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Hacking an HP Z800 motherboard into a standard PC case

Started by Andy Brown, November 01, 2014, 04:53:46 am

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Andy Brown

Looks nice. Did you cut it from metal and stick on a paper overlay afterwards?
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

Attilio Fiandrotti

So far I have only printed it on a regular sheet of paper and cut the slits. The idea is to tape the mask over a sheet of plexiglas and mark where to cut with a dremel or some similar tool. A thin sheet of metal may also do, but my experience is that plastics are easier to work with.

Picco

November 14, 2015, 02:10:23 am #212 Last Edit: November 14, 2015, 03:14:55 am by Picco
Hi Andy and everyone,


and thanks for creating the forum i'm reading the whole thing as we speak.
I've already found the information i was after with the forum, kudos!
I've got a HP Z800 from my workplace(we refurbish computers in UK) and i love it.
I have one question which i couldn't find the answer to:
When i took home the Z800 had active adaptive cooling depending on load, now first thing i did was putting in my SSD and reinstall Win7Prox64.

Since then i've also got a hot-headed graphics card and after realised the chassis fans are not adaptive anymore, i decided to take off the side and use it like that for a while. Does anyone know what driver/program i have to install in order to have adaptive cooling active again?


Thank you in advance!
Have a great weekend everyone.


MOD: I installed the HP Performance Advisor which let me know i wasn't in high perf. power mode in windows. Now i ran a stability test, and noticed that sensors are reporting the CPU bein 39 celsius under load, but the cores are 80+ while the CPU heatsinks(origi HP) and chassis fans stay on constant rpm. In the power settings, cooling set to active.
Any ideas what's the problem can be?

MOD2: Here is a picture from AIDA64, maybe will help http://imgur.com/EFvASXV
My config:
Z800 V3 Mobo
2x X5675 + HP Heatsink
12x 4GB HP Mem with heatsink
R9 280X
Some SSD+HDD

Andy Brown

Quote from: Picco on November 14, 2015, 02:10:23 am
When i took home the Z800 had active adaptive cooling depending on load, now first thing i did was putting in my SSD and reinstall Win7Prox64.

Since then i've also got a hot-headed graphics card and after realised the chassis fans are not adaptive anymore, i decided to take off the side and use it like that for a while. Does anyone know what driver/program i have to install in order to have adaptive cooling active again?


Do you have access to any more Z800s at your place of work? If so you could perhaps compare installed drivers to see if there's anything HP specific in there that looks interesting.

If you don't manage to find out what it is then you can always use the SpeedFan utility to set up a link between the CPU temperature and the case fans. There's a good tutorial here.

You'll need to find out which controller is responsible for your fans by selecting "Configure" then the "Advanced" tab. For example, the two CPU fans are on the "ADT7490" controller with properties "PWM 1 mode" and "PWM 2 mode". You can verify that by changing their values from "Auto on PECI0/1" to "Always on full" and listening for the obvious change in noise level.

My case fans are controlled by sliders on the front of the case so I don't know which controller they would appear on if they were plugged into the motherboard.
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

Picco

Thank You for your reply Andy, now i have control over the two CPU Fan and the memory fans(PWM3). 8)
Cannot seem to be able to control the chassis fan's.....yet  ;)


"Do you have access to any more Z800s at your place of work? If so you could perhaps compare installed drivers to see if there's anything HP specific in there that looks interesting."

Haha, great minds think alike...
You are right, this is the first thing i should check.
I've already asked for the standard ghost on an SSD twice, both times forgot to actually take it home with me and try it, when i remembered they were in a build to a customer already.
Once i had some time I'll come back to you with the results to share, please allow me some time, Christmas hit us this week...hard.


"My case fans are controlled by sliders on the front of the case so I don't know which controller they would appear on if they were plugged into the motherboard."
This is plan B, currently i'm trying to buy some Z800 Slot In CD's from a USA sellerhttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KvizgvOhL._SX425_.jpg as many of our customers have been asking for it.
I would love to have this Slot in CD myself too, as i'm planning to mod this workstation to my my taste.


Thank you for creating this forum and thanks for all the people who took the time and shared their knowledge. Big respect!

Picco

December 07, 2015, 11:19:51 pm #215 Last Edit: December 07, 2015, 11:47:16 pm by Picco
Looks like it's the temperature sensor issue, we've had a return from one of our customer, does the exact same thing as mine.
Now i cannot seem to find any information regarding the CPU thermal sensor, but will keep digging.

You can see while all the cores are skyrocketing, the CPU thermal sensor flatlines at 28 Celsius, so same issue with my workstation and we have quiet a few other too. :/


LordOdin

So i bought a Z600 computer off ebay fully working for 150 i was wondering if it supports 2 x5575s. It came with a single E5630

LordOdin

December 18, 2015, 08:46:07 am #217 Last Edit: December 27, 2015, 10:20:34 pm by LordOdin
Yup The x5670s do work in the z600 :D

Horus

Quote from: Marco Silva on December 07, 2014, 11:19:04 am
every reboot requires to do the on/off thing from a couple of times up to 30 or 40  >:(

Quote from: Marco Silva on August 04, 2015, 05:30:56 pm
My revision 02 board is working just fine with 2 Xeon X5675, some times is hard to boot but 80% of the time it boots at first try.

Hi Marco.
Could you please describe changes which have led to better boot results?
Can you share yours hardware configuration?
Can you share yours BIOS settings configuration? (Easy to do - just download utility, run, share Z800Config file)
BIOS Configuration Utility
BiosConfigUtility64.exe /getconfig:Z800Config
Or maybe you have another potentially important observations?

Now to avoid restarting and boot problems I use suspend sleep mode (psshutdown.exe -d -t 1). It works perfect until power losing or restart requiring.

Horus

One more hint.
To suppress F1 Fan errors you don't need to connect real fan to all connector - you just need to connect Tach pins on motherboard with any Tach pin of working fan.
(also my motherboard thinks that rear chassis fan is fan of CPU 1)

nemorus

December 30, 2015, 04:48:19 am #220 Last Edit: December 30, 2015, 09:58:27 am by nemorus
Hello. I ordered on ebay z800 board revision 02. And 2x xeon e5649 processor and 48gb dd3,GTX 970 video . Motherboard start immediately , everything works fine . Only sometimes when I have to restart the computer this does not happen after reboot it shows a black screen.Helps just disable and re-enable it the computer. But he always turns on first time with no problems. The case I purchased the NZXT Switch 810 Black, had to modify slightly.
(On the photo test video card)
PS. Sorry for my English. ;)

malefic

Quote from: Horus on December 29, 2015, 01:21:38 pm
Quote from: Marco Silva on December 07, 2014, 11:19:04 am
every reboot requires to do the on/off thing from a couple of times up to 30 or 40  >:(

Quote from: Marco Silva on August 04, 2015, 05:30:56 pm
My revision 02 board is working just fine with 2 Xeon X5675, some times is hard to boot but 80% of the time it boots at first try.

Hi Marco.
Could you please describe changes which have led to better boot results?
Can you share yours hardware configuration?
Can you share yours BIOS settings configuration? (Easy to do - just download utility, run, share Z800Config file)
BIOS Configuration Utility
BiosConfigUtility64.exe /getconfig:Z800Config
Or maybe you have another potentially important observations?

Now to avoid restarting and boot problems I use suspend sleep mode (psshutdown.exe -d -t 1). It works perfect until power losing or restart requiring.


Hi, I'm Marco...just cant login no more with that account for some strange reason.

I didn't do nothing to improve it.
My hardware was a Revision 2 board, i had it running first with a couple of X5650 and after that upgraded for X5675. Started with 24GB of ram and latter upgraded to 48GB.
I had a bunch of different GPU's installed..HP 410 raid card with 512MB cache with the battery and 7 SAS 15K HDD in raid 0 :) SSD for the OS, OLD X-FI sound card and an HP quad nic picie card.

But my board is dead now, started with issues with missing ram sticks on CPU 0 till it register none...so I've upgraded recently for dual E5-2670 they are very powerfull and cheap cpu's and one can buy new motherboards for less than 250$ and there is still an upgrade path to deca core Ivy bridge cpu's when they become more affordable.

mbppg

February 19, 2016, 01:34:04 pm #222 Last Edit: February 19, 2016, 01:40:42 pm by mbppg
New to the forum and thanks to Andy and others for great info on the Z800. I have a couple Z400 work stations from work and currently using them as NAS/Server for storage and a Plex Media Server. I was given an opportunity to pick up a non working Dell Precision 690 and starting looking into building a dual processor PC.



Looking into the 690 boards and lack of processors they could handle, I started to think about the HP Z800 motherboard and ran across Andy's article. This got me thinking....having a Dell 690 case with an HP Z800 motherboard inside.  Not sure it will fit but I am pretty sure I can make it work. If not I have a Antec Lanboy Air I know I can make work. Anyway I thought it would be cool to see if I can make it work. Plus I plan to put stickers next to the Dell logo on the sides..."Dell, powered by HP" or like the older Intel inside logo "HP Z800 Inside!"

So I bought a rev 3 Z800 motherboard, two X5680 CPU's, and 48 gig of HP ram off ebay yesterday and a few other parts from Amazon and I will get started on the project soon.
I am not new to modding and I hope to have fun with this project as I love to build things. One of my project from several years ago: http://mbppg.com/media/photoalbums/fly_n_high_pc_mod/index.html
Another more recent project called Black-n-White http://mbppg.com/media/PC%20Builds/Black_n_White%20PC%20build/

Looking forward to this build and working with guys on the group.

Andy Brown

Hi Mike and welcome to the forum. The CPU/memory configuration that you've bought pretty much mirrors my own setup and I'm sure you won't be disappointed with the performance that's for sure. I guess you already know the dimensions of the Z800 board and given your previous experience with modding I'm sure that you'll just make it work whatever it takes. I checked out your photo build log of the two-tone green/blue case and it's amazing, so much attention to detail and to getting the professional finish.
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

mbppg

February 22, 2016, 09:57:07 am #224 Last Edit: February 22, 2016, 09:58:39 am by mbppg
Thanks Andy, parts have started to arrive. The motherboard had a few slightly bent pins on the first CPU socket. Pretty sure I have them bent back correctly but I do not have CPU's yet to test with, they should arrive tomorrow.

I worked on the case this weekend and took it all down to do measurements for the motherboard. Looks like I have just enough room (14.25 x 13 inches) without having to cut anything out. I will have to remove the stock Dell I/O back panel by drilling out the rivets as the Dell I/O ports do not match up with the HP motherboard. The Dell motherboard tray is removable which will be nice to work with outside of the case to retro fit the new motherboard including proper motherboard mounting holes and possibly cutting out part of the tray to make room CPU fan mount plates on the bottom of the HP motherboard.

Parts going into the system include five Hitachi 3.0TB hard drives in RAID 5, PNY 240 GB SSD boot drive, (dual boot windows 8.1 and Mint 17.3),  LG Blu-ray rewriter, MSI GTX 970 gaming video card, two Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU coolers and an iStar tray-less hot swap hard drive cage.
http://www.amazon.com/iStarUSA-BPN-DE350SS-SILVER-Silver-Trayless-Hot-Swap/dp/B00CW31H5A

Plan is gaming/video encoding rig. I like old school PC's kinda like old muscle cars heavy iron and lots of power. Nice thing is the Dell has big fans that move a lot of air without being loud. I know this may seem a bit obnoxious but hey why not.

Project Pictures link:
http://mbppg.com/media/PC%20Builds/Dell%20690/