HP’s New Z Workstation Range

Archive notice: This article was originally published on September 27, 2017. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.

High-Performance Workstation for the VFX Industry

The Z8 in particular is aimed at users in the high-end VFX industry with its range of performance: According to HP, it is perfectly suited to 3D analysis and simulation as well as real-time 8K video editing and is said to be VR-ready. It has 3 TB of RAM and 24 RAM slots, Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs with up to 56 cores, M.2 SSDs, three Nvidia Quadro P6000 graphics cards and a storage capacity of 48 TB.

Further specs are: 10 USB connections (3.1 Gen 2 Type C), two Gigabit Ethernet ports, nine PCIe slots and optional Thunderbolt 3 interfaces. Compared with the previous flagship model Z840, the Z8 contains more storage capacity, CPU cores and graphics and PCle bandwidth. The workstation is compatible with Windows 10 Pro 64-bit and Linux.

The basic version of the Z8 without additional components is available for US$2,439.

The Smaller Variants: Z6 and Z4

The Z6 workstation comes with Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 processors with up to 48 cores, 384 GB of RAM, two Nvidia Quadro P5000 graphics cards and a storage capacity of up to 22 TB. The price of the Z6 starts at US$1,919; the device is only compatible with Windows 10 Pro 64.

For anyone working in 3D CAD or Building Information Modeling (BIM), the performance of the HP Z4 may be sufficient: The workstation has an Intel Xeon W-2155 processor with 18 cores, two Nvidia Quadro P4000 graphics cards, 256 GB of memory and 22 TB of storage. It is priced at US$1,249; as with the Z6, the only possible operating system is Windows 10 Pro 64.

The Z8 and Z6 are due to appear in October and the Z4 in November. Further new entry-level models for CAD applications are the HP Z2 Mini, the HP Z240 Small Form Factor and the HP Z240 Tower.

You can obtain all further information about HP’s new Z Workstation range on the hardware manufacturer’s website.