Upgrading an HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation Part II

[NonSequitur777]

Dear Forum,

Just completed a second HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation Upgrade project.  My first Z2 Tower G4 upgrade project (see: Upgrading an HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation - HP Support Community - 8698680) was a custom build gaming PC for one of my sons as a birthday gift. I really liked that upgrade and decided to build one for myself.

As I mentioned in my previous upgrade link, the outstanding configurability and Gaming upgradeability of an HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation is in part related to its Intel C246 chipset which makes it compatible with either 8th or 9th gen Intel (Xeon) processors as specified here: HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation Specifications | HP® Customer Support, and here: WS C246 PRO CPU Support | Servers & Workstations | ASUS Global.

Another major advantage of this desktop is the availability of an OEM HP 650-watt power supply in order to power a high-end graphics card.

And yes, you still can get awesome HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation deals via eBay.

Anyway, here is a comprehensive listing of all the components for this upgrade project:

1.) Barebone HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation:

2.) 650-watt power supply (HP p/n: L36049-003 / L57253-003 "SKO-PSU 650W WS19 EPA90")

3.) Intel 9th gen i9-9900KF processor (8-Cores, 16-Threads, 3.60 GHz up to 5.00 GHz, 95-watt TDP)

4.) ASUS Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super 8GB GDDR6

5.) Primary (boot) drive: 2TB Silicon Power XS70 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 SSD with R/W up to 7,300/6,800 MB/s

6.) Secondary drive: 1TB PNY CS900 SATA SSD

7.) Secondary drive: 2TB Seagate BarraCuda HDD

8.) Samsung 4 x 8GB DDR4 PC4-25600, 3200 MHz RAM (M378A1K43EB2-CWE)

9.) Intel Thermal Solution BXTS15A Heatsink Upgrade designed for up to 130-watt CPUs. I did modify this heatsink, as I replaced the cheapo plastic Intel push-pins with metal, spring-loaded mounting bolts (see red square picture)

10.) Wireless Wi-Fi/BT Adapter (Realtek 8812BU @ up to 1200 Mbps)

11.) An HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation requires an additional chassis cooling fan whenever you install a 95+ watt processor, which I installed, see blue square in picture 1. There is a third 4-pin PWM cooling fan connector on the motherboard to power that fan.  Please note: had to move/mount the desktop's little speaker a little bit in order for the 9025 cooling fan (p/n: 372651-001) to fit on the front chassis -see purple square in picture 2:

12.) Added an "Intel Core i9 - 9th Gen" silver chrome badge and an "Intel CORE i9 - 9900KF" domed sticker:

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[NonSequitur777]

Dear Forum,

Optimized this rig several times and ran the UserBenchMark performance test:

Link: HP Z2 Tower G4 Workstation Performance Results - UserBenchmark.

Suffice to say that this desktop is now a lean-mean gaming machine. I suppose I could install better (dual rank) RAM, but the games I played ran very smoothly north of 80+ fps at ultra 1080P presets.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[NonSequitur777 · Accepted solution]

Dear Forum,

Ran the PassMark Performance benchmark software, and here are the results:

Link: PassMark Software - Display Baseline ID# 1942758.

And ran the Cinebench R23.200 benchmarking rendering software:

And Novabench:

Link: Novabench - Benchmark Result.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777