z620 > Unable to use System Recovery Partition on Z Turbo Drive

[BambiBoomZ]

Hello,

On Friday, I assembled the office z620_2 : E5-1680 v2 / 64GB DDR3-1866 EC reg. / Quadro P2000 5GB/ Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB + Intel 730 480GB + 2X Seagate Constellation ES.3 1TB > Windows 7 Pro 64-bit

However, I am unable to evoke the recovery partition on the Z Turbo Drive to reinstall Windows.

The 12GB recovery partition is visible on the Z Turbo in Explorer, but there is no setup or application file that I can find to try and run it.

1.  There are instructions that claim pressing F11 repeatedly at start up will put it into recovery mode. This appears to "almost" work. The words "recovery mode" flash on and then the screen flashes back and forth betwen the same two screens several times and either ends with a "disk error" message "Press contril -Alt-Delete to restart or starts the Windows already on the drive. As the F11 showed brief signs of working, I tried several times, sometimes pressing several times as in the instructions or only one time and at different points in the startup, but it always ends in one or the other same result.  Am I pressing F11 at the wrong time?

2.  There is a video on HP support that instructs Start > Recovery Manager >  but there is no Recovery  Manager in the Start list

3. I tried running the z620 Recovery disk, but it can not see the Z Turbo Drive.

4. I tried to make a WinPE reovery disk on a USB drive,  but maddedingly, it needs 33.01GB and the USB drive is 29GB.

5. I thought of trying to clone the Z Turbo to a Samsung 850 Evo which I assumed the z620 recivery disk could see and then cloning that to the Z Turbo.

This is really frustrating.  Even with a completely working drive I can't restore the system.

Query: Step by step, including the correct boot order, how do I use the recovery partition on the Z Turbo Drive?

The drive is actually in quite good order, having been sed only about a month, but I thought to get a clean start.

The preliminary performance results are encouraging: Running all 8-cores at 4.1GHz, the Passmark CPU Score is 16837 (Single Thread= 2195 .  I'm hoping to have 2300+ at 4.2 or 4.3GHZ and the Quadro P2000 is quite amazing, Passmark 3D rating of 8713, which is in GTX 780 Ti territory.  On the z420 (E5-1660 v2, all 6-cores at 4.2Ghz / Single thread= 2325) , the P2000 made a 3D mark of 8945- faster than a Quadro M5000 8GB (which costs 4X). The Z Turbo is doing well = 13465.

I don't understand why recovery is so elusive on a fully functional system.

Thanks!

Cheers,

BambiBoomZ

[MtothaJ]

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@BambiBoomZ wrote:

The preliminary performance results are encouraging: Running all 8-cores at 4.1GHz, the Passmark CPU Score is 16837 (Single Thread= 2195 .  I'm hoping to have 2300+ at 4.2 or 4.3GHZ and the Quadro P2000 is quite amazing, Passmark 3D rating of 8713, which is in GTX 780 Ti territory.  On the z420 (E5-1660 v2, all 6-cores at 4.2Ghz / Single thread= 2325) , the P2000 made a 3D mark of 8945- faster than a Quadro M5000 8GB (which costs 4X). The Z Turbo is doing well = 13465.

I don't understand why recovery is so elusive on a fully functional system.

Thanks!

Cheers,

BambiBoomZ

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I cant help on the query unfortunately but congratulations for obtaining the title Mr Z620 No.1 !

With regard to Passmark what I noticed is that strong CPU performance and in particular single core performance is the one single factor which significantly bumps up all the other scores esp. disk, RAM and graphics.

That is quite logical and also the reason that dual CPU systems running many cores but at slower 2.0- 3.0 ghz speeds do not necesserily score as well, despite their killer specifications on paper.

[BambiBoomZ]

MtothaJ,

Z Turbo Drive: I never did work out the Z Turbo Drive recovery partition issue.  This was very odd as the Z Turbo booted the system, was running the software, I had access to all the files on the system and in the Recovery partition, and have an original HP z620 recovery disk.  The recovery disk was issued before the Z Turbo existed could not see the Z Turbo. I should have made a WinPE disk on USB and tried that,  but as the drive was so recently done, I decided to leave it at least through the testing period during which I deicde whether to keep the z620_2.

This is disconcerting: What is the use of a recovery partition if I can't use it to recover even a fully functional system?  This is a concern. Perhaps the Z Turbo is going to be changed to a Samsung 950 Pro.

The new z620:  Yes, in general, I'm quite pleased as it is does have the highest z620 system rating in Passmark Performance Test:

HP z620_2 > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8-core@ 4.1GHz)  / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC Reg / Quadro P2000/ HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB + Intel 730 480GB + Seagate Constellation ES.3 1TB / ASUS Essence STX PCIe sound card /825W PSU / Windows 7 Prof. 64-bit  > HP 2711x monitor
 

You are quite correct that the single-thread rating is weighted in the system rating- it must be quite heavily weighted.  the 3D graphics score is also weighted, and then probably the disk score.  While z620_2 is 16th of 22 systems tested using the E5-1680 v2, the system ranking is 8th and eight systems with lower overall ratings have higher CPU ratings. I think the intention with Passmark is to have the ratings be related to the experience of system speed.

The CPU Single Threaded rating of 2252 is not too bad, but my hope was to attain a CPU Single-Threaded rating of 2300 or better, so that it is as fast in 3D as z420_2  (E5-1660 v2). That system, using a Quadro P2000 and running all cores at 4.1GHz has a single thread rating of 2324.

The 2nd ranking z620 today- No.1 until yesterday, belongs to another Forum poster and I expect that will be No. 1 again in a few days.

However, as the whole motivation in the new system was to consolidate the 3D modeling (6-core)  and rendering system (z620_1  2X E5-2690 8-core) into a single 8-core, z620_2 with higher 3D capabilities than z420_2, z620_2 is a failure.  In Passmark E5-1680 v2 CPU ratings, z620_2 ranks 16th.  The E5-1680 v2 was sold with an unlocked multiplier and rated to run at 4.3Ghz,  but  this is not obtainable on the z620 as the various overclocking parameters are limited- it can't be refined.  Plus, I'm concerned that the z620 CPU cooling is limited and that will prevent confident full speed CPU rendering. Accordingly, I'm looking into ASRock X79 Extreme11, ASUS Rampage IV Black, and ASUS P9X79 - with which I believe you are familiar.  The ASRock X79 Extreme11 has E5-1680 v2 Passmark CPU ratings up to 21389- @ 4.6GHz, a single thread of about 2550  or nearly the average rating of 2594 for the no.1 single thread champion- i7-7700K. 

The extreme limit is not my expectation, and not advisable in a workstation,. There is another z620 on Passmark using a 1680 with  a CPU rating of 16189, so it appears the z620 can not achieve the anywhere near to the full performance of the E5-1680 v2-  even though it was offered as a processor option when new.

I'll give it go though and the performance may be sufficient, but it is quite disappointing not to have even equalled the z420 it was intended to replace for such an effort and expense.

Cheers,

BambiBoomZ 

[MtothaJ]

IMHO in Passmark CPU single core performance transposes to that of other devices since essentially its the CPU that is communicating with these devices. A slow CPU bottle necks these devices, and with RAM and the latest GPU's and SSD's there is so much headroom that a fast CPU just elevates their performance.

With regard to X79 boards, you will definietly not go wrong with any of the boards which you have listed. The challange is of course finding one in good conditions and most preferably of all - a brand new one. With regard to ASUS I would skip the base P9X79 board, since its a bit light on features and missing some of the heat sinks and the heat pipes of the P9X79 PRO and P9X79 DELUXE models. Some specs below:

The Asrock X79 Extreme11 is also a great board, probably more in the higher end segment than the P9X79 boards, so more a competitor to the ROG boards. It is also interesting since there are various reports it can also run ECC Registered RAM when paired with a Xeon (e.g. http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1188021 )

For what its worth I think you are getting good results with the Z420 and Z620 boards running those CPU's. Obviously tweaking options are rather limited but the Z series was set up for reliable / consistant performance - they appear to be running quite high CPU voltages at stock, which combined with the standard CPU settings provides very stable operation.  In the P9X79 PRO board running the E5-1650v2 @ 4.4Ghz I am using no more voltage than a Z420 running that CPU at stock settings - around 1.3V

A decent ATX case and PSU is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things. The motherboard is the unknown in this equation - I would definietly not pay the silly 500 USD + prices as seen on ebay, but if a brand new board could be sourced in the 200-300 USD range then maybe its worth taking the game one step further... 🙂