HP Z440 vs EliteDesk 800 G2 for home "server" duties.

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Mehrts

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#286006 30-May-2021 17:05

Evening all,

Basically, is an HP Z440 workstation a sensible replacement for an HP EliteDesk 800 G2, or would it be a ball-ache & a waste of money & effort?

The actual story:
I currently use an HP EliteDesk 800 G2 small form factor (SFF) PC as a lightweight "home server". On this, I run a few VMs and LXCs via Proxmox.
It's got an i7-6700 CPU & 32 GB DDR4 RAM.

The only reason why I ended up with the SFF was due to a deal that I couldn't ignore. I was using an HP T620 Plus thin client PC before this, which I outgrew.

So far, I've swapped out the SFF motherboard for a tower version (more SATA ports & fan headers).
I've crammed it with three 2.5" SSDs, plus the original 3.5" HDD.
Added a low profile GTX-1650 GPU.
Also added a quad port NIC.

For what it is, it runs great. It's almost silent, and only pulls 150w of power at absolute max chat (CPU & GPU stress tests). Under normal use, it's around 50w. These are measured numbers, not estimates.

As time has gone by, I've been wanting more PCIe slots for various cards. The EliteDesks only have 1x PCIe x16, 1x PCIe x4, and 2x PCIe x1.
The SFF and tower versions of the EliteDesks use the exact same board layout, and this is why I haven't been too interested in just moving to the 800 G2 tower.

I've been starting to look at the HP "Z" workstation lineup, specifically the Z440 due to the price & features available. There's more physical space, and up to five PCIe slots, plus the smaller slots are open-ended to accommodate larger cards if needed.
Another thing I'm conscious of, is the case airflow is (obviously) much better in the workstation.

The big differences I can see already are:
ECC RAM is required.
The Xeon CPUs have a higher TDP than the 6th gen i7 (140w vs 65w).
One is a basic desktop essentially, while the other is designed for more heavy-lifting.

I have zero experience with ECC RAM, or Xeon CPUs. From specsheets, the supported CPUs are roughly the same vintage, or one generation older than my current i7.

I really only have one concern, and that's the power consumption that the Z440 would use while carrying out the same tasks as the i7. Fan noise isn't a huge deal, as this is tucked away from any living areas/bedrooms.

Am I completely insane for thinking this way? Or is it a decent way to upgrade to a machine that was designed to handle more PCIe devices?
What sort of price range would be fair for one with 16GB RAM & some version of Xeon E5-1620 CPU? For example.

gehenna

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#2715608 30-May-2021 18:13

Looked at building your own? I'd say doing that with comparable specs will come out cheaper and it's a lot more flexible.

Mehrts

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#2715623 30-May-2021 18:34

gehenna: Looked at building your own? I'd say doing that with comparable specs will come out cheaper and it's a lot more flexible.

I have thought about it, a few times, but that's as far as I've got.

The biggest show stopper for me, is that I'm not up to speed with all features & compatibility, especially with server spec gear.
I don't want to spend a chunk of money going with one particular brand/model/generation of motherboard for example, only to find out afterwards that there was something newer/better/more efficient that I wasn't aware of in the first place.

With anything tech/computer related, everything is moving at such a fast pace that it can be hard to keep up if you're out of the game for a while.

Ex-lease business PCs can often be had for a steal, and that's pretty much why I was looking at them in the first place. That's how I came to end up with the EliteDesk.

gehenna

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#2715625 30-May-2021 18:40

Pretty much all PC motherboards have the same features to some extent or another. You won't get caught out. You're main concern will be that has enough slots to meet your needs for expansion. Plus if you're already thinking about purchasing ex lease then you're obviously at peace with not having as wide a feature set as contemporary devices, so going with something you'd build will already give you more options and flexibility

It doesn't have to be server hardware by the way. I run my UnRAID server on regular PC hardware.

Mehrts

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#2715675 30-May-2021 18:56

There's a particular Z440 on Trademe at the moment which caught my attention due to price vs specs, and that's about the only reason why I've started looking into them to be honest. They had plenty of PCIe slots & space available for add-ons.

I'm not worried if it's server spec hardware or not, hence the current use-case of a desktop PC. I've already got plenty of DDR4 RAM, and it would be a pain having to swap it for ECC stuff.

@gehenna What particular MB/CPU setup are you using for your UnRAID box?

1101

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#2715962 31-May-2021 09:35

Too many HP's use NON STANDARD Power Supplies, with non standard connectors

So, you cant fix or test it with a standard PSU .
Can be an issue if you need it fixed urgently .

Mehrts

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#2716356 31-May-2021 19:16

Yea I'm familiar with the HP non-standard PSU's, which I have no issues with. There are plenty of them up for grabs if one did kick the bucket.

K8Toledo

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#2717503 3-Jun-2021 04:05

HP Z440 Workstations are rock solid but BIOS and all else will be locked down. If you're looking at Z440 I'd consider purchasing an X99 gaming rig from TradeMe. You'll get way more for the money.

Mehrts:

Yea I'm familiar with the HP non-standard PSU's, which I have no issues with. There are plenty of them up for grabs if one did kick the bucket.

Slim chance of that happening anyway. :P

1101:

Too many HP's use NON STANDARD Power Supplies, with non standard connectors

So, you cant fix or test it with a standard PSU .
Can be an issue if you need it fixed urgently .

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Mehrts

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#2765865 24-Aug-2021 11:23

Since I've got a bit of time on my hands at the moment, I thought I'd provide an update on this.

I ended up grabbing a Z440 and it works well for my needs as a Proxmox host for a few different VMs/LXCs. It's just a secondary "testing" machine until I move my current VMs over from the EliteDesk, but it's working great.

It's a very quiet system overall, which is perfect for a home environment. There's plenty of airflow through the case at low fan speeds.

Even though it doesn't support any graphics output from the motherboard, you can change a hidden BIOS setting to allow headless boot without throwing a "no GPU detected" error, which is handy since I haven't yet moved my GTX1650 into it, and the original Quadro K4200 uses more power than I'd like when idle.

At idle with no GPU, it uses around 45w of power, and with GPU installed & running stress tests, it was up around the 220w region.

I replaced the existing Xeon E5-1620-V3 CPU (4C/8T@3.5GHz) with an E5-2630-V4 (10C/20T@2.2GHz), since more cores are better suited than single core speeds.

I managed to grab an extra 64GB of DDR4 ECC registered memory for a silly price, so that got added to the existing 16GB since you can never have too much, right?!

I've also added a 5.25" to 4x 2.5" drive bay/caddy setup, complete with two new 500GB Samsung 870 Evo SSDs, plus a couple of other HDDs I had lying around. This is really handy & is a very tidy way to handle multiple drives. This leaves the original 3.5" drive bays free for future use.

The system is running from a Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe drive via a PCIe slot adapter, and since the motherboard supports PCIe slot bifurcation, I'm keen to look into using a larger adapter & running up to four NVMe drives via one x16 slot.