Z400 Aftermarket Upgrades

[gabornico]

even if you manage to install your freezer 13 it won't cool those little mosfets.

The HP heatsink isn't that expensive, at least not when you get one used off ebay.

It has a Delta AFB0912VH 92x25.2 mm 3200 rpm fan and a very special feature which you find on several HP heatsinks:

air is partially directed to the mosfets which sit on the left and top side around the processor socket.

These will get hot under load because they have to provide a serious amount of current to the CPU, the Xeon itself isn't that critical.

If this project is just a kind of research or "let's play and see what happens" kind of experiment, then go on with whatever type of cooler you want, but if you want to have a reliable workstation build I recommend to get the performance heatsink.

The mod you refer to shows us how to perfectly ruin the airflow in  a well engineered workstation.

And yes, the fifth pin is an additional ground connection which tells the system board "hey buddy I'm performance heatsink, let's rock...).

[SDH]

From what I have seen a large proportion of the Z400s came with the Performance heatsink/fan.  Are you sure you don't already have one?  

Like Gabornico said, and it is the voice of experience, the Performance heatsink has a 92x92x25 mm specific fan that if you dig into it you'll find is a quite high RPM fan if run at 12VDC and no PWM throttle down.  But, the HP PWM throttle built into the motherboard drops those high RPM fan speeds down to what the processor/motherboard need.  Carefully balanced for cooling and quiet, but with headroom if the motherboard senses need for more cooling in which case less PWM throttle will be applied and multiple fans will speed up.

The idea of spoofing the motherboard into thinking it has a "Performance" heatsink fan attached is correct.... the ground jumper from pin 1 to pin 5 can be added to the plug on a Mainstream fan to make the motherboard think it has a Performance fan/heatsink in place when it does not.  That can be used for experimenting, but be sure to check closely that you're getting enough cooling.  I believe the "Mainstream" z400 heatsink fan was 80x80x25 or 15 mm.  There is no downside to running the higher capacity Performance heatsink/fan even if your processor does not need it.

Gabornico also brings up another important point..... if you look closely at those HP Performance heatsinks for the Z400 you'll see special flat metal airlfow guides that force some of the cooling onto the capacitors he mentions.  If enough cooling is not applied to them you may risk the motherboard.  I'm not sure if there is a way to measure that for the aftermarket heatsink/fan you mention from that link.  I looked closely at that also, but I'm sticking with what the HP engineers designed due to the special cooling issue noted above, and the the lack of balance in RPM control I mentioned by mixing an aftermarket PWM fan with the HP built in PWM cooling throttle.

If I remember correctly Dan_WGBU, our favorite engineer, ran a Z400 for quite some time, and he may have some added insights.

[Niarfe]

Thank you both for your replies!

I still have not installed the Freezer 13 CPU cooler. I did check the performance cooler and it is still more expensive than this other fan. I also come from a mentality where usually aftermarket coolers are better than stock manufacturer's parts.

I can confirm that my fan is the low profile fan since it only has a 4-pin connector for the PWM fan. As soon as I changed the CPU to the W3680, the bios stops booting becuase of the fan thing. That's is why I wanted a better cooler, but my budget was limited.  Still, I have not seen the temp on the CPU go above 56C and as low as 35C with the low profile cooler. My AC room has a bunch to do with that too.  I did use Artic Silver 5 that I had around and I believe that also had something to do with it. AS5 is a very good thermal paste.

I also bought new silent high CFM fans to improve the cooling of the case in general. Also plan on doing one of SDH's mods for the front intake fan, taking the plastic fan holder out and just have the fan straight to the chassis with screws. 

Still a couple of things to do here. Thanks to all. Now to hunt ebay for that cooler at a low price and see if I can then sell the Freezer..

[SDH]

535586-001 = 463990-001.  These are the Assembly/Spares part numbers for the Z400, Z600 and Z800 "Mainstream" heatsink/fan which are rated for up to and including processors with 95W Max TDP.  Here is a picture of the 5-hole plug for those, with the 5th hole empty:

Note also that the above heatsink has 2 rather than 3 cooling tubes, less surface area, and a smaller 82x82mm fan versus the higher heat capacity Performance heatsink (which has a 92x92x25mm fan).  Below is the wiring spoof that can be done to the fan plug end of a "Mainstream" fan to mimic what the motherboard will see if an actual "Performance" fan is attached.  Note that a black ground jumper wire is soldered onto the side of the pin 1 receptacle and its other receptacle end will be put into the empty pin 5 receptacle of the white 5-hole plug.

I'd hesitate to run this mod for long with a 130W Max TDP processorin place cooled by a "Mainstream" smaller heatsink/fan, however, but thought you'd want to see what the modification would look like.  Getting the "Performance" heatsink/fan for the Z400 is advised instead, and they are not costly used off eBay:

That is a pic of how the wires are set by HP for a "Performance" fan, and the heatsink shown beneath is a true "Performance" version.  Adding on the ground jumper wire for the mod of a "Mainstream" Z400 heatsink fan is easy using a salvaged fan wire from elsewhere, and a bit of solder.  You will already have the 5-hole white plug end on your original fan.

Finally, there are quite a few incorrect ads on the web/in eBay stating that the 658001-001 heatsink/fan is a "Performance" version for the Z400.  This is wrong, and that heatsink/fan has a conventional white 4-hole PWM type fan plug end, and a different spacing on the hold-down screws.  Don't buy that one for sure, and this has been confirmed by our favorite HP engineer, Dan_WGBU.  It is for a completely different type of processor socket, and would waste your time greatly.

[SDH]

Today I had time to add in one of the HP Texas Instruments USB 3.0 cards into my Z400, using the Akasa 3.5" form factor front USB 3.0 front ports interface that plugs into the card, and also a Molex 4-wire to SATA power adapter (Molex brand fits best, from Mouser.com).  that allows feed of proper amperage of +5VDC to the card to drive the 4 ("2x2") USB3 ports to their specified wattage without risk.  There is a 12" Akasa Molex 4-wire extension in there to bring the power from near the DVD down and out to the card plug via the Moles to SATA adapter cable.  I have also run these same cards off a floppy power to SATA power adapter, but that feed method offers too low a wattage capacity for full USB3 spec power draw from all 4 ports running at full spec simultaneously.

The card went into the top PCIe port which on these workstations is PCIe Generation II.  That slot can handle the bandwidth of the USB3 performance without issue.  Drivers are from the Z620 W7Pro64 enterprise list.

So, from the bottom, eSATA adapter; PCI Oxford serial/parallel port card (latest edition) with W7Pro64 drivers from HP that also work on W10Pro64; the 2-slot video card which is a "blower type" of card that exhausts rather than blows around the internal hot air.  In that way I don't feel need for adding a front PCI rear-blowing fan, and this thing is very quiet for its very high performance.  

Then, the TI based USB3 card with its power feed and 2 ports on the backplane plus a standard header for bringing 2 more USB3 ports forward to the top of the Z400.  To the right of that card is the chipset add-on fan from a xw6600 (or a Z600) with a Noctua ULNA 4-wire adapter in-line to drop the unnecessary high speed that HP has set these fans to.  Higher up is the Performance heatsink/fan that is the Z400 standard, and finally under that is the X5690 Xeon hexacore that has never been listed in the QuickSpecs for the Z400 but which works great.  Standard power supply, not the higher capacity one, and no need for more.  It is getting a little tight in there, however.

The front interface for the USB3 access is shown below, as are the backplane and the insides:

Without the sunlight, inside, the Akasa front face and the HP black plastic parts look very much the same.

[gabornico]

hey buddy,

I just saw your Northbridge cooler.

Which Delta fan did you install there ?

[SDH]

Gabo,

Missed your post earlier.... here is the info:

That is a HP 40x40x20mm PWM Delta fan, and the exact same fan is used in the xw6600 and in the Z600, screwed onto the chipset heatsinks (on the top or on the end, respectively).  Most of those fans you'll see on eBay are 3-wire, but this is specifically made by Delta for HP, and it runs just fine from that standard PWM motherboard header on the Z400.  You sometimes can find that fan on eBay, but make sure you get the one with the label -7R49 modifier... EFB0412HD, -7R49 down below.  Here's a good picture:

Then, I add on a Noctua 4-wire fan speed reducer, the ULNA (the NA-RC6).  Those are hard to find, and they reduce the fan speed more than the NA-RC7 (LNA) which can be more easily found in that Noctua made them available in a set of 3 (the NA-SRC7 kit).  You can find those on the Noctua web site and buy them from Amazon, etc.  Each fan varies a bit, but here are the speeds at full 12VDC, then with the HP PWM motherboard throttle, then with the normal HP PWM throttle and a Noctua LNA added, and finally the same but with a Noctua ULNA instead:

8500, 3745, 3101, 2752

I got a few even higher resistance ones from Noctua in Austria, and thereby you can drop the speed even more and still get good cooling.  I think those have 100 and 150 ohm resistors, versus the 50 and 80 ohm ones of the LNA and ULNA.  

I've never seen a Z400 with one of those chipset fans attached to that heatsink (other than my mod), so maybe it is really not necessary, but using the processor I am I wanted some added cooling on that chipset because it is handling quite a bit more bandwidth and the regular processors require.  That motherboard header was engineered for a purpose, but maybe HP found the big finned heatsink they fit in there was enough.  It works great for this purpose, however, and you can see the RPMs in BIOS from that chipset fan just fine.  On the motherboard the label is "memory fan" if I recall correctly.

Attachment method:  First, the heatsink is attached to the chipset via a glue-type-thermal compound.  You'd have to crack it off if you wanted to clean everything and use your own soft compound, like my favorite from Noctua.  I got a ruined Z600 motherboard from eBay to see if I could harvest the fan/heatsink from that for the Z400..... can't, but I got to break it off and harvest the fan anyway.  For this attachment you see above I took the fan down to Ace hardware and checked out the philips head stainless screws that would fit thru the holes.  There is one size that slid in, and one that was just a bit too tight (maybe #6 or 8 ( 8 or 10?).  So, I upsized the 4 holes a tiny bit and the larger size then fit.  These are machine screws, not the UNC or UNF ones.  I got long enough ones to get a bite on the aluminum fins.  That has been stable over time.  I was going to epoxy on an attachment, but this is working. 

Here is a picture with the Noctua ULNA attached, for the xw6600 builds.  You don't use as many zip ties for the Z400..... you need more slack.  That other fan you partially see is the stock xw6600 memory fan/shroud (those also run unnecessarily fast from HP, so I slow those down with a Noctua NA-RC7 4-wire LNA):

If you look on eBay for EFB0412HD you'll see a bunch of 2- and 3-wire fans but you need the HP PWM 4-wire version one (with the special modifier noted above that you can see on the fan's label).   I've only seen a few of those, rarely, on eBay.  However, you can find that exact HP 40x20 fan here:  http://www.pchub.com/uph/laptop/656-113748-22340/Delta-Electronics-EFB0412HD-Server-Square-Fan.html       They last a very long time when you drop their RPMs the way I described.... I have never had one go bad.

[Niarfe]

Hello All,

Wanted to report that I ended up installing the Freezer 13 and replacing the lower end cpu cooler on the Z400. Very easy to install. Could not use the snap clips and pins from the box, but instead used the original screws from the original cooler. Once all was done, this system used to idle at around 38C with the AC ON. And under load it would go as high as 60C.  With the AC off it would idle around 42 and and on load up to 66/67C which is not too bad to be honest. 

with the Freezer 13, now it idles down to 28/29 with AC ON and around 35 with AC off. Under load it never goes beyond 54C either with AC ON or OFF. I am very impressed with this cooler.

I still plan on adding more intake fans on the case and create more postivive pressure to aid the GPU.

Will post pictures later!

[gabornico]

no problem, thx a lot for the deatailed info.

Gabor

[matroX]

Hi you need to conncet pin 1 + 5 on the motherboard  CPU fan connector ( or on fan connector side).  This is how BIOS determines if you have 'high power'  fan.  In original high power fan these pins are just bridged.  Pin 1 is GND, so then on pin 5 also has to be GND.  I bridged it to computer chasis and BIOS stopped complaining. 

Greetings