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HP Recommended
Z620 Workstation
Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)

Hi, I am looking to upgrade Graphics, but having issues sourcing recommended 2nd hand ones. 

Tossing up between replacement or upgrade. Will the RTXA4000 work on my machine? Has great specs and power consumption of 140w.

8 REPLIES 8
HP Recommended

while not a officially HP supported card the a4000 should have no issues in a z620 system

 

do note that this card is not a good match for your current cpu, for best performance the current cpu should be replaced with the fastest z620 cpu offered the E5-2696 v2 assuming your z620 is the later v2 motherboard

 

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/how-to-find-a-z620...

HP Recommended

It is the V1 I believe. I would like to use VR with CAD files and Steam as well.

What can the V1 be expanded to? E5-1620 Specs seem to show good results.

HP Recommended

Would you recommend spending 2k on this card or upgrading the workstation?

Thanks for you time,

Regards,

Jeff

HP Recommended

Jeff, 

If it is your money, or OPM, we'd all recommend that you take the 1/2 hour (max) to learn how to tell the difference between a version 1 vs a v2 Z620.  2013 vs 2011 boot block date, from first page in BIOS.

 

Also, I have posted in here on how to tell if you are buying a v1 versus a v2 Z620 used motherboard on eBay.  As our friend Bambi has recently posted those have come down in price to under 100.00 USD, reliably, if you are an educated consumer.

 

We've upgraded at least 10 v1 Z620s to v2s... takes me now about 1/2 hour.

 

 

HP Recommended

p.s. A new HP workstation is always nice... especially if it is OPM.

HP Recommended

Hi, I SDH, I did read the articles and do have a V1 SP 619558-001 or AS#618264-001 REV 0G.

Do you offer service to upgrade to V2?

I saw reference to a new z workstation with an RTX A4000 card in it on NVIDIA site, but can't find it or price on HP site here or States. I guess COVID has cleaned them all out or have they not been released yet?

If I do purchase the A4000, will it use card capacity, or will it be limited by the Board, CPU etc.

I have 32gb of RAM. Excuse my ignorance, what is OPM?

 

HP Recommended

ADesigns1,

 

In m view, unless the subject system is integrated into a professional environment requiring certified drivers and/or  especially for using Solidworks or Catia, $1,800 RTXA4000 is not going to provide any useful advantages except possibly availability and that a blower-style cooler is preferred for workstation cases that lean towards quiet running in place of the very high air flow of gaming cases.

 

More importantly, the performance and cost of the GPU is disproportionate to the performance and cost of the system.  A 4-core @ 3.6/3.8 GHz running 1600MHz RAM is minimal for 3D CAD.  The recommended hardware for Oculus Rift S and the HTC Vive Cosmos tends to lean towards 8-cores  at close to 5GHz Turbo speeds  with high IPC architecture, 3200+ RAM speeds and 8GB RTX GPU's.  Here's a recommended 2021 VR system:

 

https://www.windowscentral.com/best-desktop-pc-vr

 

"Spending about $1,784 will get you a PC with Ryzen 7 5800 CPU, NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, 16GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200MHz RAM, and a 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD."

 

Notice that the cost of the entire, prebuilt system including the RTX 3060 Ti is not a lot more than the RTX A4000 on it's own. The Passmark average CPU mark for the Xeon E5-1620 =  5,869 and the single-thread mark (STM) which is the important one for 3D CAD = 1,777.  For the 8C @ 3.4/4.6GHz  Ryzen 7 5800, CPU mark = 26,131 and the single-thread mark (STM) which is the important one for 3D CAD = 3,412.  However, the referenced Dell Alienware R10 is definitely not recommended as a workstation due to poor airflow, poor design, for example a proprietary PSU that clocks air to the CPU but also swings out for no apparent reason.,.., and intolerable noise fro a workstation.

 

The z620  can be revised to quite high performance, by, first- as SDH mentions, changing the motherboard to the second version (= 2013 Boot Block Date,  and using one of the rare Xeon E5's  (E5-1650 v2, E5-1660 v2, and E5-1680 v2) that may be overclocked using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and cooling that with the z420 liquid cooler.  This is z620_2 in two iterations: the original 8-core and currently as a 6-core in search of a higher single thread performance for 3D CAD:

 

HP z620_2 (2017) (R7) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8-core@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC Reg / GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB AHCI + Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB / Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound interface > 2X Mackie MR824 / 825W PSU /> 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 z620_2 (2017) (R10) > Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.6GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) /GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / Samsung SM951 M.2 512GB AHCI + Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB + HP/HGST Enterprise 6TB / Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound interface + 2X Mackie MR824 / 825W PSU / Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit (HP OEM) > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)
[ Passmark Rating = 6412 / CPU rating = 16282 / 2D = 845 / 3D= 13735 / Mem = 3107 / Disk = 14614 / Single Thread Mark = 2550 [7.3.21]

 

Note that using the z420 liquid cooler does simply plug into a z620 precludes adding the second CPU riser:

 

z620_2 with z420 liquid cooler installed.jpg

 

The noise level is noticeable when rendering at 4.6Ghz, but the temperatures in 4K VRay CPU rendering are not bad averaging as can be seen below:

 

z420_3_HWMon_4.6GHz_6186_2525_TEMPS_7.3.21.jpg

 

The E5-1650 v2 in the current version cost only $50 and runs all cores at 4.6GHz.  E5-1680 v2 8-cores have dropped in price to about $120. The E5-1680 v2 when running all cores at 100% will run at 3.4GHz. The E5-1660 v2 (6C @ 3.7 /4.0GHz) will probably have the highest clock speed potential of them all,  these days costing $150+.

 

GPU prices and availability in the last several weeks have been rapidly improving.  One of the better values is the RTX 2080 Super- a few have gone for under $700. Compare the RTX 2080 Super Passmark 3D= 19,509 with RTX A4000 = 19,585.  There are at least three  blower cooler RTX 2080 Super designs, for example:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/114905796213?hash=item1ac0eb4e75:g:D4cAAOSwqCdg~Lng

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/304075970276?hash=item46cc5716e4:g:P3gAAOSwT5tg1iXf

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/184957075195?hash=item2b104cfefb:g:LUMAAOSwVYFg948R

 

 

Changing the motherboard in the z620 is easy and fast: a very clever design : unplug everything, rotate two green tabs 90 degrees, slide the motherboard back, transfer the stand-offs to the new board, tilt the new board do the standoffs engage in their slots, slide back, rotate the green tabs, plug everything back in, replace the shroud.

 

Passmark Performance Test, while not perfect, is good way to chart the starting point of overall performance with upgrading progress.  The version 10.0 though was "unhappy" with testing the Windows 7 systems.

 

BambiBoomZ

 

HP z420_3: (2015) (R12) Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.6GHz) / z420 Liquid cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/ Samsung SM951 M.2 256GB AHCI + Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB / ASUS Essence STX + Logitech z2300 2.1 / 600W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (HP OEM ) > Samsung 40" 4K
[Passmark System Rating: = 6186 CPU = 15844 / 2D = 819 / 3D = 11216 / Mem = 3047 Disk = 13905 /Single Thread Mark = 2525 [7.3.21]

 

HP ZBook 17 G2: (2015 ) i7-4940MX Extreme (4C@3.1/ 4.0GHz) / 32GB / Quadro K3100M 4GB / Kingston 480GB SATA SSD > 17.3" LCD 1920 X1080 panel > HP docking station> video externally to HP 2711x 27" LCD + Dell 17" (2007) / Logitech 533 _2.1 speaker system
[Passmark System Rating: = 3980 / CPU = 10140 / 2D = 618 / 3D = 2779 / Mem = 2559 Disk = 4662 / Single Thread Mark = 2387 [1.3.20]

 

Network: Netgear GS108-400NAS 8-port

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HP Recommended

Jeff.... it is an inside joke from the IT crowd.  OPM = "Other People's Money".

 

Sure I'd load in a v2 motherboard for you if you can get things easily to/from me.  The key things I do are to use cell phone to document where things came from, carefully tape up/out the different interface plugs and power connectors in order they came out from the motherboard.  There is just enough room to get them out of the way for tilting up/out the motherboard.  There is a thin green-topped black plastic "stop" that is rotated to trap the motherboard in place.... you rotate that 90 degrees and now have room to slide the motherboard towards it and then can lift the motherboard up/out tilting a bit.  There are machined slider posts at the bottom of the motherboard that lock into grooves in the metal case.  You only need to slide the motherboard about 1/2" towards the rotated black plastic lock to free those up.  New motherboard goes back the same way, being careful to  line up the rear I/O ports with the case holes as you slide it over into locked position.  The new used motherboard will already be W10-registered with MS if it had W10 running before it was parted out.  Otherwise you need to install W10Pro fresh from a W7Pro install.

 

This is a pretty easy project but not for everyone.

 

I have not checked the barcode label numbers you posted for V2 motherboards.... I can repost about that if you are uncertain.

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