HP Z210 SFF Workstation: Serious Power in Cramped Quarters
by Dustin Sklavos on August 29, 2011 8:10 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- IT Computing
- Intel
- HP
- Xeon
- Quadro
- Workstation
- SFF
- Enterprise
- NVIDIA
Conclusion: It May Be Little, But It's Fierce
Between testing workstations like the HP Z210, the EliteBooks, Toshiba's Tecra, and the Dell Precision T1600, I think my biggest problem with enterprise-class hardware has less to do with the hardware itself than it does with marketing: I wish these machines were targeted at consumers. Not necessarily in terms of internal hardware, but in terms of aesthetics and build quality. The Z210 SFF isn't particularly flashy, but it's not fugly either: it's designed for work and reliability and on that front it's a major success.
Internally, the Z210 SFF has a smart layout that allows it to fit snugly into that smaller form factor while still being very easy to service, but there are some real sacrifices made here that any potential buyer should be aware of. The biggest sacrifice is undoubtedly the single 3.5" internal drive bay; while many workstations aren't going to need more than that one drive, the chipset does support RAID, and you'll have to ditch the card reader for a second drive (depending on your needs that may not be much of an issue). The other issue is the half-height video card: the Quadro 600 is basically the fastest thing you can fit into the Z210 SFF, and while it's a major improvement over just using desktop class graphics it's not exactly a performance powerhouse.
That said, the Quadro 600 (AMD FirePro 2270 also available) at least allows the Z210 SFF to enter the conversation when it comes to OpenGL applications. The Z210 SFF is also capable of supporting a very powerful processor and frankly, the price is right, especially compared to some of Dell's offerings. The Precision T1600 we reviewed was at least $200 more than the Z210 SFF while being larger, more power hungry, and actually offering both less RAM and a slower storage subsystem. None of Dell's small form factor offerings even compete with the Z210 SFF in terms of potential processing power and graphics hardware.
With those points in mind, it's tough to argue against the Z210 SFF. If you need a system this powerful and this small, you'll have a hard time finding anything that competes with it. Lenovo doesn't have anything that can compete with it. Neither does Dell. Best of all, the pricing is actually fairly reasonable (though we'd like to see custom configurations easier to order). At about $2,000 for a configuration like our review unit, it's not exactly cheap, but you get a healthy amount of hardware for your money. While we still have some reservations about HP's Performance Advisor in practice, the underlying system is nonetheless a solidly built, well-engineered machine and easy enough to recommend on its own.
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chuckula - Monday, August 29, 2011 - link
Well a few things, here.1. This is just one of a whole slew of HP products that have been reviewed in the last few days... but HP is abandoning the PC business... so why are we bothering again?
2. OpenGL drivers from Nvidia and AMD are both embarassingly piss-poor for consumer cards in the Windows world, and gamers don't seem to care.
3. As the article states, this machine is just a 2500K + a GeForce 430 using different server number parts. Aside from the small & ugly form factor, it's nothing you couldn't build from Newegg parts at 1/2 the price.
Dustin Sklavos - Monday, August 29, 2011 - link
1. They're backtracking on that, and until they actually DO abandon the PC business there's no reason to stop reviewing their stuff since it's out there and in force. On top of that, I'm pretty sure two units don't count as a "whole slew."2. OpenGL drivers from NVIDIA and AMD are adequate for consumer cards and gamers in Windows. Not spectacular, but Quake Wars doesn't run terribly and honestly, consumers don't run very many heavy duty OpenGL apps.
3. That's not entirely true, though. In terms of silicon, the Xeon in the Z210 SFF has some differences compared to an i5-2500K: it has Hyper-Threading, increased cache, and a locked multiplier. Likewise, the GeForce GT 430 and Quadro 600 may share silicon but they do not share OpenGL performance. So no, this is NOT something you can build from NewEgg parts at half the price.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - link
To go with what Dustin has said, HP is looking to *sell* their consumer business off to another company, not "abandon" it entirely. Just like IBM ditched their laptops and PCs and Lenovo bought them, there would likely be a taker for the current #1 worldwide computer business.Of course, the actual silicon in the Xeon and i5-2500K might be the same, but what he means is that having the extra cache enabled along with Hyper-Threading makes a difference. You'd be better off comparing the Xeon chip to the i7-2600K, and even then there are differences (e.g. ECC).
Samus - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - link
Ever since slowly migrating our office to HP workstaions from Dell Precision's over the past three years, I have to honestly say hardware failures are down across the board.proliance - Monday, August 29, 2011 - link
HP said they may drop the consumer line of pc's. This is a commercial product, not consumer.Taft12 - Monday, August 29, 2011 - link
... and why would any company ditch products with margins like this?! $499 laptops at Best Buy make zero profit and would not be missed.IBM sells millions of systems a year with Intel and AMD CPUs, and they "exited the PC business" several years ago. They just happen to have Xeon and Opteron branding instead of Core and Phenom.
gamoniac - Monday, August 29, 2011 - link
@chuckula,This is a commercial line product. Big corporations cannot and should not spend time building PCs with parts from NewEgg. They need the service, warranty, and reliability provided by big vendors so that they can focus on their core businesses.
So, just because you think you can build something similar to this, it does not mean this article is irrelevant to readers other than you.
@Dustin and AnandTech,
Nice article and very much worth reading. Keep up the good analysis work.
koinkoin - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - link
Support on the hardware, onsite is important on this kind of systems.Also having proper support for your application is usefull, and this is what you end paying a bit on these kind of worksation systems.
kkwst2 - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - link
Along those lines, my experience with both Dell and HP are that the service on the workstation-class commercial systems is excellent, whereas the service on consumer systems is, uh, wanting.I thought I hated Dell, but my T3500 workstation has been a rock and when I had some issues with adding a RAID controller, they solved my problem in 5 minutes.
And chuckula first mentions crappy OpenGL drivers in consumer grade cards, and then says the workstation-class card is just rebadged. The bottom line is they differentiate these cards by the drivers, and there is a significant difference in CAD support and optimizations for these cards. It used to be you could hack a consumer card and install the optimized firmware and drivers for it, but I think that has been largely squashed.
mike_ - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - link
Yeah they're not abandoning it, they want to sell it off like IBM did with Lenovo. <5% margins just aren't worth the headache, and justifiably so.