Silencing a HP Workstation - can it be done?

[magyarhost88]

Happy New Year guys!

New year, new challenge; i've been looking at the performance of Dual Xeon workstations and really thinking about giving one a go later this month. Per core prices for the CPU's seem to be much cheaper than desktop processors, and the RAM is also seriously scalable and cheap.

On the downside, i'm a bit less enthusiastic about having to put up with an ugly HP case (especially a used one) and then the key questions that we're all here for; how to silence it!

I'm looking at this machine - https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-z8 ... e-to-order

Has anyone got experience with re-casing this beast? What about fans and power supplies? It looks like a standard ATX board so any reason why I couldn't just start from scratch with a new chassis and liquid cooling?

I've searched a bit through the forum but can't find much history on this type of build/rebuild, so any advice would be great

[CA_Steve]

Welcome to SPCR.

It's a coin toss whether or not HP has chosen to use standardized sizes and connectors for the motherboard and PSU. So, putting the guts into a new case might work, or you might find:
- the motherboard standoff holes don't match up
- the PSU doesn't fit
- the PSU motherboard connector may/may not be std ATX.

Also, the CPUs listed are from 2014 and 2016 releases. You might use Anandtech's Bench comparison tool to get a feel for what a newer CPU might provide in terms of performance/price/power.

[magyarhost88]

Welcome to SPCR.

It's a coin toss whether or not HP has chosen to use standardized sizes and connectors for the motherboard and PSU. So, putting the guts into a new case might work, or you might find:
- the motherboard standoff holes don't match up
- the PSU doesn't fit
- the PSU motherboard connector may/may not be std ATX.

Also, the CPUs listed are from 2014 and 2016 releases. You might use Anandtech's Bench comparison tool to get a feel for what a newer CPU might provide in terms of performance/price/power.

Thanks Steve.

I've had a look at the Bench tool and will contact the vendor about the dimensions and measurements you mention.

I'm glad I asked before jumping in with two feet

[edh]

I have done some work with those HP workstation cases. From what I remember they have a very obscure PSU design running along the whole of the bottom of the case. Putting in another case I doubt will be an option but in my experience they are fairly quiet anyway. Fans can be swapped, a few cooling mods can be made although they are in general very nicely ducted internally. The downside of this is that they tend to be proprietary component designs and the BIOS tends to be very restrictive on what you can do. This general inflexibility means they probably aren't well suited to modding.