[SOLVED] Upgrading HPZ820

[John McMullin]

Hi,

I am a freelance video editor and graphic designer who owns an HPZ820. The HP was originally specced for Avid work but over time my workflow has changed to being primarily Adobe Premiere and After Effects. I'm getting provided with more and more 4K rushes and the system is struggling a bit.

The graphics card is an Nvidia Quadro 2000 which is definitely underpowered and isn't even supported in the latest Premiere release. Playback is terrible in Premiere with 4K and more so if I'm using Lumetri colour correction.

Other specs are as follows:

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2640 @2.5Gz (2 processors)
Installed RAM: 32GB
Windows 10 Pro

System is installed to an SSD already.

I'm kind of ignorant as to compatibility between various processors, sockets, GPUs etc. It seems that buying new, compatible processors is really expensive and even upgrading to 64GB of RAM would cost £400, plus £500 for say a Nvidia 2070 GPU. So I'm wondering if my best option is to buy a new desktop or if this computer still has legs, given that the CPU is a bit old now and Adobe doesn't take advantage of the dual processor. Really isn't great in Avid either really, but then I'm using a lot of linked h264 media.

Thanks for any feedback.

John

 

[kanewolf]

With a Z820, your CPU is probably an E5-2640 V2 CPU based on the HP quickspecs. Swapping your CPUs to E5-2667 V2 CPUs would give you a significant clock speed boost. For that age hardware, you should buy used. There are lots of V2 CPUs on E-Bay. Same with RAM. To maximize your performance you want 8 memory DIMMs (4 for each CPU).

 

[John McMullin]

Thanks a lot for that advice. Really helps as the prices are way better on Ebay. Computer is currently dual E5-2640 CPU so I imagine I'll really notice a boost if I go for the E5-2667 v2.

These workstations usually shipped with Quadro GPUs but I'd like to go with a gaming card as they seem more powerful for the price. Would there be any problem with putting in a second hand Nvidia 1080 or 2070?

Best wishes,

John

 

[kanewolf]

Thanks a lot for that advice. Really helps as the prices are way better on Ebay. Computer is currently dual E5-2640 CPU so I imagine I'll really notice a boost if I go for the E5-2667 v2.

These workstations usually shipped with Quadro GPUs but I'd like to go with a gaming card as they seem more powerful for the price. Would there be any problem with putting in a second hand Nvidia 1080 or 2070?

Best wishes,

John

As long as you have the PCIe supplemental power connectors required, then you can. Quadro drivers are optimized differently than gaming drivers. For some applications, there is a difference. You would need to research performance of gaming cards doing the types of applications you use.

 

[John McMullin]

I seem to have the cables needed and the power supply is 1125W so that should be OK. I know that Premiere is happy with those gaming cards as well. Many thanks for your advice. Looking at the insides of my PC, I realise that it's quite a quality product so would be a shame to get rid of it.