Graphics card upgrade for Z210 LW007PA#ABG

[BambiBoomZ]

DGroves,

The contention is that workstation cases and gaming cases have different priorities; both are designed carefully for adequate thermal control, but proprietary WS cases are designed to enhance noise control.  The placemewnt of fans deeper in the case  interior and within shrouds to direct and concentrate the air flow is characteristic of this approach. The air volume CFM in WS cases is reduced relative to gaming cases, but the principal heat-producing components  are also evolved towards reduced case heat contribution.

It was never stated that, "a workstation case is inferior in proper cooling compared to a gaming case and should be discarded in favor of a gaming case"; only that there are different and proportional  priorities. 

BambiBoomZ 

[Drawn]

Hey guys - I’m going to get a z420 instead, over here in Australia a lot of these used hp work stations can still be a little pricey over here, but I got a pretty decent machine.

[BambiBoomZ]

Drawn,

A z420 will have a far better potential performance  than the z210 in every way. 

There are two versions of the z420: one that uses Xeon E5-1600 or E5-2600 first version CPU's and the later version using the E5-V2. The V2 processors will not work on a first version motherboard.  In my view, the V2 system is the one to have; the E5-1650 v2, E5-1660 v2 6-cores, and E5-1680 v2 8-core have higher clock speeds to start with than the first version with better single-threaded performance and may be overclocked using the free Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and the RAM is 1866 instead of 1600.  With the HP z420 liquid cooler, I run the E5-1650 v2 at 4.3GHz on all cores.  The E5-1620 v2 4C@3.7 /3.9GHz is very good too. I've used all the above mentioned CPU's and consider the E5-1650 v2 is the best all-rounder/best value.

When buying, make sure it has the 600W power supply and not the 400W.

For the GPU, I consider the minimum to be a Quadro K620 2GB,  but the K2200 4GB at the moment seems to be the best value for a Quadro. 

For the main drive, the Samsung 860 EVO is very good.  

Have a minimum of 16GB (DDR3-1866 ECC unbuffered or registered)

A well-configured z420 will be useful at a quite high level for years.

Let us know how you get on.

BambiBoomZ

[Drawn]

Hey BambiBoomZ

yes the machine I’m getting is the The E5-1620 v2 4C@3.7 /3.9GHz, 24gig ram, 256 ssd, and CG is K2000, (will install additional media drives) i will upgrade GC to a K2200 4gig later down the track,

this machine will be used for media editing using avid media composer and adobe after effects, back in the day I worked in television using the older z800 W3500 machines I think they were, the thing I liked about HP workstations is they never ever had any problems ever, and we hammed these machines day in day out and they never missed a beat, and the build quality is great.

[BambiBoomZ]

Drawn,

Good choice- well done.  And I agree that HP workstations are well-designed, of high build quality, and ultra-reliable.

CPU:  Avid , unless there are a lot of channels running will benefit from higher single-threaded performance, which the E5-1620 v2  3.9GHz Turbo  provides. If the projects use many channels, changing to a 6-core E5-1650 v2 or 8-core E5-1680 v2  that can be overclocked will expand the system's project capabilities.

Memory:  The 24GB of RAM is a very good start.  I expect that configuration is CH1@ 4X 4GB + CH2@ 4X 2GB.   At some point consider having 8X 4GB: video work needs a lot of RAM.  Better yet, instead of investing in more 4GB modules, consider going to 64GB- the system maximum with 8X 8GB of PC3-14900R (=DDR3-1866 ECC registered).  The registered memory introduces an additional parity check for precision and I use it in rendering, even though it's a tiny bit slower.  A bonus of  registered memory is that it's used universal in servers and regularly replaced, so it's possible to buy two year-old R memory for very reasonable prices.  I recently bought 64GB of HP labeled Samsung PC3-14900R for about $120 total. 

> When upgrading memory, always buy RAM with the HP part number sticker on it.  That will ensure compatibility.

GPU: The Quadro K2000 is not bad at all; I've considering one for another of the office vintage (2007) machines.  For a future GPU choice, also consider the Quadro K4200; it's still PCIe 2.0 but is 256-bit instead of 128-bit and 1344 CUDA cores instead of 640.  For Avid, a wider memory bandwidth and the doubled CUDA cores will be a big help, especially for encoding /export. 

Drives: For the disk subsystem, consider adding a very fast M.2 drive for the current project.  I use a Samsung 970 EVO 500GB NVMe on an LT-120 PCIe M.2 adapter, which has spectacular performance.  Load the project and libraries from the storage drives and with work requiring a wide memory bandwidth- video editing being in that category, it will really speed things up in association with a healthy supply of RAM.  Even a good SATA SSD can help, my former projects drives was a Samsung 860 EVO SATA 500GB.

Yes, an excellent system choice.

BambiBoomZ

[Drawn]

Avid Media Composer v 8.4.4 requirementsHey Guys,

So I’ve had my Z420 for a short while now and it’s a great machine that I got at a good price, I’m wanting to up grade the Graphics Card, it currently has the quadro K2000 and I have found a K2200 4gig card, this machine is being used for Avid Media Composer V8.4.4 editing, but as you can see in the attached image, in the system requirements the Lenovo p500 machine is supported with the K2200 card and the z420 is K2000 (as both seen in that image) I would assume that I could still run Media Composer in the z420 with the K2200, avid can be a bit ridgid in system requirements, what do you guys think? Should I check this with Avid first?

i have not purchased the card yet.

thanks guys.

[DGroves]

the z210 has no problem hardware wise with the quadro  k2200 model you selected as it's powered by the pci-e bus and does not require a aux gpu power connector

your video card question is not really a HP workstation question, but rather a specific Avid software question and as such you will most likely get a better response by posting it on the avid user forum or a music specific site that has avid users on it

avid will not give any official support any non approved hardware/software configuration, and will instead possibly direct you to their user forums also

[SDH]

On our high end medical workstations with 4 monitors I've installed both two K2000 and two K2200 video cards.  The K2200 is significantly faster and has served us well.

[Drawn]

Hello again guys,

I purchased a used 2TB WD hard drive for additional storage but the system does not ‘see it’ when I boot up it gets to the windows logo part then freezes, when I boot into bios and check for devices it does not see it (the system sees the other 2x SSD drives)  but not the 2TB drive, when I remove the drive it boots and works fine,

I tested and installed a Samsung drive and it works fine,

please see attached image of the drive WD drive with all the info, I tried 1 jumper setting  the 5 and 6 pin as pictured on the drive but this did not fix it, the seller swears it’s a working drive.

am I missing something here? Do I need to change a setting in the bios?

thanks for your help.

[BambiBoomZ]

Drawn,

Possibilities:  that the drive is unallocated or unformatted volumes and/or the partition structure set to MBR (Master Boot Record) instead of GPT (GUID Partition Table).  If your system is running a UEFI BIOS, which is almost certain, the partition structure must be GPT.  Anyway, GPT allows unlimited partitions of as little as 1MB and has a structure that is more secure.  Why that conflict would prevent booting is a mystery, unless that drive has a boot partition left on it. It may also have been damaged in shipping or simply have failed.

Reliability is of utmost concern for this use. Given the age of the drive, the 32MB cache, the SATAII speed and especially the conflict suggest a different drive.  Will the seller accept a return? If so, consider that and buying a new SATAIII drive. As capacity is so inexpensive today, consider a 3TB or 4TB and having 64MB or 128MB cache. 

BambiBoom