HP Z420 Processor Liquid Cooling Assembly 647289-001

[Diamantius]

BambiBoomZ,

Thanks for the heads up. Actually, the CPU never throttles as the fan speeds up on time and drops the temperature considerably before throttling kicks in. 
I am interested to see how far this particular set up will let me go. Till now, it works flawlessly at 4.3 with no added voltage and several boot cycles.
I will keep you guys posted!

[ShadowX360]

I know I'm two months late to this thread but I actually tried switching out the stock HP liquid cooler as mine likely had an air bubble that caused a very loud whine at higher speeds. No third party AIO liquid cooler can easily fit in an HP Z420 without significant remodeling - at one point I thought about mounting an 240mm cooler on the side panel but ultimately decided against it. I replaced the liquid cooling with air cooling. I did the wiring and it wasn't too bad, you just have to buy a 5 pin header for $1 on eBay and do some light soldering. The hard part is mounting a cooler over the VRMs - I ended up mounting the fan from the stock air cooler over the VRMs with a bracket and an Arctic Freezer 33 CO for the CPU. The "CO" is for constant operation, and I am manually controlling the speed on it.

EDIT: As for Intel XTU reverting the overclock on reboot, you can manually write to the actual MSRs and skip having to deal with XTU. I was too lazy to figure out what the bits meant so I just did the overclocking the first time in XTU, read the MSR, and then write to it on every boot. Just make sure you're not running in any VM environment since kernels usually block MSR writes - I had to write my own patches to allow MSR writing.

[Marshymallow]

Hello Diamantius,

I am a complete newbie with the z420. I would like to use the settings that worked for you when using the e5-1620v2 e5-1650v2 with a z420 where I will replace the stock heatsink with one from de z440 (following SDH advice) and using Thermal grizzly Hydronaut without silicone (11.8 W/mK, but easier to spread than the 12.5W/mK Kryonaut) . I read Brian1965 post about the thermal grease and that was useful.

Would you be kind enough to post the setting that worked for you at 4.3 Ghz with Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel® XTU) ? https://downloadcenter.intel.com/fr/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-

I read the main pre-requisites guide (great!) for overclocking that Brian1965 provided here : https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/z420-z620-overcklo...)

[BambiBoomZ]

Marshymallow,

In the Xeon E5 v2 series,  only the E5-1650 v2, E5-1660 v2, and E5-1680 v2 may be overclocked using The Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU). The E5-1620 v2 is not supported.  the same three designation in v3 processors are also supported, but have yet to see any HP WS's with overclocked v3's.; all the O/C'd ones seems to be on ASUS, MSI, Gigaybte, and etc. motherboards.

Int he office, all three of the XTU supported processors were used, in two z420's and a z620 and currently in z420_3, which replaced an E5-1620 V2 with an E5-1650 v2 6C@4.3GHz  and z620_2 with an E5-1680 v2. All three systems also used the z420 AIO liquid cooler.

If changing to an XTU supported processor, for the best performance, the E5-1660 v2 6C@3.7/4.0Ghz is recommended as the all-core frequency is the highest of any Xeon E5 and will yield the highest single-thread performance.  The E5-1650 v2 though is a better value, selling today for 30-40% less.

BambiBoomZ

HP z620_2 (2017) (R7) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8-core@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC Reg / Quadro P2000 5GB _ GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB AHCI + Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB / Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound interface + 2X Mackie MR824 / 825W PSU /> HP OEM Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)

[ Passmark Rating = 6280 / CPU rating = 17178 / 2D = 819 / 3D= 12629 / Mem = 3002 / Disk = 13751 / Single Thread Mark = 2368 [10.23.18]

HP z420_3: (2015) (R11) Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid cooling / 32GB (HP/Samsung 4X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/ Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 4TB / ASUS Essence STX / Logitech z2300 2.1 / 600W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (HP OEM ) > Samsung 40" 4K

[Passmark System Rating: = 5644 / CPU = 15293 / 2D = 847 / 3D = 10953 / Mem = 2997 Disk = 4858 /Single Thread Mark = 2384 [6.27.19]

[Marshymallow]

Oops I made a typo, I was refering to the e5-1650v2 - what would be the Intel Extreme Utility settings to use to make it work at 4.2ghz ? e5-1660v2 is better, but too expensive for me.

[Diamantius]

Hi @Marshymallow,

In the end I settled for 4.1 Ghz, at least till summer ends. I used a combination of XTU and Throttlestop. No added voltage, just upped the multiplier to 41 for all cores. I will post a screenshot of Throttlestop settings on Monday, when I get to work.

[Marshymallow]

Thank you, very appreciated, have a good weekend

[Marshymallow]

Hi @Diamantius,

Sorry to bother you, but can you post a screenshot of Throttlestop settings ?

Best regards,

[Diamantius]

Totally forgot. Apologies. 
Here are my settings. I took two screenshots, idle and at 100% load.

[Marshymallow]

Thank you, this is very helpful !