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Our lab contains 22 workstations outfitted with the following:

HP Z230 SFF Workstations
Xeon E3-1241v3 3.5GHz Quad Core Hyperthreading
16GB DDR3
256GB HP Z-Turbo Drive PCIe SSD
nVidia Quadro K600 Graphics
HP Z27i 2560x1440 displays
Sennheiser HD201 headphones

They run Autodesk Inventor, HSM, and pretty much everything else quite well, even at the higher resolution. Only the most advanced CAM simulations in HSM could use a tad more graphics "oomph." They're really a joy to use, but I wish we had a few more of them. I'm just out of square footage to put them in.

HP Z-series products are really the "right" thing (enterprise-class product) for this application, and we've been very happy with them so far. The only thing we're lacking is a glass screen on the monitors, which is concerning in the educational environment, but we're extra careful, and the students know that they won't be coming back tomorrow if anyone or anything touches one of those monitors.