I recently picked up two HP z820 workstations via eBay for parts only ($125 +150). These are fully functional rigs that shipped with everything but a hard drive, lucky for me. The plan is to maximize system performance across the board.
This includes CPU, GPU, SSD and memory upgrades. We are also upgrading to HP's factory liquid cooling system, this high end option is designed to handle up to two 150w processors such as the power hungry E5 2687w, so yeah, pretty much a killer CPU cooler and cooling system that would have been insane for overclocking if you could actually do that. Very robust cooling systems on the z820, including active cooling on all 16 DIMM slots and double redundancy on airflow through the case, front to back. I'm actually amazed at how well this computer was put together, and tool less design; coming from poor quality consumer based throw away retail machines for most of my life, it's refreshing to see some quality products and extensive documentation from HP. Now if HP could turn some of this talent over to the retail space, I would be a much bigger fan.
A little context:
This workstation offered best in class performance back in the day and even in 2020 appears to have pretty good bang for the buck if you enjoy tinkering with high performance equipment from yesteryear. Plus, the CPUs are relatively cheap, but you may have to go to China to get them. That's where I had to go for my E5 2673s, absolutely nothing on the US market because it's an OEM chip and was never released for public sale. It's actually quite a rare CPU and they can be difficult to find.
The HP Z820 has 16 DIMM Slots supporting DDR3 ECC Memory.
The first generation Z820 using the Xeon Sandy-Bridge processor supports up to 128GB of 1333MHz memory.
The second generation Z820 using the Xeon Ivy-Bridge processor supports up to 512GB of 1866MHz memory. <-------- I have this one
*I also have the high end 1125W HP Gold rated PSU option. The HP Z820 Workstation power supply is also capable of 1450 watts of output power when the input voltage is greater than 180V.
*I will be running 2 SSDs in a raid 0 configuration (for a total of 1TB storage) for the boot drive/data and a 64GB octal channel 1866MHz memory kit (populating all 16 slots to achieve a theoretical maximum of 100GB/s r/w/c bandwidth, and this is only possible with all eight channels across both CPUs are fully populated.
*I did my best to find better ram with tighter timings, but unfortunately, my search did not reveal any compatible memory in this case, nothing out there with better timings that will work with this machine. At the end of the day, I am netting around 70 ns latency which is really not that far off what AMDs current Ryzen chips will get you.
On the GPU side, I'm going with the MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT GAMING X 8GB. This GPU is a powerhouse and so I should be futureproofed for quite some time with this beast under the hood. The MSI Gaming X model in particular, has one of, if not the best, cooling system out of any 5700 XT on the market. It also offers the lowest noise at idle and is tied for being the quietest GPU under load as well. That's quite a challenging feat that MSI seemed to pull off here. Even when the fan is on, I dont even notice. One look at the heatsink and you'll get my drift. This is a great marriage, at least in my book, to bring the 5700 XT and an HP z820 together, united forever as a peer powerhouse. This is going to offer excellent GPU performance for this rig for many years to come. It's also a cool running card with a sick backplate that minimizes and directs heat away, so as not to deep fry your CPU from below. Case temps are also dramatically lower (on the other test rig I have) when you look at internal temp numbers from the RX 5700 XT and the RX 580 with the side panel on.
The Xeon E5-2673 v2 8 core 16 thread 3.3GHz CPU was chosen for a few reasons. First, I could have gone higher core count, but the trade off is clock speed, and since I'm intending to use this for benchmarking and gaming, I favored the higher clocked chips (plus I naturally favor per core performance over core count anyway). Second, the E5 - 2673 v2 turbos to the magic number of 4GHz. Another thing, the E5 - 2673 v2 has a TDP of 110W, whereas virtually every CPU similar to it, or above it is either 115w, 130w or 150w, (and these require the larger PSU and liquid cooling option). I have all the needed hardware to run the high end chips, but I can do without the heat for the same clock speed, thank you very much. So a good blend of clock speed, single core performance and pretty good power efficiency overall, as you can see outlined in the snip.
*The CPU has a base speed of 3.3GHz, however, the all core turbo is 3.6GHz, effectively, giving the processor a real base clock of 3.6GHz, identical to the much hotter 2687W or its retail equivalent, the 2667 v2. In theory, all three 8 core CPUs have an all core turbo speed of 3.6GHz and a single core turbo speed of 4.0GHz. The conclusion we can draw from this is that the OEM 2673 v2 offers identical performance to it's retail siblings at a substantially lower TDP of 110w. There is no doubt, OEM chips tend to have some advantages over their retail counterparts, as evidenced here in TDP.
These are the upgraded, high end liquid cooling system. Small radiator with pump built it - per CPU. It's amazing. To give you some perspective on performance, I can blaze through Cinebench R20 without even spooling up the fans! Holds temperature like nothing else I've ever seen.
Additional pictures of the build:
Upside down cooler (this locks into place with each 80mm fan above each CPU/radiator) This is essentially a hood. You can actually lose a fan here and the system is still able to keep operating normally.
Setup right now
RX 5700 XT Installed, great airflow through this case, runs super cool!
Typical, three display port and one HDMI
That's a serious cooler if you ask me.
.
This includes CPU, GPU, SSD and memory upgrades. We are also upgrading to HP's factory liquid cooling system, this high end option is designed to handle up to two 150w processors such as the power hungry E5 2687w, so yeah, pretty much a killer CPU cooler and cooling system that would have been insane for overclocking if you could actually do that. Very robust cooling systems on the z820, including active cooling on all 16 DIMM slots and double redundancy on airflow through the case, front to back. I'm actually amazed at how well this computer was put together, and tool less design; coming from poor quality consumer based throw away retail machines for most of my life, it's refreshing to see some quality products and extensive documentation from HP. Now if HP could turn some of this talent over to the retail space, I would be a much bigger fan.
A little context:
This workstation offered best in class performance back in the day and even in 2020 appears to have pretty good bang for the buck if you enjoy tinkering with high performance equipment from yesteryear. Plus, the CPUs are relatively cheap, but you may have to go to China to get them. That's where I had to go for my E5 2673s, absolutely nothing on the US market because it's an OEM chip and was never released for public sale. It's actually quite a rare CPU and they can be difficult to find.
The HP Z820 has 16 DIMM Slots supporting DDR3 ECC Memory.
The first generation Z820 using the Xeon Sandy-Bridge processor supports up to 128GB of 1333MHz memory.
The second generation Z820 using the Xeon Ivy-Bridge processor supports up to 512GB of 1866MHz memory. <-------- I have this one
*I also have the high end 1125W HP Gold rated PSU option. The HP Z820 Workstation power supply is also capable of 1450 watts of output power when the input voltage is greater than 180V.
*I will be running 2 SSDs in a raid 0 configuration (for a total of 1TB storage) for the boot drive/data and a 64GB octal channel 1866MHz memory kit (populating all 16 slots to achieve a theoretical maximum of 100GB/s r/w/c bandwidth, and this is only possible with all eight channels across both CPUs are fully populated.
*I did my best to find better ram with tighter timings, but unfortunately, my search did not reveal any compatible memory in this case, nothing out there with better timings that will work with this machine. At the end of the day, I am netting around 70 ns latency which is really not that far off what AMDs current Ryzen chips will get you.
On the GPU side, I'm going with the MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT GAMING X 8GB. This GPU is a powerhouse and so I should be futureproofed for quite some time with this beast under the hood. The MSI Gaming X model in particular, has one of, if not the best, cooling system out of any 5700 XT on the market. It also offers the lowest noise at idle and is tied for being the quietest GPU under load as well. That's quite a challenging feat that MSI seemed to pull off here. Even when the fan is on, I dont even notice. One look at the heatsink and you'll get my drift. This is a great marriage, at least in my book, to bring the 5700 XT and an HP z820 together, united forever as a peer powerhouse. This is going to offer excellent GPU performance for this rig for many years to come. It's also a cool running card with a sick backplate that minimizes and directs heat away, so as not to deep fry your CPU from below. Case temps are also dramatically lower (on the other test rig I have) when you look at internal temp numbers from the RX 5700 XT and the RX 580 with the side panel on.
The Xeon E5-2673 v2 8 core 16 thread 3.3GHz CPU was chosen for a few reasons. First, I could have gone higher core count, but the trade off is clock speed, and since I'm intending to use this for benchmarking and gaming, I favored the higher clocked chips (plus I naturally favor per core performance over core count anyway). Second, the E5 - 2673 v2 turbos to the magic number of 4GHz. Another thing, the E5 - 2673 v2 has a TDP of 110W, whereas virtually every CPU similar to it, or above it is either 115w, 130w or 150w, (and these require the larger PSU and liquid cooling option). I have all the needed hardware to run the high end chips, but I can do without the heat for the same clock speed, thank you very much. So a good blend of clock speed, single core performance and pretty good power efficiency overall, as you can see outlined in the snip.
*The CPU has a base speed of 3.3GHz, however, the all core turbo is 3.6GHz, effectively, giving the processor a real base clock of 3.6GHz, identical to the much hotter 2687W or its retail equivalent, the 2667 v2. In theory, all three 8 core CPUs have an all core turbo speed of 3.6GHz and a single core turbo speed of 4.0GHz. The conclusion we can draw from this is that the OEM 2673 v2 offers identical performance to it's retail siblings at a substantially lower TDP of 110w. There is no doubt, OEM chips tend to have some advantages over their retail counterparts, as evidenced here in TDP.
These are the upgraded, high end liquid cooling system. Small radiator with pump built it - per CPU. It's amazing. To give you some perspective on performance, I can blaze through Cinebench R20 without even spooling up the fans! Holds temperature like nothing else I've ever seen.
Additional pictures of the build:
Upside down cooler (this locks into place with each 80mm fan above each CPU/radiator) This is essentially a hood. You can actually lose a fan here and the system is still able to keep operating normally.
Setup right now
RX 5700 XT Installed, great airflow through this case, runs super cool!
Typical, three display port and one HDMI
That's a serious cooler if you ask me.
.
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