other than download it and unpack the archive somewhere in your /home directory. Read the readme to see what if anything else you might have to do and then just double-click the boincmgr file and it will launch the Manager and the client. You can download it here:
http://www.arkayn.us/lunatics/BOINC.7z

The gpu app is configured for the special sauce CUDA92 application out of the box but the CUDA101 application is also installed if you have the required level of Nvidia drivers. It is all explained in the readme. But the gpu applications only work with Nvidia cards that are CC 5.0 or greater capable. You would have to purchase a more modern Nvidia card to use them.

Your GT 650 card is only CC 3.0 capable. Same for your Quadro K600 in you HP Z420 workstation. They won't even run on TBar's CC3.5 zi3v AIO. So to get use out of anything but the cpu apps in the AIO, you are going to need to update your Nvidia cards.
The zi3v special app is here:

http://www.arkayn.us/lunatics/CUDA60_zi3v-Special.7z

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Thank you for that.

I have an RX580 in my main computer (Mac Pro running OSX) at the moment, though. I don't use the MacBook Pro (with the 650) as much anymore. What are my options for the Mac Pro?

As for the HP, now my school says they're not available for some time as they aren't being taken offline just yet.

Thanks for the help.

You'll have to ask TBar directly for that. He is the developer/packager of the special apps. He also primarily runs Macs. But I don't think he has any special apps for any card less than CC 5.0 capability. He shows a CUDA90 zi3v app for Sierra but I think that is only for CC 5.0 cards. Read the forum threads and then get in contact with TBar. I think your only choice will be the stock Mac CUDA42 or CUDA50 apps. Or the stock Mac SoG app.
https://arkayn.us/forum/index.php?topic=191.0

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

As for the HP, now my school says they're not available for some time as they aren't being taken offline just yet.

I wonder why they even publicized them then? Testing the waters?

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).