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Helping You Create Your Custom Gaming Computer

Hp z400 gaming computer and other upgrades.

So, you have a HP Z400 Workstation, and you are wondering if it can be an effective gaming pc?  You’ve found the right place to help you upgrade your Z400 in to a good gaming computer!  The HP Z400 Workstation is a single socket CPU DDR3 based Xeon workstation.  The Z400 Supports up to 24GB of DDR3 10600 memory and 2 x Internal 2.5″ or 3.5″ Hard Drives.  It is important to note that the Z400 only has a 475W or optional 600W Power Supply, which will limit your graphics card options.  We will show you an upgraded 700W Power Supply that will open a door to higher end graphics cards.  Let us show you how you can build an effective HP Z400 Gaming Computer.

Where to buy?

If you haven’t already acquired a HP Z400 Workstation we’d recommend checking out a company called  Serverworlds .  They sell the Z400’s cheap and they provide free ground shipping to the lower 48 states.  You can click on this link and it’ll bring you directly to there Z400 Page:  HP Z400 Link .  You can also try to snag them cheap on Ebay.  However, Ebay can be a bit of a gamble because you never know what you are going to get.

The goal is to purchase the Z400 with a good processor and memory already installed and then you can source the graphics cards, hard drives, and other optional components from other sources.

What Processor should I get?

High Clock speed cpu’s are the way to go.

Recommended Processors:

*We have tested the 4 slot and 6 slot Z400 System Boards.  If you install the latest bios update from 2018, your system will support the processors below.  You will also need the high performance heatsink (463981-001) to use the processors below.*

Xeon QC X5667 3.06Ghz 12MB 6.40GTs Processor | 3.46 Max Turbo Frequency (SLBVA)

Xeon QC W5580 3.20Ghz 8MB 6.40GTs Processor | 3.46Ghz Max Turbo Frequency (SLBF2)

Xeon QC X5677 3.46Ghz 12MB 6.40GTs Processor | 3.73 Max Turbo Frequency (SLBV9)

Xeon QC X5687 3.6Ghz 12MB 6.40GTs Processor | 3.86Ghz Max Turbo Frequency   (SLBVY)

Xeon 6C X5680 3.33Ghz 12MB 6.40GTs Processor | 3.60Ghz Max Turbo Frequency (SLBV5)

Xeon 6C W3690 3.46Ghz 12MB 6.40GTs Processor | 3.73Ghz Max Turbo Frequency (SLBW2)

Xeon 6C X5690 3.46Ghz 12MB 6.40GTs Processor | 3.73Ghz Max Turbo Frequency (SLBVX)

How much Memory should I get?

The base line should be a minimum of 12GB of memory.  However, 16GB to 24GB would be ideal.

Memory PN’s:

2GB PC10600U 2Rx8 Non-ECC Unregistered (P223C)

2GB PC10600E 1Rx8 ECC Unregistered (DM0KY)

2GB PC1200E 1Rx8 ECC Unregisterd (YY90K)

4GB PC10600U 2Rx8 Non-ECC Unregistered (P328H)

4GB PC10600E 2Rx8 ECC Unregistered (T192H)

4GB PC12800E 2Rx8 PC3L ECC Unregistered (6DWFJ)

8GB PC12800E 2RX8 PC3 ECC Unregistered (MT18JSF1G72AZ-1G6E1ZF)

8GB PC12800E 2Rx2 PC3L ECC Unregistered (HMT41GU7AFR8A-PB)

*You cannot mix ECC and Non-ECC Modules*

Recommended Memory configurations:

6 x 2GB PC10600E or 12800E Modules (12GB)

3 x 4GB PC10600E or 12800E Modules (12GB)

4 x 4GB PC10600E or 12800E Modules (16GB)

6 x 4GB PC10600E or 12800E Modules (24GB)

It’s very important to use 10600 or 12800 modules because they will run at the max speed supported by the system board and processor.

What Hard Drive should I get?

Ideally you would want to have a Solid State Drive as your boot device as well an NVME.2 SSD to store your game libraries/large programs on.  If you are limited on budget you could go with a small SSD for your boot device and a larger capacity 7.2K SATA drive to hold your larger files/programs/games.

Recommended SSD Drives:

Samsung 870 Evo 500GB 2.5 inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-77E500)

Samsung 870 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-77E1T0B/AM)

Samsung 870 EVO 2TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-77E20B/AM)

Samsung 870 EVO 4TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-77E4T0B/AM)

Recommended large Capacity SATA Drives:

Seagate 2TB BarraCuda SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch Desktop Hard Drive (ST2000DM006)

*NVME.2 Drives cannot be used as a boot device with this model workstation*

NVME.2 PCIe Adapter (You need this if you plan to install an NVME.2 Drive in to this system):

NVME.2 SSD Adapter *Required to Install NVME.2*

Recommended NVME.2 SSDs:

Samsung 980 EVO Series – 500GB NVMe – M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V8V500B/AM)

Samsung 980 EVO Series – 1TB PCIe NVMe – M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM)

Crucial P5 NVMe M.2 1TB SSD (CT1000P5SSD8)

Samsung 980 EVO Pro Series – 2TB PCIe NVMe – M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V8P2T0B/A)

What Graphics Card should I get?

This is where it gets a little tricky.  The HP Z400 has may have a 475W or 600W Power Supply installed.  You’ll have to determine which power supply wattage that you have installed.  Then you will have to stick with a graphics card that won’t fry your power supply when under heavy usage.

Recommended Graphics Cards:

NVIDIA GTX1050 TI 4GB Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA GTX1660 Ti 6GB Graphics Card

If you upgrade your power supply to 650W or more:

Upgraded 700W EVG 700B Power Supply

EVGA NVIDIA GTX1070 8GB SC Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA GTX1070TI 8GB Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA RTX 2060 6GB Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA RTX 2060 Super 8GB Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA RTX 2070 8GB Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB Graphics Card

Expect Some Strong Bottle-necking if you install these Graphics Cards:

EVGA NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti 8GB Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA RTX 3070 8GB Graphics Card

EVGA NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti 8GB Graphics Card

What type of Monitor should I get?

Ideally it would be nice to get a monitor with a 144Hz or 244hz refresh rate or better monitor.  However, it really depends on the games you play.  If you play first person shooter games a 144hz or 240Hz or better monitor is a must.  If you play other games that do not require quick response time then a 60hz monitor should work fine.

Recommended Monitors:

ASUS PG248Q Full HD 144Hz 1MS 24″ Gaming Monitor

ASUS VG278Q Full HD 1080P 144Hz 1MS 27″ Gaming Monitor

ASUS XG258Q ROG Strix 24.5″ 1080P 240Hz 1MS Gaming Monitor

ASUS VG279QM TUF  27″ 280Hz (240Hz) Gaming Monitor

Using the criteria above you can build a good gaming system using a HP Z400 Workstation.  It will not be a 4K gaming unit but it will allow for stable frame rates and a good overall gaming experience.

Sample Configuration:

Precision Z400 Workstation

Xeon QC W5580 3.20Ghz 8MB 6.40GTs

16GB PC10600U (4 x 4GB)

Samsung 256GB 6GBPS SSD + WD 2TB SATA 7.2K 6GBPS HDD

GTX1080 w/8GB  Graphics Card

1 x 10/100/1000 Network Port

Upgraded 700W EVG 700B Power Supply w/ Adapter

10 Pro 64Bit

We have tested this system with games like Dota 2, CS Go, PubG, and The Division.  The frames can range from 40FPS to 200FPS depending on the game and settings that you choose.  The system was tested using a 144Hz 27″ Acer Monitor.

HP Z400 700 Power Supply Upgrade

HP Z400 Gaming Computer

How to Install memory in to an HP Z400 Workstation

How to install an X5690 Processor in to an HP Z400 Workstation

How to Install 48GB of memory in to an HP Z400 Workstation

HP's Z400 Workstation Runs The Tom's Hardware Gauntlet

We've recently put a lot of effort into designing a custom benchmark suite for testing workstation-class hardware. It's a work in progress, first used to test Intel's Xeon 5600-series CPUs. Today we have some results gleaned from HP's Z400 workstation.

The Z400 And Benchmarking Notes

• Page 1: Introduction: Evaluating Workstations
• Page 2: HP's Z400 Workstation
• Page 3: The Z400 And Benchmarking Notes
• Page 4: Benchmark Results: 3D Animation Tests
• Page 5: Benchmark Results: Maxon Cinebench 11.5
• Page 6: Benchmark Results: Landscape Rendering Test
• Page 7: Benchmark Results: High-Definition Editing Test
• Page 8: Benchmark Results: Digital Audio Workstation
• Page 9: Benchmark Results: Scientific Tests
• Page 10: Conclusion

All in all, the Z400 sports a fairly standard X58-based motherboard. The one exception is the memory slot configuration on our first-gen board, which HP has since rectified with a six-slot follow-up, allowing two modules per channel.

While it may seem that this is greatly reduced from your average enthusiast board, remember that these platforms have a different purpose and market segment than those boards. These systems stress reliability and availability as much as performance. There won’t be any detailed conversations about overclocking settings available in the BIOS, because there are no such provisions.

Most workstation motherboards only have a single PCIe x16 slot for graphics. It was only recently that workstation software supported SLI and CrossFire, and thus the systems weren’t equipped for it either. Most server-oriented motherboards have onboard video and lack an x16 slot at all. Instead, they include multiple x8 slots for storage and networking controllers.

The Intel Xeon W3520 processor the machine is equipped with is very similar to Intel's now-EoLed Core i7-920, which shares the same clock speed and most of the same features. There are only two differences to be seen between the two: the Xeon W3520 supports ECC memory and Intel Demand-Based Switching, whereas the Core i7-920 does not. With that said, DBS in the workstation space is what SpeedStep is on the desktop.

Testing Workstations

Testing workstations for Tom’s Hardware is quite a bit different from evaluating the latest desktop CPUs and graphics cards. In approaching the methodology, the benchmarks need to persist for longer than the typical mainstream app, and they need to be intensive enough to demonstrate the performance differences between very similar machines, meaning tests that only take a few seconds to complete are out of the question. Also, the tests must be repeatable and objective. That is, the differences between systems must be measurable in a quantifiable way. “It feels faster” doesn’t cut it.

Over the past several years, SPEC (the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation) has attempted to create tests that can be used to benchmark systems against each other, including the SPECapc (SPEC application performance characterization) tests. The SPECapc tests are scripted workloads that measure the performance of actual applications. Unfortunately, the SPECapc tests usually only work correctly under the version of the software that they were designed under, and if the test isn’t updated for newer versions of the software, then people trying to evaluate workstations are left trying to size them up using older software. This can lead to disparities between old and new code that go on for five years or more. Also, the SPECapc benchmarks may be enough to weigh down the machine for substantive testing purposes, but those tests, in many cases, do not accurately represent a ‘production workload.’

Stay on the Cutting Edge

Join the experts who read Tom's Hardware for the inside track on enthusiast PC tech news — and have for over 25 years. We'll send breaking news and in-depth reviews of CPUs, GPUs, AI, maker hardware and more straight to your inbox.

So, we here at Tom’s Hardware have developed a few workstation tests of our own that we feel are a better approximation of real workloads. In many cases, they should be familiar to people performing production-type tasks. With experience in the digital content creation industry and regular contacts working in the industry, we were able to get a feel for active professionals would like to see in benchmark tests.

Hewlett-Packard supplied the Z400 workstation on extended loan, both as a review unit and as a test case for the development of our new workstation tests. These workloads were developed on the Z400 with the express intent of bringing it to its knees, and we managed to do that after months of work. The suite, as it stands, is not written in stone. And it is our aim to expand them and possibly change some tests to increase their demand--hopefully with some suggestions from you. We tried to cover multiple market segments, but the initial tests are heavy on the DCC (Digital Content Creation) market segment and light on others. This is something we hope to remedy.

Current page: The Z400 And Benchmarking Notes

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• bitter So JF was right to say that HT should be disabled in some scenarios Reply
• haplo602 hmm ... I wonder if you could make a D3D/OGL comparison test in some 3D modeling software ? I don't actualy know if any of them supports both APIs. BTW you dual PCIex16 comment is wrong. There were dual PCIex16 slots in HP workstations since xwX400 models (6400,8400,9400). Reply
• Draven35 Some of the other models have dual x16 slots... but they are rare in baseline models. At some point we'll look at how well an SLI config works in workstation OpenGL tests. 3dsMax uses Direct3D (and OpenGL), but prefers Direct3D (it is 'recommended' by Autodesk on my GTX 460-equipped primary machine...), but Maya does not, it requires OpenGL. As for whether HT should be disabled? Still questionable. If you're doing animation, and have HT off, you'll gain some interactivity when working, but as soon as you need a test render you'll be losing time. If your 3D application does multithreaded interactiivty tasks, then you're better off with HT on- for instance, the VPR interactive shading mode in Lightwave 10. Its largely dependent on how your software responds to what, and hopefully we'll have more answers on that with the next workstation we look at. Reply
• ares1214 Nice cable managment... Reply
• Draven35 It came that way! The other models in the z-series have better cable management even, specially with the shrouds. Reply
• HibyPrime Lets see. 2GB Ram - Not even close to be considered a usable workstation. - Nevermind, I messed up. I didn't see the (x3) 250GB main/2TB raid 0 - raid 0 setups in workstations are used for scratch disks, and thats it - storage is too risky. 2x 250GB in raid 0 makes much more sense cost wise as you'll never use more than 500GB on a scratch disk, with a 1TB for temporary storage. I say temporary because a workstation is just that, once the work is done (and during) it's backed up and rarely used again. Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium PCIe - Any Audio professional needing sound quality is going to be using almost exclusively external hardware. The analog outputs all anyone else is going to need. Who ever chose the specs for this machine needs to be shot. Reply
• MU_Engineer This was an interesting review, but the real machine to test would have been the dual-processor Z800. The big advantages of a workstation are better reliability and stability than a standard desktop and the ability to use multiple processors and more RAM than a typical desktop. Perhaps a Z400 vs. Z800 test would have been interesting as there were a mix of poorly-threaded and well-threaded applications in the test. Reply
• warezme This machine is pathetic. Any decently configured OC'ed quadcore i7 will run circles around this thing, ugh. Reply
• Draven35 It was agreed to start with a z400... the workstation tests were actually developed on this machine, hence why it has a Gen 1 board. Mayhap we'll look at a z800 later. Most video editors use a RAID array for their video files unless they are just editing DV. HD footage shot on a decent quality camera would quickly overwhelm your proposed 500GB array- the raw P2 footage alone for my film project was 350 GB, and that's before the scratch files generated for color correction and transition renders- and the P2 footage is pretty strongly compressed for semi-pro camera footage. (40 Mb/s) If you're editing uncompressed 1080 HD, you're dealing with 124 MB per second of video. With a larger array, a system like this could be set up for editing uncompressed HD with the simple addition of a BlackMagic Decklink in one of its HD flavors, or the HD version of the Avid Mojo if you prefer to work in something like Media Composer. With the transition of TV to HD, more and more projects are being finished for HD in an attempt to future-proof them- which has actually been going on for about five years before the transition. If you want to see something truly horrible, look at the data rates required for 2k or 4k playback... HP doesn't sell their machine configured with any kind of professional audio interfaces. They submit their machines for certification by Avid, and the 'full' Pro Tools (Pro Tools HD) comes from Avid on a z800.The audio interface choice for the system was either the Creative card, or the onboard RealTek codec, because that's what HP had and could configure a system with. You'll find a surprising number (like, most) audio guys including musicians these days working with a mix of software and hardware, and the mixing is done on a computer, not on external hardware. There are audio interfaces with two, four, six, eight and more inputs... my personal music workstation has eight analog inputs, plus ADAT and S/PDIF in. (Note, I need more like twice that in inputs.) You need all these input to capture multiple instruments on completely independent tracks simultaneously , so that they can be given separate effects and the mix can be adjusted on each track. (That's right, you can capture all those tracks at the same time.) Some of these audio interfaces are an internal card , some are an internal card plus an external breakout box (M-Audio Delta series, MOTU 2408, etc), and most are USB or firewire external (Presonus, TASCAM, Echo, Digidesign, Focusrite, et al) boxes with all the hardware located within it. In addition, many have PCI or PCIe DSP accelerator cards from UAD or TC electronic for effects processing and synthesis. Reply

The big advantages of a workstation are better reliability and stability than a standard desktop

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2022 Suzuki DR-Z400S Dyno Test

Horsepower and torque figures on Suzuki’s 400 dual sport motorcycle.

The dual sport segment is alive and well in 2022. It seems like more and more people continue to realize just how versatile these motorcycles are. In a place with such a diverse geographical landscape like Southern California, you could ride a dual sport from your house, up into the mountains, down to the desert, to the beach, and back home—all in a single day. And that would include single-track, fire road, and pavement riding—all on one bike.

There are many options to choose from in the dual sport market for such adventures, some more capable than others. One bike that has stood the test of time in this segment is the Suzuki DR-Z400S . Sure it’s still carbureted, is rather heavy at 324 pounds wet (as measured on the Dirt Rider scales), and hasn’t enjoyed an update in many moons. But it has plenty of potential with some modest modifications, as test rider Evan Allen proved with his DR-Z400S project bike build .

Related: Building A 2019 Suzuki DR-Z400S Project Bike

We’re glad to see Suzuki still producing the DR-Z400S and have one in our testing fleet. A quick few runs on our in-house dyno revealed peak figures of 31.8 hp at 8,400 rpm and 24.3 pound-feet of torque at 5,800 rpm. Now that dyno runs are done and dusted, we’ve mounted a set of proper DOT knobbies on the bike— Dunlop Geomax EN91 tires, to be exact. Now it’s time for on- and off-road testing. Perhaps a Tour de SoCal is in order?

2022 Suzuki DR-Z400S Engine Specifications

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Z400 RAID not seen by Windows 10

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‎12-28-2023 05:16 AM

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Solved! Go to Solution.

• HP Z400 Base Model Workstation
• Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)

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