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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

HP Z820 , Z620 and Z420 is upgradeable to Thunderbolt 2 , Xeon V2 and faster Memory !

To quote from the Adobe blog;

"This means that you can now have a Workstation with Dual Intel E5 2620 processors, 512GB RAM, Internal 4 drive raid, Blueray drive, choice of video card like the NVIDIA GeForce 690/Titan/ Quadro K6000 w/12GB RAM, Atto Raid card, RED Rocket, and THUNDERBOLT for sharing TB devices and drives. Wow !! – and all from a single desktop tower and one AC Power plug !!"

This is why i'm a PC man :)
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
No more expensive than comparable systems from other vendors if you play the coupon game right. I guess what I'm saying is that systems like this are quite expensive. My Z820 was about $15K and that doesn't include monitors, external storage, Rocket card.... Doesn't even include the GPU I currently have installed (GTX Titan), but it was originally purchased with a Quadro 6000. Still a nice GPU and actually only about 3% slower in CUDA than that Titan. That's another discussion though. Anyway, it's one of those things where the amount of compute power isn't necessarily a linear increase with price. And for a lot of tools like this, sometimes ROI can't be one of the primary factors to consider when purchasing. Sometimes we have to bite the bullet and use the better tool for a certain job, even if the costs don't justify it. I can build a 6-core desktop that's clocked near 5GHz for 1/3 the price and when we factor in the types of software out there that currently benefit most from more than 6 cores, it comes down to highly nodal tasks like rendering. Stuff that can be easily divided amongst multiple systems. Of course, the Xeon platform does have other advantages and I do own it for certain reasons or tasks at which it excels.
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For me it's more important to be efficient than to save a few bucks (if one of my guys spends a week working to get something configured o run on the cluster he's just spent enough of our customer's money to buy a well equipped Z820). I've got a Windows HPC cluster for folks to use for distributed development or tasks, but in general for the type of work we do (and for one-off tasks)... if it can be done with a single machine that's usually the most cost effective way to get it done. That's not universally true... some apps like Maya make distributed computing pretty straightforward, but even then the user needs to know how to leverage it or they waste a lot of time. What I'm looking into now (in the 2 minutes a week I have free) is a workstation class virtualization solution... thinking of getting an NVidia Grid VCA to see how it behaves with graphics intensive workloads (small number of demanding users) over corporate network infrastructure. Over the long term I'd like to save money AND provide high performance workstation environments to my group by leveraging virtualization, which I've been using to save quite a bit of money on the server side for years.
 
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Hi all. Does anyone know if that thunderbolt card will be avalaible for current Z820? (V1 xeon, not the upgrade of september with v2 xeons). I´m planning buy a z820 next week, but unfortunately I think the "new V2" upgrade is not avalaible in my country yet. And , because of things long to explain, I have to buy it on the next couple of weeks. Reading this thread, and searching information, I´m not sure if the motherboard of Z820 V1 will be fully compatible with that card when it will be avalaible.

thx
 
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Jaime_guerra said:
Hi all. Does anyone know if that thunderbolt card will be avalaible for current Z820? (V1 xeon, not the upgrade of september with v2 xeons). I´m planning buy a z820 next week, but unfortunately I think the "new V2" upgrade is not avalaible in my country yet. And , because of things long to explain, I have to buy it on the next couple of weeks. Reading this thread, and searching information, I´m not sure if the motherboard of Z820 V1 will be fully compatible with that card when it will be avalaible.

thx
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I expect all HP Z820 support it, since new firmware that supports the V2 processors is on HP's website already for the Z Series.
 
Yes, the motherboards are the same and so is the firmware. I don't believe there is any need for the V2 Xeons to support it and the only reason there would be is if HP wanted to force customers to upgrade CPUs in order to use the Thunderbolt card.
 
Oh, yes of course. I talked about "V2" but it´s only a way to name that upgrade. I guess the specifical version of Xeons (current of V2 ) doesn't matter.

My doubts are about if the motherboard of the current Z will be able to use that card. I´m reading things about the GPIO connector. This article is interesting. On page 2 someone wrote the current Z820's motherboard has that connector, but I can´t find more information in order to confirm it.
 
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OK, so we have the new Xeon E5 V2, but are having tons of trouble trying to get the system to even POST, we just get a blank screen, as others appear to do in HP forums.

Has Anybody successfully upgraded their HP Z workstation Xeon to a V2 Xeon yet and any tips?
 
John Bellari said:
OK, so we have the new Xeon E5 V2, but are having tons of trouble trying to get the system to even POST, we just get a blank screen, as others appear to do in HP forums.

Has Anybody successfully upgraded their HP Z workstation Xeon to a V2 Xeon yet and any tips?
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Did you update the BIOS first?
 
DJ Meyer said:
Did you update the BIOS first?
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Yes, the old XEON E5 cpu ran rock solid with updated BIOS 3.50 ,
but now I get nothing with the upgraded Xeon E5 V2 but a blank screen and all fans running,
it doesn't post but power is on...
 
John Bellari said:
Yes, the old XEON E5 cpu ran rock solid with updated BIOS 3.50 ,
but now I get nothing with the upgraded Xeon E5 V2 but a blank screen and all fans running,
it doesn't post but power is on...
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Try just one CPU in whichever socket is labeled CPU1 (normally the one towards the front of the machine.
 
Could be a bad or improperly seated memory module if you upgraded your RAM.

Don't have any of the docs handy, but have you tried the reset jumper on the motherboard? Even if you upgraded the BIOS, there could be a setting carried over that needs to be wiped.

I've seen some reports of this problem and HP may have an issue that needs to be fixed. I have not personally dealt with a V2 CPU upgrade on the Z workstations yet.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Could be a bad or improperly seated memory module if you upgraded your RAM.

Don't have any of the docs handy, but have you tried the reset jumper on the motherboard? Even if you upgraded the BIOS, there could be a setting carried over that needs to be wiped.

I've seen some reports of this problem and HP may have an issue that needs to be fixed. I have not personally dealt with a V2 CPU upgrade on the Z workstations yet.
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I tried jumper E14 in various positions, pressing 5 seconds to reset the CMOS button, reseating the memory, no luck so far. I also called one reseller of HP parts and they said though they have the V2 processors, they have not successfully upgraded one yet either as of this date.

Maybe I have to wait a little longer for HP to address this- especially for people looking to add a 2 matching CPU, but it stinks letting a good system gather dust for now...
 
Walking in a THERAML PASTE Wonderland

Walking in a THERAML PASTE Wonderland

Update 12/22/2013 Even though HP supposedly updated the firmware to support the "new" intel processors at BIOS 3.50, my first test of a new Xeon E5 V2 failed on the BIOS Z420/620 updated 3.50 and now 3.52 firmware. The system wouldn't post at all, yet the fans run and after about 30 seconds the pair of case fans ramp up to 747 fan blade speeds during take off...

I also tried a new Supermicro dual CPU board and same exact result minus the fan speed ramping...

seems the OEM's are possibly having compatibility issues with these newer CPU's, yet so far being unreported?

Either that, or I got a lemon... more Eggnog please, less thermal paste.

Happy Holidays to all ...
 
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