HELP required to max out my first Z420 Project PC

[Rhothgar]

What a nightmare!!  Sometimes when I do long posts, I do a quick select all and copy and paste it into Notepad or Word just in case.  I normally do this with complex posts.

So sorry to hear that this has happened.  I received other Z420 yesterday.  Still not unboxed it as yet.  That's something to look forward to for Sunday.

@SDH

Whilst I think of it, I have sourced but not yet purchased one of the 749554 fans.  Are you firmly in the no-liquid near my motherboard camp?  Reason I ask is the Z420 I have not yet opened as the pumped water cooler in it.

I think maybe this is really a question for Brian1965 or BambiBoomZ as the forum overclockers.  I'll bet BbZ has thoroughly tested different iterations in the quest for speed...

[SDH]

Back at it... these things happen.  I'll try to be brief but that never works.  My big lesson was that one cannot attach a .txt file to one of our posts here... that is the type of file BIOS creates and places on a non-bootable thumb drive when you properly use the HP Replicated Setup mechanism to capture BIOS settings for cloning from.  And I could not back out from that situation to convert it to a .doc or .pdf attachment.  PM me with your email address if you wish so I can send you the original CPQSETUP.txt file so you can use it as is.  However, a .pdf version of it is attached here now, plus a little .pdf on the HP liquid cooler you refer to.  It turns out you can add liquid through a little-known access screw to remove bubbles that might be trapped inside.

No, I'm not against liquid cooling but my finding that the high cooling capacity heatsink/fan from the Z440 worked perfectly also in our single-processor Z420/Z620 builds took most of the pressure off.  You'll see below how to drive the ZX20 v2 processors under W10 in Turbo mode to 100%, and also how to see the temps with the no-cost downloaded CPUz and HWMonitor utilities from CPUid.com.  I calculated the surface area of all the cooling fins of that heatsink and it is only slightly under 2x the area that the Z420/Z620 single processor heatsink/fan provides.  Plus it has 4 instead of 3 heatpipes (and 2 of the 4 are extra large).  Plus those cost me only about $18.00 USD here via eBay.  So I use one of those instead of the HP liquid cooler and can confirm that my temps stay excellent even during max stress testing.

EDIT:  for those who don't know about this heatsink discovery I've included two pics... one of the much higher performing Z440 stock heatsink/fan which also works perfectly for single processor Z620 builds (it even perfectly fits under the dual-bank active memory "cooling saddle" that the Z620 uses).  It also works for all Z420 builds.  I've posted on this easy and inexpensive mod before in the forum.  Note also how large the two central heat pipes are, compared to the small front and back heat pipes.  Those smaller ones are the same size as all 3 in the stock Z420/Z620 heatsinks:

As I've posted about before the white fan plug end for the Z440 heatsink has 6 holes instead of 5 but that last hole connects only to a continuation of a ground jumper that first goes from pin 1 to pin 5.  That end of the white fan plug can be left free projecting beyond the the end of the Z420/Z620 5-pin motherboard CPU fan header.  No change of the 6-hole fan plug is needed... it truly is plug and play.  Only the white fan plug pin holes 1-5 are used... pin hole 6 is not.  You'll be able to see a ground jumper from pin hole 1 over to pin hole 5, and then a second short extension of that wire from pin hole 5 to pin hole 6.  Feel free to snip out that last short ground jumper wire segment between holes 5 and 6 if you wish...

Bambi and Brian take things to a whole different level with overclocking, under W7.  Maybe you can do a comparison once you get things up and running well and try overclocking under W7.  First with your included liquid cooler and later with that double surface area HP heatsink/fan.  I'd love to see the temperatures at full stress test for each!  You'll be highly skilled at using the recommended Noctua NT-H1 thermal compound by then.

BIOS settings:  it is a complex thing with multiple interactions.  Here's some points:

1.  I only run in legacy mode.  I'll learn more about UEFI/GPT partitioning when I get ready to finally test out our special monitor control software under W11 in the Z420/Z620 v2 builds (following Paul T's W11 install advice).

2.  My settings are optimized for low boot times and fastest speed I can get out of W10.  We can't run W7 due to security issues in the enterprise world I live in.

3.  What HP has to do for its factory default settings is keep energy consumption in mind.  My settings are to maximize performance but cost more in energy.  Those are not needed for surfing the net and reading email.  And, if there are other links in the chain that are weak it is a waste to heat up the office and still be running slow memory and processors.

4.  I put in a 5 second post delay to make it easier to enter BIOS... most will want to delete that.  I turn on use of the ESC key to enter BIOS.  Changes from Factory Default settings were done for a reason.

5.  There was a post back in February of 2018 about how to turn Turbo on in BIOS... there has been some dissent about that but the poster was correct... without enabling Runtime Power Management Turbo would look to be turned on  in BIOS but after a cold boot if you checked BIOS again it turned out to have gone back to disabled status. There is a link to that post  HERE , and I have seen this multiple times on multiple Z420 and Z620 v2 workstations personally also.  It is not a CMOS corruption issue...

6.  I always use the latest BIOS... HP and Intel have integrated security features into BIOS and though some squawk about recommending that if one just learns how to upgrade BIOS from within BIOS it is safe and easy.  HP has built this into their workstation BIOS.  Just learn how to harvest the BIOS .bin file and how to use that from inside BIOS.  Plus, BIOS upgrades usually include fixes you'd want to have.

How to test and monitor:  There is a feature of CPUz that lets you stress test your processor cores to 100%, and HWMonitor lets you see temps, voltages, and speeds.  Those both are free and have been around forever, and are kept upgraded.

It is very easy to use a thumb drive and HP replicated setup to capture your BIOS settings, load mine, go back to yours, etc.  The process produces a single .txt file on the top level of the thumb drive.  Those are all named the same so make sure to carefully store each one in a folder that is identified, and maybe also include a little note on what is what.

Finally, there also are OS settings that count in optimizing speed... specifically for W10 you want to go into the Power app of the control panel and choose to use the performance settings.  HP Performance Advisor, when it was available for use, strongly recommended doing that step to get best performance.

Finally, in W10 there is a default-enabled "Fast Startup" feature that I strongly believe should be defaulted to off.  It has caused us much grief and I've seen zero benefit.  And, it does not seem faster at all.

Here's a pic, and below are two PDFs for you.  PM me....

[Rhothgar]

@SDH

Apologies for late reply but thank you so very much for this input.  I have manually altered all the settings now.  I saved the BIOS Setup from my own machine and printed off your PDF and marked everything that was different and then manually changed it all.

I very nearly asked if it is just a case of moving the asterisk in the .txt file to where it needs to be and re-importing the BIOS but thought it would be quicker to manually do it as I know how busy you are.

It did raise some questions though in that if AMT is disabled, the other Management Options vanish and TPM is nowhere to be seen?  All the TPM guff below BIOS Watchdog Timer is nowhere to be seen in my BIOS yet we are running the same version and bootblock date!

@DGroves
Many thanks for the AIO file. Much appreciated.

@BambiBoomZ/Brian1965
On a Windows 7 x64 Ultimate host, I have managed to find Intel XTU 6.5.2.40 but it keeps crashing out.  I was unable to find the early XTU 5.?? version anywhere online that I would be happy to download from.  I am left wondering if the XTU 6.5.2.40 from Softpedia is legimate and safe.  Keen to get on with a little tweaking as XTU7 does not allow individual tweaking of cores.

[SDH]

Got your PM... the official .txt file will be in your email folder in a few minutes.  You never know how things translate over from source to PDF and then hand entered.  Just use what I'll send you.

Here is a LINK from the past with a few tips on replicating BIOS settings.  Very handy...

Solved: Replicated Setup tip, for cloning BIOS settings with USB dri... - HP Support Community - 506...

[SDH]

XTU downloads:

https://community.hwbot.org/topic/149515-intel-xtu-version-library/