Hello,
Some time ago, I posted a question: Are the z420 and z620 liquid coolers the same part?
As I was assembling a new z620 to replace the office z420 (Xeon E5-1660 v2) and the idea was to use the E5-1680 v2 (8-core @ 3.0 /3.8Ghz) at the Intel rated 4.3GHz overclock, it was apparent that liquid cooling would be necessary.
Custom liquid cooling solutions are difficult to specify, expensive, and refined proprietray designs such as the HP z-series are resistent to subversion. This is logical as overclocking and changing the cooling could affect reliability and longevity as well as potentially make the system noisy and use more energy. Certainly, be especially careful of any upgrades of a system under warranty.
As the z620 motherboard and z420 appear to be the same board except for the 2nd CPU riser sockets on the z620 version, it occurred to me that a z420 liquid cooler might work in a z620.
I superimposed photos of the z620 standard fan/heatsink and the z420 liquid cooler:
And, from this I could see that the two coolers occupy more or less the same volume.
I also tried to work out possible ways to use a third-party liquid cooler:
> which employs an extrnally- mounted radiator.
But, a dual 92mm fan version would cover the top PCIe slot real cover. I could see that a single -fan radiator would work, but I could not find a closed loop liquid cooler with a single 92mm fan. These are all 120mm = too wide.
With the z420 liquid cooler, the question was as to whether the much wider radiator could project, in effect, downwards beyond the CPU shroud.
As the envelope /volume of the two coolers did appear to be the same re: the superimposed photos, I decided to give it a go:
The standard z620 fan/heatsink with the shroud removed:
The z420 liquid cooler installed:
Notice that the z420 cooler has a special small diameter fan - it's just visible to the upper right, below the radiator. This directs downward air flow to the chipset- which is the same location on the very similar z420 and z620 boards. A nice little enhancement.
With the shroud on:
The projection out the bottom of the shroud shows the reason that this will only work in a single processor system.
Total installation time: removing the original fan/heatsink and installing the liquid cooler was about 30 minutes- including taking the photos.
So, the cooler does project though the shroud downward side. There is a black plastic guard that protects the 2nd CPU riser visible to the lower left of the radiator, but there is plenty of clearance.
I was concerned that the vertical support for the shroud might somewhat impede the air flow into the fan, but the CPU temperatures with all eight cores at 4.1GHz at idle were very encouraging:
I am still looking at ways to add a 92mm pull fan on the output side of the radiator, perhaps powered off the Molex 4-pin but until I start some heavy CPU rendering, I won't know if it's necessary.
After some experimentation, using intel Extreme Tuning Utility, which had been very successful in April in the z420, I settled on running all cores of the E5-1680 v2 at 4.3GHz with the goal of having a Passmark Single Thread Mark of 2300:
And the magic single thread mark of 2339 is very good. The average Passmark single Thread Mark for the i7-6700K- which is a 4-core, is 2349. The temperatures at the higher clock speed and with more voltage added for stability are still quite acceptable. These temperatures were recorded as soon as possible after the above test:
This shows that during the Passmark test results posted above- by the way, the very long version, that the maximum Package temperature rose to a maximum of 63C and the maximum individual core temerature was 58C. This is quite comfortable for the E5-1680 v2, which is rated to 85C. A similar renderign run on z420_2 all cores at 4.1GHz would see a Package maximum of 74-78C with individual core maximums at 65-71C.
It may be my imagination, but it seems that the z420 liquid cooler is at least as quiet as the z620 fan/heatsink.
These clock speeds and temoerature results are not in the league of our Forum friend Brian1965's z620 whose Tower of Cooling is so very-well, -cool, but in my variegated uses: 3D modeling, (architecture and industrial design), graphic design, simulation, and CPU rendering I think it's going to have very good performance and reliability. This z620 in effect replaces two systems: the z420_2 and z620_1 which has 2X Xeon E5-2690 8C@ 2.9/3.8GHz for CPU rendering. However, I discovered that the CPU rendering I use- VRay, i not epsecially good at running on two processors- the z420 E5-1660 v2 six core could be faster.
The final specification of z620_2:
HP z620_2 (2017) (Rev 1) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8-core@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC Reg / Quadro P2000 5GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB + Intel 730 480GB + Seagate Constellation ES.3 1TB / ASUS Essence STX PCIe sound card / 825W PSU /> Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440) / Logitech z2300 2.1 Sound
[ Passmark Rating = 6322 / CPU rating = 17178 / 2D = 852 / 3D= 9012 / Mem = 3032 / Disk = 14227 / Single Thread Mark = 2339 [7.3.17]
[ Cinebench R15 = cb1214 (CPU) / 153 (Single Threaded) / 150.77 (OpenGL) MP Ratio 7.92x / Accuracy 99.6% ] 7.21.17
The z420 liquid cooler for $50 represents by far the best cost/ performace upgrade I've ever done.
Cheers,
BambiBoomZ