QuickSpecs HP Z600 Workstation. DA - 13277€€€North America — Version 2 — April 13, 2009 Page€1 € € 4. 6 DIMM Slots for DDR3 ECC Memory 9. HP 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3-1333 ECC Registered RAM Z600, Z800 FX621AA HP 8GB (1x8GB) DDR3-1333 ECC Registered RAM Z600, Z800 FX622AA PC3-8500 (DDR3-1066) ECC Registered DIMMs € € HP 16GB (1x16GB) DDR3-1066 ECC Registered RAM Z800 NL674AA Introduction Boost the capabilities of your HP Workstation and keep it performing reliably with HP DDR3 memory.  The Z600 supports Unbuffered 1GB single rank, 2GB and 4GB dual rank PC3-10600E 1333MHZ ECC DIMMs  In dual processor configurations, each processor must have memory connected to it.  The CPUs determine the speed at which the memory is clocked. Page 52 Slot 6 option ROM download (Enable or Disable), and latency timer and speed 32/33 Slot 7 - PCIe2 Slot 7 option ROM download (Enable or Disable), and latency timer and speed x16(8) HP Z600 PCI slots Chapter 4 System management ENWW.

A few months ago we had the opportunity of reviewing the HP Z800 and it got our praise in just about every way. Today we are looking at its little brother the Z600.

Features

• Engineered to perform
  The HP Z600 is engineered to optimize the way processor, memory, graphics, OS, and software technology work together to deliver massive, whole-system computational power.
• Sleek new industrial design
  Brushed aluminum side panels, integrated handles, and visually cable-less engineering are just a few of the new design features that create new standards for lowered acoustics, serviceability, and energy efficiency.
• Designed with the environment in mind
  Lower power and cooling costs with ENERGY STAR® qualified configurations, 85% efficient power supplies, and HP WattSaver, an energy-saving feature that, when activated, helps lower energy consumption in off mode.
• Revolutionary architecture
  Tackle bigger problems faster and process more tasks and threads in parallel with the new Intel® QuickPath Technology and new Intel® Xeon® processors* with integrated memory controllers.
• Compact and unassuming
  Enhance your work area with HP’s quietest workstation, designed for environments where space is at a premium.
• Ease of service without comparison
  The tool-free chassis and the uncluttered and highly streamlined internal design gives you the ability to add or change components in mere seconds.
• Easy-to-use system diagnostics tool
  Quickly capture complete system configuration data and share with IT personnel with HP Vision Field Diagnostics, an easy-to-use system diagnostics tool that runs outside the OS.

Packed with either one or two Quad Core Xeon processors and clock speeds between 2.00 GHz and 2.93 GHz the Z600 workstation is all setup to provide exceptional performance.

One of the things that impressed me the most about the Z600 was the design. To come up with the design HP employed the services of BMW DesignWorks.

The Z600 workstation is very expandable, if you are willing to pay for it. The system supports up to 24GB of RAM, but it does not come cheap. To add the full 24GB of DDR3 RAM it is going to add $2920 to the cost of the system.

The Z600 workstation is also built to be green. No, I am not talking about the color, I am talking about how energy efficient it is. I know that a workstation with 2 Quad core CPU’s and 24GB of RAM is not going to be a low power machine, but the Z600 does have an 85% energy efficient power supply.

One of my favorite things about the Z600 workstation is how easy it is to take apart. There are lots of easily removable parts, but the one I liked the most is the power supply. This power supply only has one cable, so it is easy to pull out and replace if needed. I will talk more about the power supply below.

Design

The whole case, inside and out, was designed by BMW DesignWorks. BMW spent quite a bit of effort making the case very easy to get into, easy to take apart, and quite and cool. There are no tools required to open the Z600 case, or to access each of the parts. When you look inside the case you will notice lots of green touch points. Each of these touch points indicate a part that can be moved or removed.

The front of the Z600 case has a simple design without a lot of frills. In the middle is a single slot loading DVD, with an eject button just below the slot. On the right side of the case is the power button, 3 USB ports, a headphone and microphone jack, and a Firewire port.

The back of the Z600 case is fairly standard, it has 2 80mm fans on the right and on the left are a bunch of I/O ports. The I/O ports consist of 2 PS/2 ports, 6 USB ports, a Network port, a microphone, audio in, and audio out jack. Below all that are the PCI card slots, in the machine I have there is a single video card with 2 Display ports and a DVI plug.

Now we get to the interesting part, the left side of the case. The left side of the Z600 case is mostly bare except for a small handle and a lock. When you lift the handle the side comes off very easily and we get our first view of the inside.

The first thing to notice, when compared to the Z800, is that the power supply is at the bottom instead of the top. However, just like the Z800, the power supply is what I like the best. The power supply in the Z600 is very unique and it has several innovative design features. As you can see from the picture the power supply spans the entire length of the case. This was done so that the power supply can get its own fresh air from the front of the case and expel it out of the back. Unfortunately, the second thing that I liked about the Z800 power supply is not the same with the Z600, the Z800 power supply was completely cable-less. The Z600 however, has a single cable that comes out of it for the graphics card. Only having one cable still allows the power supply to be easily removed and replaced without having to unplug all the cables of a standard power supply. Instead of the cables being attached to the power supply they are attached to the case. There are two plugs in the case that the cables are attached to and there are two plugs on the power supply that connect to the plugs in the case. The reason I like this feature so much is because I recently had to replace the power supply in my personal computer, so I know how much of a pain it is to remove all the cables.

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Up at the top is a removable panel that covers the memory slots. When the panel is removed the first thing you see is a fan. The fan helps to keep the memory cool. Below the Memory are the CPUs. Each CPU has a fan and HeatSink so that the CPU’s will stay cool, they are also slightly offset so that the heat from the front one does not go into the back one.

Below the CPUs are the PCI slots. The Z600 only supports one video card. If you will remember the power supply only had the one video power cable also. One upgrade I would probably recommend is a sound card. As you may have noticed, the motherboard does not have enough audio ports to support anything more than a 2.0 speaker system. If you are doing audio or video editing you are going to want more and so a sound card will be required.

To the right of the PCI card slots are 2 hot swappable Hard Drive bays. With my Z600 workstation HP filled the drive bays with 2 150GB 15000 RPM SAS drives. They also put in a single 1 TB 7200 RPM data drive in one of the lower slots. The bays slide out fairly easily, but getting them back in can be a challenge. There is a lever on each drawer that needs to be lowered for removal and raised to lock it into place. If you happen to not get the drive pushed in all the way before locking the lever the hard drive will not be fully connected.

Below the hard drives are the 5.25″ drive bays. These bays a quite a bit harder to get to when compared to the hard drives, but the tool-less design helps to keep things as easy as possible.

Overall the design is great, as I said before it is very easy to get into and access all the various parts.

Performance

With a workstation like this, one would expect that the performance would be really good. So I was very interested in finding out just what the Z600 could do.

Resuming from sleep is very slow. The login screen shows up very quickly, but it takes about 20 seconds before the USB mouse and keyboard start responding to movement and key presses.

I kept my performance testing very simple with the Z600. Most performance tests do not do an adequate job of representing the true power of 8 hyper-threaded cores, so I turned off hyper-threading. In addition PCMark05 and 3DMark06 are getting old and it is time we stopped using those numbers, so I only used PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage. SpecViewPerf is also difficult to use and get reliable numbers from because its programs are all single threaded. To over come this SpecViewPerf runs multiple instances of each program, but so far the max it can do is 4, so half of my cores will go unused.

So on to the actual testing. The first test I did was 3DMark Vantage. This test puts all the components through different tests. As I described above all tests are done with hyper-threading turned off. The scores are decent, as you can see. During the tests the machine stayed very quiet.

The next test I ran was PCMark Vantage. This test does not stress the components as much as 3DMark.

My third test is with Bapco’s SYSMark. This test is similar to PCMark in that it does not really stress the system. Instead it uses programs like Office and Photoshop to test and see how well the Z600 will respond to real world situations. Since this workstation is more likely to run those programs instead of games, this test is more realistic for buyers of this workstation.

So that does it for the performance tests. Next I wanted to see how much heat I could generate and how much power it would take up. For this I turned on Hyper-threading (uses up more power and generates more heat), downloaded Prim95, and started it up. During this I had SpeedFan running and Kill A Watt plugged in. Before I started Prime95 I recorded the power at 154 Watts, and the Heat at about 18 C.

After running Prime95 for a while I recorded the power again, this time at 421 Watts and the Heat at 79 C. It just goes to show that this Workstation is capable of running hot, and using quite a bit of power.

I noticed that during all these tests, even the CPU tests, the fans did not get any louder. This may explain why the CPU temps got so high, but they never got too high to cause concern.

I was surprised to see that some of the tests came out with the Z600 outperforming the Z800. This could possibly be because of updated software or drivers. I wish I still had the Z800 so I could rerun those tests.

For my last test I wanted to see how the 15000 RPM SAS drive compared to my personal machines 2x 7200 RPM Raid-0 setup. So I downloaded a little app that tests hard drives. I first ran it on my desktop with the Raid-0. As you can see the numbers look fairly good. Next I ran it on the HP Z600 with the 15000 RPM SAS drive. When I saw the numbers I was blown away. I only wish I could setup a Raid-0 with the SAS drives. Unfortunately, the Z600 configuration I have does not support Raid-0.

Support and Warranty

The warranty that comes with the Z600 is a 3 years parts, and labor with onsite service standard warranty. There is an option to add onto that with additional coverage. The maximum warranty that I could find was for 24×7 4-hour on-site response – 5 yrs, workstation + monitor. The is a great warranty and it only costs $519. Considering that this is the same extended warranty as the Z800 and the fact that the Z600 is not nearly as expensive and cannot have as much hardware I was expecting it to be a bit cheaper.

Support can be found with a quick visit to the HP website for drivers and other downloads. HP also has forums where you can ask questions that can be answered by HP staff or other customers. If you would rather talk to someone in person a call to their support reps can give you the answers you are looking for. Last but not least, you could send HP an E-mail.

Conclusion

After all is said and done the Z600 certainly lives up to the expectations that were set by the Z800. If you are looking for a Workstation and the Z800 is out of your price range then the Z600 may fit the bill. Its performance is very similar in most tests and it costs a lot less. You do lose a bit of expandability, but do you really needs 192GB of RAM? If this sounds like you then give the Z600 a try.

It’s been a few months since HP launched their Z400, Z600 and Z800 workstations, and we’ve finally got the company’s mid-range Z600 on the SlashGear test bench. A dual-processor monster that HP envisage being used in midrange CAD, financial modelling and even high-end DCC, the Z600 would also make for a storming video editing workstation; HP also claim it’s environmentally friendly. That’s the theory, anyway: can the Z600 really deliver performance in a home or small-office friendly way?

The specifications of our test machine certainly make for impressive reading. Packing dual Intel Xeon X5570 processors (each running at 2.93GHz with 8MB cache and 1333MHz FSB), there’s also 6GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, two 160GB 10,000rpm SATA hard-drives, an NVIDIA Quadro FX1800 video card with 768MB of memory, slot-loading 8x DVD burner and Windows Vista Business 64-bit.

HP squeeze all of that into one of their latest Z-series workstation cases, complete with tool-free access and construction, along with a FireWire card for media-friendly connectivity. There are two PCIe Gen2 x16 card slots, one Gen2 x8, one Gen1 x8 and two PCI slots, along with four eSATA ports. To put the same system on or under your desk would cost $7,501; for $450 more you can double the RAM to a whopping 12GB, though the maximum on offer is 24GB.

Build quality is excellent, and the tower case is slimmer than you might expect: just 6.5-inches across. A hinged panel at the front hides the 5.25-inch bays, one of which is taken up by the DVD drive, plus there are a few USB 2.0 ports on the front-right bezel. All in all HP offer six external USB 2.0 connections (and a further three inside), two of which will be used up immediately since they bundle a USB keyboard and mouse in with the workstation. The side-panel – which has a key lock for casual security – opens smoothly and reveals well laid-out drive bays and some clever fan positioning. Both CPU fans are upright and pull air from front to back, rather than pushing it parallel to the motherboard; there’s also a large fan duct with its own fan which covers the memory.

Various green tabs indicate sections of the case which pull out, such as the tool-free drive bays which slide out from the side and into which the hard-drives snap. The power supply is a non-standard size and shape, and runs across the entire base of the Z600 with a single pull-handle for removal; the benefit is fewer cables criss-crossing the case space, as they all connect at the back and are routed behind the motherboard. Finally, there’s also an integrated grab-handle at the top, front and back, making transport straightforward.

The benefit to this non-standard internal layout and thoughtful ducting is that the Z600 is surprisingly quiet. You’d expect a dual-CPU workstation with six fans to sound like a minor tornado, but in fact it’s incredibly quiet. We’ve tested basic notebooks with more noticeable fan noise than the Z600 puts out, and according to HP their 80PLUS Bronze compliant PSU is 85-percent efficient and means the workstation is ENERGY STAR v5 qualified. In standby, the Z600 uses under 1W too, meaning you won’t be paying over the odds for the benefit of quick start-up times.

Of course, frugality and quietness are no use whatsoever if your workstation lacks grunt, but thankfully the Z600 isn’t short in that department either. Needless to say, standard day-to-day productivity tasks make little to no difference in the Z600’s stride, with several browser windows, Outlook, HD media playback and other concurrent routine apps having a negligible impact on the system.

We then loaded up Geekbench, which measures processor and memory performance, to get an idea of exactly how potent the Z600 is. Total score was 12,828, with the Z600 scoring 14,814 and 17,622 in processor integer and floating point performance respectively, while memory and memory bandwidth performance came in at 4,965 and 4,832 respectively. By way of comparison, the HP Z400 Workstation we reviewed four months ago – which has a single Xeon 2.93GHz processor and 6GB of RAM – managed 7,613 in Geekbench.

Finally, we ran PCMark and compared the Z600 with a Dell Precision T5500 workstation. The T5500 has dual quad-core Intel Xeon X5570 2.93GHz processors, 6GB of third-party DDR3 1333GHz memory, NVIDIA Quadro FX1800 graphics and a 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor hard-drive; the final build price was around $7,700, two hundred dollars more than the HP. As the graphs show, performance of the two systems was, unsurprisingly, on a par, with the Z600 edging slightly ahead in its overall PCMark score (8396 versus the Dell’s 8355) while both machines comprehensively bested the HP Z400.

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The Z600 range starts from $1,800, though it’s worth repeating that for the dual-processor machine we’ve been testing you’re looking at just over $7,500. That’s a whole lot of money, but then again you get a whole lot of performance for it, and in a form-factor and package that, before now, would have far more demands to accommodate its space, power and noise. It’s overkill for anybody but the most extreme of video editors, but if you’re living and breathing CAD and high-end design, or running plenty of real-time modelling, then the HP Z600 Workstation should be high up on your shortlist.