HP Z820 Workstation

[srp_jss]

Hi All, I am looking for workstation with powerful performance and personally picked Z820, i am confused with the processor and thread part. This is a refurbished machine and has the following specs.
1) Xeon 2 x E5-2620 Enterprise 6-Core CPU, (Max. Number of processors: 2 CPU socket: LGA 2011)
2) 64 Gb DDR3 ECC
3) Intel® C602 Chipset
4) GPU ( nvidia Quadro 200 0, 1GB 320 -bit GDDR5)
5) 450 GB SAS

I am presently looking for a job and i need a server where i can spin lot of machines and simulate various types of server roles, Windows and Unix. My agenda is to create, 8 Servers and 4 Client machines. Sort of AD farm. I am looking to run on a Type-2 hypervisor ( Vmware workstation or Hyper-v). I am not able to decide on various facts like

a) Will 6 core CPU may affect the performance of the machine, even though it has high RAM ? Do i need to consider a different CPU in this case with more cores, if yes what is an ideal candidate

b) Any other consideration to be taken care, while purchasing this workstation.

c) How is the future upgrades may affect me, like DDR4 RAM upgrade or storage upgrades for SSD or a CPU change in worst case ?

- The price of this machine is around 1350 pound, ( this is a seller refurbished) and the configurations can be changed during ordering.

Please guide me
Srp

 

[kanewolf]

You are getting two six-core CPUs. The CPUs do support hyperthreading. That is 24 threads. I doubt you will be limited by CPU. The clock speed of that CPU isn't very high 2.0Ghz. I don't think that will be too limiting as a test machine.

 

[bambiboom]

Hi All, I am looking for workstation with powerful performance and personally picked Z820, i am confused with the processor and thread part. This is a refurbished machine and has the following specs.
1) Xeon 2 x E5-2620 Enterprise 6-Core CPU, (Max. Number of processors: 2 CPU socket: LGA 2011)
2) 64 Gb DDR3 ECC
3) Intel® C602 Chipset
4) GPU ( nvidia Quadro 200 0, 1GB 320 -bit GDDR5)
5) 450 GB SAS

I am presently looking for a job and i need a server where i can spin lot of machines and simulate various types of server roles, Windows and Unix. My agenda is to create, 8 Servers and 4 Client machines. Sort of AD farm. I am looking to run on a Type-2 hypervisor ( Vmware workstation or Hyper-v). I am not able to decide on various facts like

a) Will 6 core CPU may affect the performance of the machine, even though it has high RAM ? Do i need to consider a different CPU in this case with more cores, if yes what is an ideal candidate

b) Any other consideration to be taken care, while purchasing this workstation.

c) How is the future upgrades may affect me, like DDR4 RAM upgrade or storage upgrades for SSD or a CPU change in worst case ?

- The price of this machine is around 1350 pound, ( this is a seller refurbished) and the configurations can be changed during ordering.

Please guide me
Srp

srp_jss,

As Kanewolf mentions, the z820 with 12 cores /24 threads should have a good capability for VM's.

I would add:

1. The system is LGA2011 and the RAM can only be DDR3. Those were sold with 1600 speed with E5 first version CPU's and an E5 v2 would run 1866.

2. There has been a large number of Xeon E5-2670's on the market in the last month, selling for as little as $60-70 on U.S. Ebay. You might enquire about substituting a pair of those or even buying the system without CPU's and adding those CPU's yourself. These are 8-core @ 2.6 / 3.3Ghz. That's a total of 16 cores / 32 threads or +50%. In an HP z820, the best Passmark CPU score for a pair of E5-2620 is 13449 while a pair of E5-2670's can make a score of 20376.

3. Consider a 250GB or 500GB SSD, allowing 15-20GB per VM

4. You might have a better bargain with an HP z620 How about:

HP Z620 Workstation/Desktop PC dual (8 core) E5-2660 2.2GHz, DDR3 96 GB > £1,050. Shipping included (it's in Hounslow)

And that one has a two Xeon E5-2660 which is 8-core @ 2.2 /3.0Ghz. Passmark: up to 18789

That system also has 96GB of RAM and a Quadro K600. That = +50% threads and a top clock speed of 3Ghz instead of 2.5GHz for £300 less- that will allow for some good SSD and storage drives.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

Modeling:

1. HP z420 (2015) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 (6-core @ 3.7 / 4.0GHz) > 32GB DDR3 1866 ECC RAM > Quadro K4200 (4GB) > Intel 730 480GB (9SSDSC2BP480G4R5) > Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > 600W PSU> > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > Logitech z2300 speakers > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)>
[ Passmark Rating = 5064 > CPU= 13989 / 2D= 819 / 3D= 4596 / Mem= 2772 / Disk= 4555]
[Passmark V9.0 Beta Rating = 5019.1 > CPU= 14206 / 2D= 779 / 3D= 5032 / Mem= 2707 / Disk= 4760] 3.31.16
[Cinebench R15 > CPU = 1014 OpenGL= 126.59 FPS] 7.8.15

Rendering:

2. Dell Precision T5500 (2011) (Revised) > 2X Xeon X5680 (6-core @ 3.33 / 3.6GHz), 48GB DDR3 1333 ECC Reg. > Quadro K2200 (4GB ) > PERC H310 / Samsung 840 250GB / WD RE4 Enterprise 1TB > M-Audio 192 sound card > Logitech z313 > 875W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64> HP 2711x (27", 1920 X 1080)
[ Passmark system rating = 3844 / CPU = 15047 / 2D= 662 / 3D= 3550 / Mem= 1785 / Disk= 2649] (12.30.15)

 

[srp_jss]

Thanks BambiBoom and kanewolf, you both were brilliant and this will really help me to pick my option. BambiBoom, Thanks for the ebay link, that was really helpful.