UPGRADE Z620 WORKSTATION TO DUAL CPU CONFIG, WHAT PROCESSOR CAN BE USED

[Dusty716]

I have a Z620 Workstation that currently has a single Xeon - 2680 processor. I would like to upgrade to a two CPU system, I have purchased a CPU riser board and ddr3 ecc memory.  My question is what is the fastest CPUs that i can use in my z620? i found a matched pair of 2683 v3 and 2697 v3 but i read someplace that the z620 can only use v1 and v2 processors? The 2690 v2 is available but it uses 10 more watts and doesn't seem to offer only a slight speed benefit?

Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Dusty Lunn

[SDH]

Dusty, welcome...

There are actually two versions of the Z620... a v1 and a v2. It is easy to know what you have if you look in BIOS to get your boot block date. Assuming it has the later date it is a v2 that can run both the v1 and v2 processors. If it has the earlier date it can only reliably run the v1 processor(s). You can look up those boot block dates in this forum and via google. Hopefully you have the later 3/6/13 boot block date in your Z620 (and no you really can't update the boot block date unless you are a true computer genius with too much spare time). You can, however, pretty easily upgrade a v1 to a v2 by buying a used v2 motherboard and transplanting that in.

The v3 and v4 processors cannot run in the ZX20 generation of HP workstations; those run in the ZX40 next generation.

There are many discussions in here by Brian and Bambi on best processors for particular needs, and DGroves has lots of experience with the Z820 version of these to read up on. A recent post to review with some input from Brian is HERE. I'd only use a processor in these that was able to run at the max the v2 can ever run at... 1866 MHz. Since you want to run 2 now you need to only get matching ones that have dual QPI links.

He built up a highly optimized Z620 v2 and overclocks it, but I think he only does that on W7Pro64 rather than W10/W11. I've converted all of my ZX20 v2 and ZX40 workstations to run W11 and like that quite a bit. If I was going to start a fresh project I'd work with the ZX40 family of workstations, and those don't have the v1 versus v2 issue to deal with. I have posted here on specific ZX20 1866 MHz ECC buffered memory I use that can be bought (recycled from servers) at about 10.00 USD/8GB stick and with excellent pricing also on 16GB sticks if you really need that much. Remember that the slowest memory or the slowest processor you choose will drag down the speed of the other components to match its same pokey performance.

Lots of good info here in this forum...

[Brian1965]

Hi Dusty716,

Can you please advise what Boot Block date you have, (see SDH's post above to find this), and also what BIOS version you are on?

What is the intended use of your Z620 and which is more important?

1) Having the maximum amount of CPU cores (threads)? NOTE: Very few applications can take advantage of CPU's with more than about 6-cores, unless you are using specific CPU rendering/computing software or plan on running several 'virtual' machines on your system.

2) Having a fast CPU(s)?, i.e.  making the computer more responsive and maximizing graphics, RAM and HDD/SSD performance.

In general, higher core count CPU's run a lower frequencies compared to the lower core count CPU's. This is due to thermal management issues of the CPU. More cores = more heat, faster clock cycles = more heat.

Here is a link to the Z620 Quickspecs which lists all the compatible CPU models. Remember that the v2 CPU's only run on the latter Boot Block date systems.