Z800 Upgrade for 2015

[jackburton]

jpafrancisco, if you do go ahead and get your CPU+GPU upgrade completed I'd very much enjoy seeing some game demonstration videos on youtube.

[jpafrancisco]

Sure thing! I would be happy to post the finished upgrade project! 

[alexanderhernan]

I was able to add an 2.5 Samsung Evo 850 SSD with this adapter from OWC.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury-Accelsior/S-Carrier

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E250B-AM/dp/B00OAJ412U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1...

Works fine.

I also added an Nvidia GT 610 graphics card.

http://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GeForce-Synergy-PCI-Express-ZT-60601-10L/dp/B0088PVBZC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF...

and PCI Sound Blaster Audigy 2 zs Sound Card with Live Drive

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-Audigy-Platinum/dp/B00006RVQL/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&...

Apple Broadcom WiFi-ac PCIe

http://www.amazon.com/802-11AC-BCM94360CD-Wireless-Desktop-Bluetooth/dp/B00P0QAU36/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UT...

IOgear Bluetooth USB adapter

http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Bluetooth-Micro-Adapter-GBU521/dp/B007GFX0PY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=145...

All work vanilla in Windows-8 or 10 ( Plug and play )

[FILMTOOLS]

what is your sustained speed with that SSD pci adapter?  And can you boot your system with it?

[alexanderhernan]

Yes, It is bootable. I boot Windows-10 from the 2.5 inch Samsung evo 850 SSD with Adapter.

The SSD adapter is rated for 6gb. transfer rate. My Samsung Evo 850 SSD bench marks are about 520mb/s read and write.

From my experience, Samsung SSD's perform the bests. I have tried several other brands and they did not perform as described. The Samsung SSD's preform very well.

 

[alexanderhernan]

I also added 2 Blu-ray burners.

LG 16x Blu-ray writers.

http://www.amazon.com/LG-WH16NS40-Internal-Blu-ray-Rewriter/dp/B00E7B08MS/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qi...

[FILMTOOLS]

That is great news about being able to boot with the card.  M2 speed is great that is native speed no caching?  I have Samsung EVO 840 PRO now running but connected to SATA port and I am getting about 250MB/sec read/write.  It is worth using the card. 

 m2 is also bootable?

Do you know of any adapters that can host two SSD's or m2's?

Thanks!

[alexanderhernan]

I don't know of any adapters that can suppport 2 SSD's via PCIe bus. However you can always use 2 adapters with 2 SSD's.

Just make sure you setup your primary boot drive in the system bios to boot from the SSD first. 

If you get an M.2 SSD then I know that the Samsung Evo 850 and Samsung SM951 SSD will work as they both are "ACHI".

Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a technical standard defined by Intel that specifies the operation of Serial ATA (SATA) host bus adapters in a non-implementation-specific manner.

I don't know if the HP z800 will support the NEWer "Nvme" SSD's as in the Samsung 950 Pro or Intel 750 PCIe SSD.

[Blckout99]

Has anyone tried liquid cooling these ? In particular with dual cpus. I know there was an official HP liquid cooling kit, but its impossible to find now, and 3 or 400 dollars when they pop up. I'm wondering if any of the Antec closed loop kits would have long enough piping to reach the second cpu or another brand... without having to do a custom kit and large hosing.

[alexanderhernan]

I bought an HP liquid cooler for my HP z400 with Hex core Xeon. It works okay I guess. there is no way to tell at what temprature the CPU is running at unless I use a temp sensor gun ( Which I don't have ).  I bought it for about $50 New on ebay however they are hard to find now. It was difficult to install. Not really worth it if you ask me. It uses the same amount of fans and is louder than the regular heatsink with fan.

I was looking for a liquid cooler for my HP z800 however they are really expensive at about $250 if you can find one.

Cons:

1) Liquid cooling fans are louder.

2) Hard to install

3) Expensive

4)HP liquid cooling kits  for Z-series is  Hard to find

5) You can't really tell if they are working or not? No temp sensors on the Motherboard.

6) Not really worth the money and effort if you ask me.