Question Is this PC worth building?

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BrutalHero

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Jun 6, 2015
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Hi,

I have in my hands a HP Z8 G4 Motherboard with 2 Xeon Gold 6128 3.4ghz CPUS and 2 RTX 5000 Graphics cards and around 400 gb of DDR4 Ram..

I am only missing the case to setup everything together, which will cost me around 500 euro.

My Question: Is it worth paying the 500 euro to make this setup or it's better off selling all the parts individually and buying an I9 9900k with an RTX 3080.

Computer Usage : Game Development (Unreal Engine 5, Unity) Photoshop, Blender , Gaming and normal daily tasks.
 
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DavidM012 said:
Yes you should just freshly install windows unless you fancy rummaging around what data's on it but I'll leave that to you. Eg. Install windows on a different drive since you have a few of them and nose around.

I'm amazed it works. So download hwmonitor, hwinfo, cpu-z and gpu-z for your basic monitoring utilities. So you can monitor temps and read system if you will need it. Might be worth having a kill-a-watt meter on the socket that determines the power draw with this rather unusual rig so you can monitor power usage. Just so you have an idea of what it's using and how it behaves under load and idle and so on.
Click to expand...


Thank you,

I freshly installed windows to avoid any problems. I will download the programs you mentioned.

I have a question though, my pc Rams are running at 2600mhz but they are 3200mhz, how can I fix that?

I checked bios and there are no options for it
 
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That's the maximum memory speed of the Xeon cpu. Because we haven't identified your dimms I'm not sure if you're using ECC or non ECC. It supports both types of memory.

You can read the part number of the dimms in the spd tab of cpu-z and search them.

My guess would be you aren't using the typical dimms that an hp technician might install but that's ok, if they were incompatible the machine wouldn't even start.

So since you're using 3200 dimms and underclocking them, well it might be under-utilizing their value a bit but 2600 and 3200 dimms of the type you're using might also have been similarly priced so there wasn't much odds in using them.
 
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DavidM012 said:
Hwinfo is better for reading the dimm part numbers since it has a drop-down tab for each row of dimms. I think you can use mixed dimm modules on the g4 mobo so you could have a variety of dimms in it of different specs.
Click to expand...

Now I am even more confused as I am using the official HP memories that came with this motherboard.


It says I am using only 1333 mhz , in bios it said 2600 and the rams are 3200.

Pic :
6b2dxUu.png
 
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Ok so it looks like it may not be configured properly or one or more of the dimms isn't working. It should be displaying the part numbers so there's a problem somewhere.

How many do you have installed? If you have 24 dimms and there's 352 gb of memory, divided by 16 is 22 so I'd say 2 dimms aren't working.

The question is which ones? So you'll have to test them one at a time until you find the faulty ones.
 
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DavidM012 said:
Ok so it looks like it may not be configured properly or one or more of the dimms isn't working. It should be displaying the part numbers so there's a problem somewhere.

How many do you have installed? If you have 24 dimms and there's 352 gb of memory, divided by 16 is 22 so I'd say 2 dimms aren't working.

The question is which ones? So you'll have to test them one at a time until you find the faulty ones.
Click to expand...
I have 22 rams installed at once.


DavidM012 said:
If it's not the dimms we've found our first workstation problem... could be that an IMC (integrated memory controller) of one of the Xeon CPU's took a long walk off a short pier.
Click to expand...

Should I try and hotswap cpus ? I have 2 more from the other motherboard that I have .

Note aside : I tried playing DayZ on Extreme with 1440p resolution and I have above 100 fps .

I would be surprised if a cpu is broken
 
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DavidM012 said:
https://www.passmark.com/products/rammon/

Can try this software too since it's a workstation with an unusual mobo might be that hwinfo and cpu-z aren't well supported on it so maybe it's struggling to read the memory spd because either there's some odd modules or the hwinfo and cpu-z software doesn't read it well on this mobo.
Click to expand...
I will try shortly and let you know.

1 more thing to note, I had to put all rams one by one today because if I put them all together system wouldnt recognize them. But doing it one by one everything was showing correctly.
 
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Yeah it's never a good idea to start with the maximum amount of memory I was expecting something like that though I've never worked on a workstation before. There's probably some details an hp technician would be trained in.

You have to go careful one step at a time because there's a lot of variables in the situation. Also I advise against hotswapping cpu if you want to change them I don't know if this station supports hotswapping so power off if changing cpu.
 
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Anyway it's just a detail the machine appears to run however not reading spd could either be a symptom of a deeper problem or you could attempt to proceed with running software. If it starts to crash it might be indicative of more problem too. But there's a clue if that happens it's something to do with the memory.

Memtest on 352gb of memory

www.memtest86.com

MemTest86 - Official Site of the x86 Memory Testing Tool

MemTest86 is the original self booting memory testing software for x86 and ARM computers. Supporting both BIOS and UEFI, with options to boot from USB.
www.memtest86.com

Could take a while too. Never done that before either.
 
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DavidM012 said:
Anyway it's just a detail the machine appears to run however not reading spd could either be a symptom of a deeper problem or you could attempt to proceed with running software. If it starts to crash it might be indicative of more problem too. But there's a clue if that happens it's something to do with the memory.

Memtest on 352gb of memory

www.memtest86.com

MemTest86 - Official Site of the x86 Memory Testing Tool

MemTest86 is the original self booting memory testing software for x86 and ARM computers. Supporting both BIOS and UEFI, with options to boot from USB.
www.memtest86.com

Could take a while too. Never done that before either.
Click to expand...
DavidM012 said:
Anyway it's just a detail the machine appears to run however not reading spd could either be a symptom of a deeper problem or you could attempt to proceed with running software. If it starts to crash it might be indicative of more problem too. But there's a clue if that happens it's something to do with the memory.

Memtest on 352gb of memory

www.memtest86.com

MemTest86 - Official Site of the x86 Memory Testing Tool

MemTest86 is the original self booting memory testing software for x86 and ARM computers. Supporting both BIOS and UEFI, with options to boot from USB.
www.memtest86.com

Could take a while too. Never done that before either.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me :)

I will look into it deeper after work .

I have an issue though : RAMMon won't start : Rammon was unable to retrieve SPD information from the ram modules
 
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Another symptom. Well either the DIMMs aren't identical or it could be that the Xeon CPUs are partially working but the Integrated memory controller isn't working properly.

The way to detect deeper problems is a battery of stress tests which could be time consuming. A game doesn't really stress the system to the max like you might find a game works but a heavy 3d app crashes or something so I'd look up what version of prime 95 to use on it and run it for couple of hours while monitoring temps and also look up the operational temperature of the CPU's so they don't get too hot so you know when or if to stop the test.

I don't often do stress testing but there is a range of benchmarking and stress testing software that could be looked up. These can be time consuming also.
 
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DavidM012 said:
Another symptom. Well either the DIMMs aren't identical or it could be that the Xeon CPUs are partially working but the Integrated memory controller isn't working properly.

The way to detect deeper problems is a battery of stress tests which could be time consuming. A game doesn't really stress the system to the max like you might find a game works but a heavy 3d app crashes or something so I'd look up what version of prime 95 to use on it and run it for couple of hours while monitoring temps and also look up the operational temperature of the CPU's so they don't get too hot so you know when or if to stop the test.

I don't often do stress testing but there is a range of benchmarking and stress testing software that could be looked up. These can be time consuming also.
Click to expand...

Thank you, I will take a look into the DIMMS tomorrow and check if they are all identical .
 
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DavidM012 said:
Oh and the 1333mhz spd of the dimms that you can see is normal. 2600 is double data rate and 1333mhz is simply the base clock. That is not a symptom it's normal.
Click to expand...


I've been testing the pc for a couple of days now,

no issues so far.

Gaming is overall good but the performance not the best. Cranking to low settings gets lower fps than highest settings. and gpu utilization is at 30-40%

Do you know any good software that is free for benchmarks to test the stability of the system?
 
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Here be a link to some freebies

Bear in mind that running a few games will only utilize a couple of threads of the dual CPU's and only a fraction of the memory. it's like playing table tennis on a football field. There might be some mud further up the field but you don't go near it right because you're only playing table tennis.

You're only utilizing part of the system. So when you use more of it... you could hit the rocky or muddy patches.

You aren't likely to often use 352gb of ram. You could use less and not notice any difference. You have to monitor the usage to see how much you are using for each app. You could have multiple apps and only be using 256gb or even 64gb. So there's no point in having excessive capacity.

So you could sell some dimms. It's up to you to determine how much memory blender and how much multi tasking of things you want are going to use. Like how many apps you run concurrently.

Prime 95 is a serious stress test that will max out the cpu utilization to 100% and draw maximum power. you could get in trouble there if you aren't using the uninterruptible power supply to get the system up to full power. It could be dangerous since stressing the cpu could cause a brownout. The non avx version of prime 95 is 26.6.

The other benchmarks will also draw more power when the system is under stress. Could also be dangerous.

So don't try to go to warp 9 full power . Go to warp 1. Only stress a couple of cores at a time... monitor the power draw seriously 'till you really understand how much power you're pulling.

You also need to know the max operating temperature of the CPU's and monitor them so you don't exceed it and you should probably stop stress testing 5-10c below the max temp. It's 74c. So stop at even 55c until you see how it goes and then you can push slowly closer to the maximum.

However even if you do go slowly you could pull too much power at some point and there could be an electrical fault of some kind from the mains power source if it is not adequate.

The PSU of the workstation is 15 or 20 amps which is more than a typical PC.

Did you have any progress in sorting through the dimms? Do they have any writing on the labels? Identical or mixed specifications?
 
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Here's another link to the HP support site for it.

I had a thought about the SPD not read problem and I noticed in the above hwinfo that the date of the bios is 7/10/22

However the date of the bios available for download on the HP website is april '22. So maybe they had an hp technician install a more recent version of the bios. Where could they have otherwise obtained it?

So... this might be part of the back story or not either they were trying to crack this problem and failed, or maybe they simply had some other reason to let it go such as upgrading.

This is mere speculation. So there is apparently another way of reading the dimms specification that doesn't use spd (serial presence detect). However it's very technical and involves some kind of programming script. This is uncommon for Pc's but more of a thing in the workstation world.

So there's a possibility you could consult someone more knowledgeable for info on that. A Don't: Don't go back to the earlier bios version since the latest one isn't apparently available for download.


Also about stress testing. Well I cheerfully stressed my PC to the max when I was learning how to overclock a few years ago and did not exceed 55c on the cpu but I had a very overkill cooler on it.

You aren't overclocking your dual Xeons but they could still reach a high temperature under load. So monitor it closely while stress testing. A successful stress test is considered 2 hours at full load.

Also another bear in mind that this is not a typical pc it is a workstation pulling 15-20amps from the wall. Like a big horse pulling a ton.

As for the gaming performance, yup not great, top of the line 144hz hd hi fps silliness or more but mid-hd (1440p you say on day-z, a 2013 title) lo to mid range performance.
 
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DavidM012 said:
Here's another link to the HP support site for it.

I had a thought about the SPD not read problem and I noticed in the above hwinfo that the date of the bios is 7/10/22

However the date of the bios available for download on the HP website is april '22. So maybe they had an hp technician install a more recent version of the bios. Where could they have otherwise obtained it?

So... this might be part of the back story or not either they were trying to crack this problem and failed, or maybe they simply had some other reason to let it go such as upgrading.

This is mere speculation. So there is apparently another way of reading the dimms specification that doesn't use spd (serial presence detect). However it's very technical and involves some kind of programming script. This is uncommon for Pc's but more of a thing in the workstation world.

So there's a possibility you could consult someone more knowledgeable for info on that. A Don't: Don't go back to the earlier bios version since the latest one isn't apparently available for download.


Also about stress testing. Well I cheerfully stressed my PC to the max when I was learning how to overclock a few years ago and did not exceed 55c on the cpu but I had a very overkill cooler on it.

You aren't overclocking your dual Xeons but they could still reach a high temperature under load. So monitor it closely while stress testing. A successful stress test is considered 2 hours at full load.

Also another bear in mind that this is not a typical pc it is a workstation pulling 15-20amps from the wall. Like a big horse pulling a ton.

As for the gaming performance, yup not great, top of the line 144hz hd hi fps silliness or more but mid-hd (1440p you say on day-z, a 2013 title) lo to mid range performance.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link

I updated the bios because I tried to find the ram problem and when I enetered bios it asked for an update.

It's a workstation that unfortunately I do not utilize to it's full potential 😛

I got an offer to trade one of the RTX 5000 for a RTX 3080 founders edition (NO LHS) ,

is this a good trade proposition ?
 
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If that's what you want. I can't make that decision for you. What you'll be doing if you split the pair of rtx 5000's is reducing the multitasking ability of your workstation.

So were you to run lots of tasks like photoshop and blender unreal engine and so on you would not be able to run so many tasks at once and reducing your ability to render large scenes. Because the 2 cards can share memory. Though I think you can run mgpu with different cards you won't be able to nv link the cards directly.

Also because you're swapping the second hand parts well because you aren't buying new you won't have any warranty on the rtx 3080 so if it's a defective card you will have no recourse. It might be a bit better for gaming but having different gpu's of different specifications probably doesn't help your rendering and blendering any.

Question - (SLI) 2x RTX3090Ti + NVLINK Problem

Hello everyone. Recently I wanted to improve the quality of my work and try SLI. I have one Gainward RTX 3090TI card, bought a second card and plugged it into the slot. I purchased NVLink Ampere (3 slot) and connected them together. I turned on SLI in Nvidia options, as people describe it on the...
forums.tomshardware.com forums.tomshardware.com

There's a thread where someone got sli and nv link to work in Davinci Resolve at 17fps with 2 3090's in sli and nvlink.

Basically if that's not relevant to you then, maybe. Well 'updating' the bios has put you back to the earlier version but, maybe you still have the more recent bios on the other board.

There are probably utilities you could use to make a copy of the bios off the other board but, since it works maybe quit messing with that. If they both had the 7/10/2022 version. Because you'd have to switch out the board to copy well that's going to take some time to find out.

Really if you just want to build a gaming PC then you should probably just sell the workstation and everything else and buy all your PC parts new. A powerful gaming PC will have some 3d application ability but, you don't really know what the workstation can do and, switching the dual CPU architecture for the single CPU architecture means, not so much multitasking ability is available.

If you use the 3080 in your workstation well, you'll get some improvement in your gaming but the CPU's still won't be able to improve the FPS greatly since what counts is the single core performance of the CPU and they won't push the 3080 to it's fullest potential either.

Things you'll have to question is the source of the 3080 - has it been used for mining, or what? Also why is someone offering you a card that is about $1000 new for a card that is about $2000 new?

Something seems a bit dodgy about all this wheeler dealing also because you don't really know what the quadro cards are capable of in your rendering.

'Not using the workstation to it's full potential' well not if you're only gaming on it for the moment dunno what happened to your 'Unreal aspirations'.

So I guess, just don't give strange bioses updates if they ask for one?

Also even if you aren't using the workstation to it's fullest potential, some day you could load it up with apps and pull more power than your mains can handle. What matters isn't necessarily your peak usage but the peak demand of the system.
 
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DavidM012 said:
If that's what you want. I can't make that decision for you. What you'll be doing if you split the pair of rtx 5000's is reducing the multitasking ability of your workstation.

So were you to run lots of tasks like photoshop and blender unreal engine and so on you would not be able to run so many tasks at once and reducing your ability to render large scenes. Because the 2 cards can share memory. Though I think you can run mgpu with different cards you won't be able to nv link the cards directly.

Also because you're swapping the second hand parts well because you aren't buying new you won't have any warranty on the rtx 3080 so if it's a defective card you will have no recourse. It might be a bit better for gaming but having different gpu's of different specifications probably doesn't help your rendering and blendering any.

Question - (SLI) 2x RTX3090Ti + NVLINK Problem

Hello everyone. Recently I wanted to improve the quality of my work and try SLI. I have one Gainward RTX 3090TI card, bought a second card and plugged it into the slot. I purchased NVLink Ampere (3 slot) and connected them together. I turned on SLI in Nvidia options, as people describe it on the...
forums.tomshardware.com forums.tomshardware.com

There's a thread where someone got sli and nv link to work in Davinci Resolve at 17fps with 2 3090's in sli and nvlink.

Basically if that's not relevant to you then, maybe. Well 'updating' the bios has put you back to the earlier version but, maybe you still have the more recent bios on the other board.

There are probably utilities you could use to make a copy of the bios off the other board but, since it works maybe quit messing with that. If they both had the 7/10/2022 version. Because you'd have to switch out the board to copy well that's going to take some time to find out.

Really if you just want to build a gaming PC then you should probably just sell the workstation and everything else and buy all your PC parts new. A powerful gaming PC will have some 3d application ability but, you don't really know what the workstation can do and, switching the dual CPU architecture for the single CPU architecture means, not so much multitasking ability is available.

If you use the 3080 in your workstation well, you'll get some improvement in your gaming but the CPU's still won't be able to improve the FPS greatly since what counts is the single core performance of the CPU and they won't push the 3080 to it's fullest potential either.

Things you'll have to question is the source of the 3080 - has it been used for mining, or what? Also why is someone offering you a card that is about $1000 new for a card that is about $2000 new?

Something seems a bit dodgy about all this wheeler dealing also because you don't really know what the quadro cards are capable of in your rendering.

'Not using the workstation to it's full potential' well not if you're only gaming on it for the moment dunno what happened to your 'Unreal aspirations'.

So I guess, just don't give strange bioses updates if they ask for one?

Also even if you aren't using the workstation to it's fullest potential, some day you could load it up with apps and pull more power than your mains can handle. What matters isn't necessarily your peak usage but the peak demand of the system.
Click to expand...


Yeah, you are right.

The potential in the workstation is worth in the long run, even if I will try to sell the workstation no one will probably purchase it from me as it's very expensive.

I went on HP website and configured the same workstation as mine and it comes out to 12.000$ which I believe is overpriced but I guess companies have this kind of moneys.

I will probably buy the SLI link and connect both rtx 5000 , even though I won't use it to the full potential . It's way better than trying to sell everything.

The bios is very weird actually, it was an official update from HP. But I am really surprised that in the bios there are no settings for the memory speed. All bioses that I have been into had this settings.

This one looks very plain for a 10k$+ pc.



Someone offered me 2k euro for the pc but I believe it's not worth giving it for that cheap. The value it has is way above that.
 
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