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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 :)

Is this HP z840 a good deal?

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Eric Watson

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Greetings.

I've been editing with CS6 for quite some time now with heavy usage of PS, After Effects, and Premiere. I currently have two identical systems that've stood strong with me for about six years.
They're basically beefed up HP M9650F machines (I7 920 2.67 GHz, 24 Gigs RAM, single Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT card, Windows 7 64 bit). I've never attempted overclocking anything. Though I can continue to use them, renders are slow, machines are loud and they lock up on me from time to time...especially when entering sleep mode. It's time to upgrade and refresh my system(s). Judging by various specs out there, one modern workstation will run circles around both my machines.

I intend to edit 4K and 5K, continue CS6 AE, Premiere, After Effects, and purchase the plugin Element 3D.
I'd also like to pick up a couple 27" 4K monitors and put them side by side to have a really long timeline with large reference icons (PP).

I been shopping around the past few days and trying to weigh if I should just go ahead and buy a stock system and beef it up or build one from scratch.

For starters, is this HP Workstation Z840 a good baseline option? It looks like I'm gonna need to add a lot more memory, HDDs, and SSD.
http://www.staples.com/HP-Workstati...-K7P09UT-ABA-Black-Hematite/product_IM1VZ3985

The price seems kinda high. If I could find it refurb or build a better system for less I will.

Thanks in advance for your advice.
 
The HP Workstations are solidly built and provide a good warranty program if that is a good option for your business. Compared to a custom build, the custom build will probably be a screamer over the HP Workstation at the same price point or lower.

Our shop is exclusively HP Workstations, as we have a battery of creative workstations and render farms boxes. Deployment, maintenance and stability give us a relatively trouble free environment.

In a single user environment, Id probably go the direction of the custom build and apply the savings on camera gear.
 
I have a maxed out z840, love it, is real quite also. I'd be careful on getting a minimum config z840 then maxing it out, HP balances the whole thing out including the power supply ... so I wouldn't get a z840 then add to it. I feel like my z840 is kind of like my maxed out mac pro's, super solid and very well architected which is more important to me then a small increase in speed on a tricked out system. A tricked out system though it takes time to run and manage, probably is half the cost. There's a couple of threads on tricked out builds on reduser which look real awesome for those inclined to do that. [
Jeffery Anderson said:
This thread has a good build, that a lot of Red Epic Dragon(probably now Weapon) are using:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?132442-New-Workstation-Build-i7-X99-Titan-X-Overclocking
Click to expand...
]

I'm a extremely small shop but can't afford 2 hours of down time, and also don't have any time to debug issues, so I have to have something that is fully supported (thus my pick for using z840's and mac pro's).
 
Thanks Jeff. Yep, I read that very same thread yesterday...quite a few ups and downs while he was baking it in. Lot to learn from that thread. Kinda got me thinking.
 
PatrickFaith said:
I have a maxed out z840, love it, is real quite also. I'd be careful on getting a minimum config z840 then maxing it out, HP balances the whole thing out including the power supply ... so I wouldn't get a z840 then add to it. I feel like my z840 is kind of like my maxed out mac pro's, super solid and very well architected which is more important to me then a small increase in speed on a tricked out system. A tricked out system though it takes time to run and manage, probably is half the cost. There's a couple of threads on tricked out builds on reduser which look real awesome for those inclined to do that. [ ]
Click to expand...

All good points. One thing I like on the z840 is they're highly configurable. The one in the link needs more RAM, HDD/SDD for sure
 
I would atleast consider an X99 workstation versus the Dual Xeons. The Asus boards allow both the unlocked I7 8 Core chips which have tremendous performance for realtime and render with 4K+ media. The ram is also unlocked with DDR4 2666+ showing excellent performance for GPU acceleration and AE. The Asus X99 boards also allow the V3 Xeon chips is a single chip platform. The Asus WS board supports Reg Dimms with the Xeon chip so you have 128GB ram options. The X99 also gives Thunderbolt card support and the slot configurations for Dual Titan X GPU's. The Cost of a single chip configuration on the X99 will be around $3K+ less than a Dual Xeon config.
 
Eric Bowen said:
I would atleast consider an X99 workstation versus the Dual Xeons. The Asus boards allow both the unlocked I7 8 Core chips which have tremendous performance for realtime and render with 4K+ media. The ram is also unlocked with DDR4 2666+ showing excellent performance for GPU acceleration and AE. The Asus X99 boards also allow the V3 Xeon chips is a single chip platform. The Asus WS board supports Reg Dimms with the Xeon chip so you have 128GB ram options. The X99 also gives Thunderbolt card support and the slot configurations for Dual Titan X GPU's. The Cost of a single chip configuration on the X99 will be around $3K+ less than a Dual Xeon config.
Click to expand...

Hmm... More to think about. When I assess the CPUs of an I7 5960X 8 core VS. the Xeon 2620 V3 6 core (source: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-2620-v3-vs-Intel-Core-i7-5960X) the resulting comparison is very close indeed. In fact, I don't usually overclock, but the I7 outperforms the XEON in that metric of performance.

Would it be it just as advantageous to go with a single CPU instead of two?
 
Eric Watson said:
Hmm... More to think about. When I assess the CPUs of an I7 5960X 8 core VS. the Xeon 2620 V3 6 core (source: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-2620-v3-vs-Intel-Core-i7-5960X) the resulting comparison is very close indeed. In fact, I don't usually overclock, but the I7 outperforms the XEON in that metric of performance.

Would it be it just as advantageous to go with a single CPU instead of two?
Click to expand...
I'm not so sure about a single cpu z840, but generally for the same price a single cpu system is better then a dual cpu. Also sometimes the single cpu boards are better then the dual cpu boards for the same price range (thus i don't know if the single cpu z840 makes sense). I have over $20k of single "computer" licenses on my system, so makes sense to max out a z840.
 
If I am right the Z840 jumps in another slot config if you only have one CPU installed..! (PCIe slots)
 
The 820 / 840 are very nice workstations. I've run several of them here and they have been bullet proof. I do have a Z820 for sale - 16 core, 64GB RAM, GTX Titan 6GB GPU, if anyone is interested. Sorry to throw that out there, but hey, why not. ;)

To make full use of all the PCIe slots/ lanes on the 820/840 workstations, you do indeed need two CPUs installed. The biggest issue I've had with these systems is their slot layout and PCIe power allocation is somewhat limiting and it can be difficult to install more than one powerful GPU. Two can be installed, but often at the expense of other devices and/or power connections.

As for the dual Xeons vs. single i7 discussion, it really comes down to what you need the system to do. I concur with everything that Eric said above about the single 5960X, especially when we take its ability to overclock into consideration and the faster RAM. Thera are times where more cores is still better, however. My 20-core Xeon box still outperforms my hopped-up i7-5960X build for a lot of rendering tasks, some intense setups in Resolve and a few other niche tasks. But for 90% of everything I throw at either system, the i7-5960X is definitely the superior box.

There is also value in the same build or similar to my X99 i7-5960X build, but using registered memory and a single 14 or 18 core Xeon CPU. You lose the ability to overclock, but gain the additional cores and ability to install 128GB RAM. On motherboards like the ASUS X99E-WS, we can install RDIMMs for 128GB even with the i7 CPU. Of course, we lose the registered memory functionality and they will run slower than the 2666MHz or faster RAM we could have otherwise, but I can say that the biggest issue with my hotrod i7 build is the 64GB RAM as it's often just not enough. Looking forward to 8K frame sizes, the 64GB is going to be an issue.
 
Jeff, do you think HP will modify the layout and power architecture to accommodate today multiple modern GPUs?
 
Hard to say, but when the Broadwell/Skylake core Xeons arrive next year, we will undoubtedly see some changes. I'm expecting to see smaller/sleeker workstations since they have improved thermal designs with the new CPUs and 3.5" HDDs and 5.25" tape and optical devices are about to vanish from high end systems for good.
 
Jeff whats your opinion about Dell Workstations of equivalent specs as and HP workstations? Pound for pound, warranty, etc?
 
Greg Huson said:
Google HP Remarketing. While we're currently all - mac, we used to be all-hp. HP has great warranty service, and you get that even with refurbished computers. Last I looked they had pretty good deals on refurbed 840s, and VERY good deals on 820s.
Click to expand...

True, Greg. Purchase reaction has to be quick though. HPs refurb inventory has a rapid turn around. A lot of their systems are snatched up by IT Creations:
http://www.itcreations.com/workstation-hp/HP-Z840-WORKSTATION.html
 
Sorry for my word choice...

If you compare Figure 3 and 4 you see the difference between the speeds where the PCIe Slots operate, in there respective configs. (Single or Dual CPU)
Hope this clear things up...

Short: In single CPU mode, some PCIe slots operate at slower speed.. and some are not available.
 
M.Halsell said:
Jeff whats your opinion about Dell Workstations of equivalent specs as and HP workstations? Pound for pound, warranty, etc?
Click to expand...

I would take the HP systems over the Dell any day. There are some nice design points to the Dell towers, I like the slot layout much better and they definitely put a bit more effort into the internal design vs. the HP z8xx towers. Actually the Z800 was an awesome design. The problem with the Z820 and Z840 is they shoe-horned the newer, larger CPU platform into the Z800 container. No re-design beyond making stuff fit. Actually was rather disappointing on that front. That said, Dell's support has been complete crap over the past several years now and their build quality and overall quality control is nowhere near as good as HP's. I purchased a T7600 shortly after my first Z820 and ended up returning the T7600 because it was flaky.
 
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