Z820 Make Use of Front Drive Bays

[peterbata]

Thank you @SDH. And top of the morning to you. Believe it or not I have that very same document sitting on my desktop. How I missed those diagrams on pages 33-34 is beyond me. Having struggled with Covid for the last couple of weeks may have had something to do with it.

I took @DGroves advice and purchased an Adaptec ASR-71605 RAID controller card. I want to make absolutely certain that I insert it into the appropriate slot. If I am interpreting the diagram correctly I should be inserting the card into the very first slot closest to the memory on the CPU1 side (16 in the diagram) This is the card's specs vis a vis PCI 8-lane PCIe Gen3 taken from:

Microsemi Adaptec RAID 71605 

[SDH]

Never have used a RAID/SAS card... I have zero ideas on this. But I bet the google knows.

[peterbata]

We can always count on good 'ol reliable that's for sure. Have a wonderful Saturday. As always, your input is valued immensely. Peter

[joselso]

Please note that pages 89-90 in that same HP document that you have, provide guidance as to PCIe cards installation sequence in HP Z820.

It turns out that, in general, the 1st choice of slot for controller cards such as your RAID 71605 card is Slot 6 (see page 90).

Note 2 at the bottom of page 90 describes an exception to that recommendation, if you have a High Performance GPU Compute card; only in such cases, install the RAID controller card in the alternate slot(s) #1 or #5 or #4 or #3, depending on whether you have one or two CPUs installed.

[peterbata]

Thank you so much for chiming in @Joselso. As a matter of fact, I do have an NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU installed in the machine.

NVIDIA Quadro K5000 

As soon as I receive the Adpatec 71605 I will defintely take a look at what slot the GPU is installed in. I received the machine in it's current iteration. So, I am assuming that it was inserted into the appropriate slot.

I should have mentioned that the controller does come with a battery. My Z820 has two CPU's.

I have been out of the hardware game for a few decades now. It certainly is not like getting back up onto the bike so-to-speak. So much has changed. And, thank you for pointing out the pages that I should be referring to. Now I am really confused.

Much appreciated. Peter

[joselso]

If your NVIDIA Quadro K5000 card is the only graphics display card in the Z820, then it should be installed in Slot 2 as stated on page 90.

However, if there is a dedicated graphics card apart from the K5000, and you intend to use the K5000 as a GPU Compute card, then the dedicated graphics card should be installed in Slot 2, and the K5000 GPU Compute card should be placed in Slot 6 as stated in Note 2 on page 90.

In general, it is recommended that GPU's used as Compute cards should not serve as graphics display cards, and users had better install a separate graphics display card dedicated for local display, and not connect the GPU Compute card to any display.

In my place of work, we use GPU Compute cards to accelerate computation of high-end CST software. CST recommends in URL:
http://updates.cst.com/downloads/GPU_Computing_Guide_2024.pdf, section 10.2:

When available, the GPUs have to operate in TCC mode.
The TCC Mode is available on all Tesla and on most Quadro cards. This mode is not available for Quadro cards which are connected to a display/monitor.

[peterbata]

I only have the one K5000 installed in this machine. As we know the Z820 does not offer an onboard display port. At the moment I am only using the card as a means to project what I am doing vis a vis ESXi installation, BIOS settings, etc. I was hoping to perhaps use the K5000 in passthrough mode in ESXi for a Plex Media server VM that I was planning to create at some point. As soon as I have sorted out my RAID card and HDD situation. I received the 2x HGST SATA 8TB drives yesterday. I also have 1x HGST SAS 8TB drive that I was hoping to use as well. I am going to get back to you in so far as the K5000's current location. If memory serves me right you may very well be right about it's current location. I decided that it was only right for me to take a few seconds to finally confirm where my GPU is located. Yes, in fact it appears to be occupying Slots #2 & 3 if these aging eyes are seeing correctly.

[DGroves]

if you read the HP documentation, you will discover that the z820 has "TWO" x16 PCI-e slots that HP designates for use with video cards when using a dual cpu configuration

in regards to the adaptec raid card feel free to "pm"  me if you have questions don't forget the "forward" mini sas/sata cable and the male to male sata adapter if using the internal hotswap bays

for this raid card i also recommend the x8 pcie clot that is near the pci slot

alsi installing a 40mm 4pin pwm fan on the adaptec cards' heatsink is recommended you will also need a fan extender cable to connect the fan to the 4 pin fan header located at the bottom rear of the motherboard

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166574603390?itmmeta=01HR1140TA04E6E8H5T5H2M44K&hash=item26c89ebc7e:g:laoAA...

[SDH]

Peter,

I'd listen to DGroves. He's probably done this at least a hundred times in Z820 workstations.

And don't turn your video card into a compute card just yet. We've read about losing video capability of a workstation if that is not done properly.

Joselso is referring to the page numbers at the bottom corners of the document... those are different from the page counter at the top in the PDF reader. It was confusing also to me until I realized those are different, and I'm easily confused... probably why I have not used a RAID card in the past.

[peterbata]

From what I can gather from the listing photos I should be receiving the appropriate cables along with the controller card. And, I did order the male to male adapters as you recommended:

Adaptec ASR-71605 

Male to Male 

I was not aware that I would need a cooling fan but will look into that right away. Can it be easily mounted to the heatsink?

Would the fan extension cable be similar to this:

Fan extension cable 

Thank you for the offer to "PM" you. It means a lot to me. Chances are I may very well take you up on that offer. You also recommended that I use the x8 pcie slot near the pci slot. Would that be #6 in this diagram?