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HP Recommended

Don't know if it has been answered before: Are there any 3rd party AIO Liquid Cooling solutions that fit inside the Z420 and perform equally well? 

HP Recommended

Diamantius,

 

I can only think that to break the pump body that the cooler was mounted on a CPU without tightening the mounting bolts in an even way; that put an extreme torsion on the pump body and cracked it.

 

I'd say, emphatically, that the proper solution is to return the unit to the sender for refund. It is not fair to the buyer to pay for a component and have to spend time and money to make it work.  Anyway, a new pump body would probably cost more than a complete working unit.

 

BambiBoomZ

HP Recommended

BambiBoomZ,

I have already notified the seller regarding my findings and waiting for an answer. Hopefully, he will agree to refund.
However, my confidence in second-hand Liquid Cooling is somewhat shaken. Imagine if this thing hadn't cracked during transport  but a week or a month later, inside my Z420 :Surprise:


What other solutions are there? Any aftermarket AIO coolers that fit and work just as good?

HP Recommended

Diamantius,

 

There are a couple of 3rd party AIO liquid coolers, but fitting under the shroud and most important, the 5-pin power - HP  connector, and control connection would seem to me a very complex wiring and BIOS- related project.  HP z-series are not PWM control friendly and the fan/ pump curves of the cooler may disagree disagreeably with the BIOS, or be ignored

 

That experience may understandably dilute confidence, but the z420 is an excellent design, well-made, effective, and when not abused as I believe the subject unit to be, very rugged and quiet.  I consider the $50 I spent on the z420 liquid cooler for the 620- which allows the E5-1680 v2 to run on all 8-cores at 4.3GHz, by far the best $50 I ever spent on a computer.

 

When installing and testing a replacement cooler, consider a careful temporary heavy plastic sheeting and duct tape (< can take the heat) protection of all surrounding components. Run the Prime 95 CPU stress test for at least 1 hour which will load the CPU to 100% so as to increase the cooler pump speed and verify a near worst case cooling potential.  Have HWMonitor running to monitor temperatures, and using a strong direct light into the open case, check often for any signs of moisture. I'm guessing it will run a maximum of no more than 63-68C.

 

Confidence in that particular component is very important.

 

BambiBoomZ

HP Recommended

There is another good option to consider.... use of one of the larger heatsink/fans that was designed for the Z440/Z640 in your Z420.  As you know the Z420/Z620 standard heatsink/fan is the identical for those two workstations, and has 3 heat tubes.  The heatsink is offset upwards from the processor so there is more room that could be used for cooling fins.  The standard Z440/Z640 heatsink/fan is also the same for those two workstations, but it has significantly higher cooling capacity.

 

I did the experiments and the single mainboard heatsink/fan used in the Z440 fits perfectly atop the Z420 socket.  It also fits perfectly on a single processor Z620.  It has 4 heat tubes rather than 3, and has almost twice the cooling fin area as the Z420/Z620 heatsink/fan.  This heatsink is a way to get better cooling without the liquid risk.  Roughly 25.00 off eBay, and I'm now doing this with all my higher end Z420 and Z620 workstations... the version 2 ones with souped up V2 processors.  By the way.... I'm hoping you have a version 2 Z420 and are using the 1866 memory that the faster V2 processors can run in those workstations.

 

Here are 3 links for you and there are some great pictures in these for perspective:  Try  This, and  This, and  This.

 

These deserve good thermal paste and proper application technique....

HP Recommended

Hi SDH, 

That's actually a great alternative, thank you very much. Have you tried overclocking with the Z440 heatsink? I have the Arctic Cooling MX-4 thermal paste at hand, so I think it will do the trick nicely.
And yes, I have the v2 Z420 with the 1650 V2 and 1866 RAM. 
The only problem right now is that I can only find the 749554-001 heatsink for sale in the U.S. Shipping+customs to Greece would total a bit over $60. It's still cheaper than the liquid cooler, so if performance is comparable, I might as well go with that one.

HP Recommended

Our policies here on a corporate level don't include overclocking on the HP workstations.  I have not yet had time to master overclocking on my home workstations.

 

The right test would be use of the same fan (from your original Z420 heatsink running on your original Z420 heatsink and then on the larger Z440 heatsink).  Both setups should be run with the same thermal compound and the same stress testing.  I did some rudimentary testing and discovered that there are several fans that HP has used in these two heatsinks.  They all fit and work fine on both heatsinks.  I got about 9 degrees cooler running with the ZX40 heatsink/fan in a home Z620 version 2 running a E5-1660 V2 with full load of HP matched 1866 sticks (8 x 4GB), based on HWMonitor and HP Performance Advisor reporting.

HP Recommended

Just to give an update on what worked:
I ordered a Z440 Heatsink from eBay, and retrofitted it with the Z420 Fan. 
I used Arctic Cooling MX-4 paste.
Installed latest XTU and played around a bit. I am pretty happy with the results so far, with stock CPU voltage; my 1650 v2 is sitting nicely at 4.3 Ghz on all cores, breezing through a 6-hour stress test in XTU with a maximum temperature of 70 degrees C, at which point the fan speeds up dropping it to 62 degrees.
A pretty decent performance overall and certainly great value for money. 

HP Recommended

Diamantius,

 

Be aware that the temperature rating for the E5-1650 v2 is 70C, so you may be running at the edge of thermal throttling. If the intention is to use air cooling, consider 4.1Ghz or 4.2GHz. I tried a z420  / E5-1660 v2 (also rated to 70C) on the stock z420 air cooler and it would not run beyond reliably above 4.1Ghz plus using +150.000 mV.

 

The temperature will rise also with added voltage which I believe will be necessary under normal use. In the z620 /E5-1680 v2, running 8-cores at 4.3GHz on z420 liquid cooling requires +187.500. Brian1965, our local champion, runs the 1680 v2 up to 4.7GHz with +270mV and that has a custom 360mm liquid external cooling unit. Overclockers generally get a bit nervous about the longevity of the CPU above 1.5V. The 1680 v2 by the way is rated to 85C. in the 1680 v2 the z420 liquid cooler idles at about 29-33C and maximum sustained temperatures under workloads have been about 64-68C with 72C peaks. 

 

I think as you turn off the system and reboot, eventually XTU will not hold the 4.3GHz, espeially without aded voltage.  XTU will exit during booting or at seemingly random times when a program is started. Some stress tests- such as the built-in XTU one, are somewhat deceptive as the loading is more or less steady state; not as dynamic as real world use.

 

Let us know how you progress.

 

BambiBoomZ

 

 

 

 

HP Recommended

Diamantius,

 

Be aware that the temperature rating for the E5-1650 v2 is 70C, so you may be running at the edge of thermal throttling. If the intention is to use air cooling, consider 4.1Ghz or 4.2GHz. I tried a z420  / E5-1660 v2 (also rated to 70C) on the stock z420 air cooler and it would not run beyond reliably above 4.1Ghz plus using +150.000 mV.

 

The temperature will rise also with added voltage which I believe will be necessary under normal use. In the z620 /E5-1680 v2, running 8-cores at 4.3GHz on z420 liquid cooling requires +187.500. Brian1965, our local champion, runs the 1680 v2 up to 4.7GHz with +270mV and that has a custom 360mm liquid external cooling unit. Overclockers generally get a bit nervous about the longevity of the CPU above 1.5V. The 1680 v2 by the way is rated to 85C. in the 1680 v2 the z420 liquid cooler idles at about 29-33C and maximum sustained temperatures under workloads have been about 64-68C with 72C peaks. 

 

I think as you turn off the system and reboot, eventually XTU will not hold the 4.3GHz, espeially without aded voltage.  XTU will exit during booting or at seemingly random times when a program is started. Some stress tests- such as the built-in XTU one, are somewhat deceptive as the loading is more or less steady state; not as dynamic as real world use.

 

Let us know how you progress.

 

BambiBoomZ

 

 

 

 

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