HP Z840 Tower Workstation

Description

The HP Z840 Workstation chassis allows tool-free access to most internal components but if security is an issue, a side access panel key lock and a Kensington slot are standard features. Green touch points inside the chassis indicate removable components making upgrades to the system a breeze. The removable service panel is laser-etched with a clear layout of the system board for easy upgrades and troubleshooting. The system is very quiet and can easily be used as a desk side tower and is also 5U rack mountable using an enterprise-class rail kit. Two sturdy handles integrated with the chassis make moving the system to a new location easy.

The chassis for the HP Z840 is based off the HP Z820 model and features three separate and distinct cooling zones for the components; one for the PSU, another for the CPU's and memory, and a third for storage and I/O. Shrouds over each of the cooling zones give the system a very organized and well-thought out appearance but don't be fooled into thinking it's just for show. Fans for each cooling zone have separate sensors on the system board to ensure the fans only run as long, and as fast as required to keep the system at peak operating temperatures. Internal cables are also very well organized and unobtrusive for better component access and air flow management.

Intel's C612 chipset can support dual, next generation Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 or E5-2600 v4 series processors. Using two top of the line E5-2699 v4 processors, that’s 44 total processor cores and 88 threads. An integrated USB 3.0 controller supports nine SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports with four up front, one internal, and four on the back of the system.

The HP Z840 is very expandable with a total of seven expansion slots and support for up to 10 storage devices. 16 memory slots support an impressive 2 Terabytes of memory when used in a dual processor configuration with 2400MHz 128GB DDR4 Load Reduced (LRDIMM) memory modules. Registered (RDIMM) DDR4 2133 MHz modules are also supported but cannot be mixed with LRDIMMs. With one CPU the system supports up to 1 Terabytes of memory with speed dependent on the speed of the slowest rated processor or DIMM and memory configuration.

This system is ISV certified to perform effortlessly when running intensive software applications used by design engineers, financial analysts, and geologists. ISV is an acronym for Independent Software Vendor and means these independent software vendors have tested the software, hardware, and components to ensure stable and reliable performance.

In an effort to maximize the number of active slots available in the 1 CPU configuration The fifth PCIe slot acts as a PCIe 2.0 slot with four lanes available when used with a single processor and jumps to 3.0 performance when used in the two processor configuration with all 7 lanes available.

The system comes standard with an 850 Watt power supply, and supports graphics cards up to 150 watts. The optional 1125 watt PSU supports graphics cards up to 600 watts. The 1125 watt PSU has been qualified such that when the system is connected to a voltage source greater than 105 volts, output jumps to 1275 watts when the input is 200 volts or more, the PSU will be able to output 1450 watts. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is highly recommended if 1275W output power is desired. This is a great feature when used with high power consumption configurations featuring a complete memory compliment, additional external storage, and powerful graphics cards like the Nvidia Tesla.

A dual port 6 Gb/s Intel SATA RAID controller is standard equipment. Users can also choose from a secondary 4 port 6 Gb/s Intel SATA RAID controller (sSATA), or an 8 port 6 Gb/s LSI SAS RAID controller. The SATA controller supports RAID levels of 0, and 1 with a max of 1 RAID. The sSATA controller supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 10 with a max of 2 RAIDs, and the SAS controller supports RAID levels of 0, 1, 1E, and 10 for a max of 2 RAIDs. An optional eSATA bulkhead adapter is supported on the SATA and sSATA controller.

The system comes standard with 4 LFF 3.5-inch drive bays with blind mate connectors. However, using HP's innovative SAS/SATA storage solution drive cage modules, the four 3.5-inch drive bays can be adapted to support eight 2.5-inch HDD or SSD drives. Each drive cage module holds four 2.5-inch drives or two 3.5-inch drive bays.

To maximize storage, two additional hard drives can be installed in the 5.25-inch external drive bays and configured for RAID to support the OS and applications. The optional HP Z Turbo Drive PCIe Solid State Drive reduces boot up, calculation, and graphics response times, even with 4K video! There are two versions; a 256GB PCIe version and a 512GB PCIe version.

Intel's advanced Vector Extensions 2.0 (AVX2) improves performance with math, codec, and digital signal processing software, and can also improve facial recognition, professional imaging and high-performance computing in addition to increased vectorization. Intel's Data Protection Technology with AES-NI (Intel AES-NI) provides fast and secure data encryption and is broadly accepted as the standard of the industry.

And, already a standard feature on Mac computers, Thunderbolt2 Technology supports simultaneous 4K video file transfer and display over a single cable with data transfer rates nearly 4x the speed of a USB 3.0 connection. The system also supports 3 high-end GPUs with 2GB ports standard and supports several different graphics cards including the W5100 AMD FirePro and a large cross-section of Nvidia products including the Nvidia Tesla K40 graphics accelerator cards. The Z840 can support up to 12 displays and HP also offers several different display options depending on your needs.