HP Z620 with E5-2687W

[Lars_Poster]

Hello! Im just posting this as a bit of a thank you and some information if its of use to anyone.

I bought a z620 (the first generation) with two E5-2680's in it and 128 GB of ram. Plan being to use it for physical simulation work on Ubuntu. These ran with all threads at max at just under 3 GHz at temperatures that never went over 70.

The hope was the machine could run for weeks on end doing one thing and with a low risk of it crashing on me.

This was fine but then the usual thing happened and I wanted to squeeze the last out of it.

So I bought two E5-2687W and then started reading here and saw there may be problems. I installed them and the top processor (on the main board) pretty much shot up to over 87 degrees. The second one on the riser stayed at 78 or so.

I saw advice here as to putting a 640 4-pipe heat sink on the board cpu so I bought a new one and installed that. I changed teh paste as well to Noctua.

Using this heat sink the top cpu never gets above 80 now which I am happy with. All threads run at 3.4 GHz and there is a significant reduction in time taken to do what I wanted to do.

The next plan is to install Noctua fans or something else on both cpus. I got two of these adapters from here:

https://www.moddiy.com/products/4-Pin-CPU-PWM-Fan-to-5-Pin-HP-Fan-Header-Adapter-Sleeved-Cable-5cm.h...

They are simply tidier versions of what I could have done myself with bridging the pins. These should ten work on a 4 pin Noctua or other fan.

The riser board for the second CPU seems to divide the case across the middle so I dont think much air is coming from the front fan up to the area above the riser board.

I may also remove all the hdd drive caddies (they are not in use) and insert a 120 mm in there. In addition I plan to remove the D VD and card reader and set up a fan in the optical drive bays blowing directly at the top cpu.

In short:

1. The E5-2687Ws work fine but get a bit toasty. I have no idea how this would be for the v2 chips.

2. The advice as to the 640 heatsink was golden - works well. Just have to be careful which of the 6 pins on the fan plug is not connected to the 5 pins of the header. I found that if the right most pin is not connected, the fan does not start. So the left one on the fan plug should be left hanging. Then it works.

3. With any luck I will be able to connect up different fans to the cpus using cheap adapter cables and will see if that makes any difference at all.

Thanks again for all the good information this board provides!

lars

[SDH]

Lars, happy to help.

About the Noctua fans idea. Here's the deal... those are great PMW fans, quiet and efficient. Very well built and last forever. However, their native PWM control is added to by the HP motherboard's PWM algorithm and that causes them to run too slow. HP's choice of PWM fans has been carefully selected, and usually is of a high or very high native speed before the HP PWM braking is applied. You can see that in the fan codes on the label when you look them up at Delta, etc. If you take a slow fan like the Noctua and apply the HP PWM braking you'll not get enough RPMs usually.

All the other ideas are great. I'm hoping you have a front bottom HP case cooling fan already. If not do so. The black plastic fan holder carries a 92x92x25mm fan. You can adjust that somewhat by going on eBay and looking for higher amperage HP case fans, which will run faster. Some are as low as 0.3A; others 0.6 and even some higher. Just search for HP 92mm fans and look at the ones that have that reddish brown plug end. Those fit the intended fan header on the motherboard correctly.

Also take a peek on eBay at 488506-001 or -002. Two of those bonded and stacked in 2 bays with some hole cutting out front and a 92mm rear mounted inward blowing PWM fan might do the trick. It would take some work, but those are very strong and fit in all HP 5.25" bays. All the 5.25" single bay fan blowers I've seen use small loud fast fans. I use Gorilla brand super glue for such ghetto mods, and make sure to have a fan blowing over the glue area when it is setting up because the fumes can lightly frost the black plastic surfaces close by otherwise. 

[Lars_Poster]

Thanks for that! 

I was not aware about HP's fan control peculiarities.

If I put Noctua three pins (or any other manufacturer) onto than 4 to 5 pin adapter....will the HP PWM allow them to run as intended? Or am I going to get a "no fan detected" type of error ?

I know the logical answer is to simply try but those Noctua fans are not exactly cheap and I have no other 3 pin fan handy.

I have the bottom front fan already. Sometimes I think its that fan and the two exhaust fans at the back that are doing all the heavy lifting - I cannot "feel" any airflow (the fan is running) through the heatsink stacks on the CPUs and yet the other three case fans really do seem to be shifting a lot of air both in and out.

I had thought of something like this "Evercool 5.25" Drive Bay to 3.5 HDD or 2.5 HDD Cooling Box" for the optical bay drives but they are only available from the states right now and they are very pricey. 

Saying that ....none of the above is probably necessary given the performance of the 640 heatsink but lowering temps scratches a very particular itch.....

Lars

[SDH]

Lars,

Hey, save some Aquavit and crayfish for me!

PWM fans need only 2 wires to run... from pins 1 and 2 which are ground and +12VDC. Pin 3 is the source for "sense" (or "tach") signals to go from the rotor controller PCB back to the motherboard. If that is missing then the MB does not know a fan is attached. Pin 4 is the line that PWM control signals (PWM braking of full speed) goes from the MB out to the rotor controller PCB. HP has used a ground jumper short lead from pin 1 over to pin hole 5 on the plug of their "Performance" fans so ground seen by pin 5 tells the MB a Performance fan is attached to the heatsink rather than a Mainstream fan. My recall is that the MB does not know if you detach/clip the PWM signal wire that goes to pin 4.

For some reason in the Zx40 family the made the heatsink fan header 6 pins, and there is a second ground jumper from pin hole 5 to pin hole 6. I've never heard the reason for this. That is why when you use one of the very nice double-performance double-surface-area 4-heat-tube Z440 heatsink/fans in a Z420 or a Z620 single-processor build you just leave that 6th pin hole hanging out in space when you plug it onto the Zx20's 5-pin CPU cooler header. It only wastes about 1/8" of space...

Your Noctua PWM fans will run at their full speed if you disconnect pin 4 but you'll likely need to create a jumper wire somehow from ground (pin 1) over to pin 5 because your HP motherboard will know you need a Performance fan given your processor. Your stock Noctua PWM plug only has 4 pin holes. I've harvested the 5-pin HP plug ends off of discarded CPU cooler fans that had those. There is a way to release the metal wire ends from one plug and shift them to another... it is tricky and you can ruin the metal end attachments if you're not careful. You have to depress the tiny metal locking tab, pull the metal end out of the original plug hole, and elevate that tab again so it will lock into a new plug end. You get one shot at that, and I use a scalpel blade for that. You have to keep the order straight from source to target plug, and it is not easy to add a jumper wire from 1 to 5 but I've done that with my nano soldering gun. You'll end up with a FrankenPlug with 5 pin holes, nothing attached to hole 4, hole 1 to ground wire with ground jumper from there over to hole 5, +12VDC at hole 2, and sense wire connected to hole 3. Also, the Noctua plugs are the usual PWM shape for the non-HP world. The HP plugs are different.

Case cooling also is helped by the fan inside the power supply. I like the look of that EverCool product... looks well built and should fit perfectly. It looks like a 92x92x25mm fan built in that would be running at full 12VDC speeds with its 2 wires. As you know Noctua makes some nice 4-wire PWM splitter adapter cables, and 4-wire PWM cable extensions. You could swap in a 92mm PWM fan if you wanted the motherboard to run that fan also... say splitting off the front low HP chassis fan 4-pin motherboard header:

Evercool drive cooler

My instincts however turn to Ghetto Mod. Some spare window screen duct taped onto the front of your case after you throw away all the 5.25" bay covers from there, and then mount inside as big a fan as possible, blowing inward. In honor of Noctua you could even tape two together back to front with more duct tape, kind of like what they do with their big CPU cooler kits (just without the CPU cooler in the middle).

Send us pictures!

[Lars_Poster]

Well I took your advice (which I interpreted as "go janky ghetto or go home) and went at the HDD bay fan.

I have a lot of broken 120mm fans so I simply removed the fans from the houses and bolted three of them to an Arctic 3pin 120mm fan.

The idea being to form a duct from the slotted front fascia to where I need the air to go.

This fit nice and snug into of the HDD caddies. I held it in firmly with some Gorilla double sided tape. Th enice thing about this is that the HDD caddy is not destroyed and can go back to stock fairly eaily.

Then this was simply positioned in the HDD space. It is connected to a SATA connector with an adapter.

And it looks lik ethis:

Ducting1Ducting 2In position 1In position 2

A quick test using the software for which the machine is used for gave me a -4 degree C drop in temps on the bottom CPU! At least 70% of the airflow goes right down the fan intake on the cpu riser. The rest goes into the area above the riser but is blocked from that CPU fan by the shroud for one of memory banks.

The fan runs at full tilt but its so far into the case that sound is essentially minimal.

The next thing will be the fan for the optical bays but I have to wait for some blanking plates to arrive. I will post some pictures when I get them.

lars

[SDH]

Lars,

Nice. Welcome to the hood...