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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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x2xx

Quote from: JonMS on June 29, 2015, 05:22:49 pm
Quote from: x2xx on June 17, 2015, 03:25:44 pm
only quick info for all original Z800 users, successfully running 2x X5687 + 2x R9 290 OC with stock 1110W PSU (no additional psu needed).

power to GPUs
V-G1 6pin -> 8pin
V-G2 6pin -> 8pin
1x molex -> 6pin
1x modified CPU power cable -> 6pin (1x +12 CPU0  1x +12 CPU1)
(Obsidian Series 800D 8-Pin Motherboard Power Extension Cable Corsair CC800D-8PIN)

all stable

Quote from: JonMS on March 14, 2015, 07:41:45 pm
Quote from: x2xx on March 11, 2015, 10:26:07 am
quick info:

i was searching for max power output thought 6pin GPU connector and i find this pdf
http://www.nvidia.com/content/quadro/maximus/di-06471-001_v02.pdf
where they use  6-pin to 8-pin adaptors for tesla and quadro fx5xxx in Z800

because i want to try SLI GTX980 and dont want case full of molex conversion cables


Z800 board is not GeForce SLI certified so you will need to use an SLI hack to make it work. I did this back in the day on an Asus P5Q-E board. As far as powering them if you're using the standard Z800 case you can run dual 5.25" drive-bay PSUs (1 for each GPU) I'm doing this for my dual AMD R9 280X set up as Crossfire requires no certification. Here is a picture of my set up:



Can you share pictures of your custom cable and how you have it connected?


hi, this is it

https://i.imgur.com/wuz7kUy.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/a261xS1.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/flOGUhC.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/dUrssRY.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/vnaXsf1.jpg

best regards

Picco

x2xx, thank you so much mate, just found a pair of 290x-s on gumtree.
I also have a borderline-lunatic idea of passive cooling the two cpu/vga with two separate loops, but this is only on the drawing board at the moment.
1x Zalmasn Reserator 1 v2 -> CPU_0 + 290x_0
1x Zalmasn Reserator 1 v2 -> CPU_1 + 290x_1

MOD: actually if i search for the part number it comes up as a 1x8 pin male + 1x8pin female + 1x4pin male.
Did you have to mod the cable somehow?

mbppg

Well it has been a little while and I have been super busy. With little pockets of time I had a worked on the PC build but I did not take pictures nor did I really journal my steps. So here is the finished product. I fit an HP Z800 motherboard into a Dell Precision 690 case. So here is a short list of major issues steps:
Customized the case to fit motherboard and drive cage
Custom motherboard tray
Drilled stock motherboard CPU brackets to work with Cool Master CPU fans
Everything was off the shelf items purchased for the build.

Here are the specs/parts:
Dell Precision 690 case (free from work)
Z800 rev 3 motherboard (ebay)
(2) Xeon X5680 CPUs (ebay)
(12) 4 gig ECC samsung ram 48gig total (ebay)
MSI 4gig GTX 970 millennium gaming video card (amazon)
EVGA 850 B2 Bronze +80 power supply (amazon)
Adaptec ASR-6805 Raid controller (512 meg) (ebay)
Marvell 4 port 9200 series 6 gig SATA controller (amazon)
iStarUSA 5 bay hard drive cage (amazon)
(5) Hitachi 3.0 TB hard drives (work)
PNY 240 gig SSD boot drive (amazon)
(2) Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU coolers (amazon)
LG super blu-ray burned (amazon)
(2) Cougar 140mm PWM fans (newegg)
Couger 120mm PWM fan (microcenter)
Noctua 80mm fan (amazon)
Noctua 40mm fan (amazon)
Bulgin anti vandal switch (amazon)
Original z800 front panel connector including audio, usb and firewire cables (ebay)
Z600 power switch cable just for the temp sensor (ebay)

This PC build was fun to do and presented a few challenges but turn out to be a great setup and a great looking PC. The really cool thing is this is unique, one of a kind PC that is super fast and super quiet (no benchmarks yet). None of the high quality fans run over 20 dB but yet still move a lot of air. Just installing software and dual booting Windows 10 and Mint 17.3 Linux. Yes a havea couple cables to clean up but I wanted to get some testing completed and some software loaded first.


Andy Brown

Just a quick pointer for people monitoring this thread that I've posted a guide to setting up SpeedFan on the Z800 to automatically ramp up the CPU fan speeds when the core temperatures get hot.
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

desune

Quote from: mbppg on March 04, 2016, 06:02:43 am
Also found a picture of the high capacity CPU fan for the z800, pin 5 is just a short jumper to ground. I have not had a chance to check it but I am pretty sure it will work and turn off the CPU fan message.



Hi mbppg,

Have you had a chance to try this yet?  Did it work?

Thanks.

mbppg

Quote from: desune on March 31, 2016, 12:19:24 am
Hi mbppg,

Have you had a chance to try this yet?  Did it work?

Thanks.


Yes I did this to the cooler master fans that came with the CPU cooler and it works great.

Chris

Hi all,

I lucked into a Z800 with a gen 2 motherboard and the proprietary 850w power supply. I'd like to put a modern video card into it, but I'm wary about the power consumption. Has anyone had any luck using their z800 with a new Radeon R9-3xx series? I see that a few people have posted using the 290 series - did you find that there was any instability playing modern fps games? (I'm thinking of things like R6 Siege).

Thanks!

Andy Brown

Quote from: Chris on April 11, 2016, 04:53:14 pm
Hi all,

I lucked into a Z800 with a gen 2 motherboard and the proprietary 850w power supply. I'd like to put a modern video card into it, but I'm wary about the power consumption. Has anyone had any luck using their z800 with a new Radeon R9-3xx series? I see that a few people have posted using the 290 series - did you find that there was any instability playing modern fps games? (I'm thinking of things like R6 Siege).

Thanks!


Hi Chris, check out the new post in the comments section from user "ujt 80".
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

Chris

Quote from: Andy Brown on April 13, 2016, 01:26:49 pm

Hi Chris, check out the new post in the comments section from user "ujt 80".


Much obliged! Fingers crossed (s)he is using the original hp 850w power supply.

Edit: Hopefully this will help others in the future - I went out and bought a Radeon R9-380 video card. The original 850w power supply runs it just fine.

lvoigt

April 20, 2016, 03:09:43 pm #249 Last Edit: April 20, 2016, 05:45:33 pm by lvoigt
Hi all,

Can anyone help me with determining what temperature sensor is used in Z800 (thermistor) power switch/speaker cable assembly? I don't want to have to buy a full cable assembly just for the temperature sensor... Much appreciated if someone could help. That is the only piece now missing from my setup and it is causing all my fans to spin at max speed (ambient temperature showing 0C in bios).

Andy, great blog that I used as reference, same cabinet/case :-)

Regards,
LV

Andy Brown

Quote from: lvoigt on April 20, 2016, 03:09:43 pm
Can anyone help me with determining what temperature sensor is used in Z800 (thermistor) power switch/speaker cable assembly?

Hi, Check out this post further back in the thread.
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

BenGman

Hi Everyone, its been a year since I've made any major changes to this computer which has been powered up virtually 100% of the time. My memory errors (memory in slot 1 reported an error, when memory was swapped from different locations the error was still only reported at slot 1) assumed to be due to overheating, have disappeared on its own .

Today I added a second video card so now I have the following:
Geforce GT 730 2GB and
Geforce 210 1GB (an old one added today).

This is my first time running 2 video cards in a single computer, didn't think it would work without SLI/Crossfire. I had to downgrade the NVidia drivers of the GT 730 to the latest version for the 210, and I can't update them any further without blue screening, so I have 6 displays operational (DVI, HDMI and VGA) x 2. If I find another NVidia card around I'll try adding it as well.

Maybe this year I'll finally build that custom case.

obnauticus

I recently purchased a Corsair Carbide 540 http://www.corsair.com/en-us/carbide-series-air-540-high-airflow-atx-cube-case and the adapters necessary to connect an ATX power supply to my Z800 mb.

I've run into a problem and I am wondering if anyone here can assist:
After hooking up the PSU to the motherboard, the computer won't POST (no VGA, no beeping). Fans are running and I am not sure what additional debugging steps I can do since I have not video output.  I have tried removing devices to root-cause the problem, but nothing seems to get me VGA output. I am wondering if anyone here has run into this problem with the z800->ATX adapters from aliexpress, or if anyone has any ideas with what may be wrong with my configuration. I'm thinking it could possibly be the power supply?

I'm running two Xeon X5650 (http://ark.intel.com/products/47922/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5650-12M-Cache-2_66-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI) and one nVidia GTX970 using this power supply: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-SuperNOVA-Crossfire-Warranty-110-B2-0850-V1/dp/B00KYK1CC6?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00.

Maybe my PSU isn't big enough?

BenGman

September 06, 2016, 03:18:33 am #253 Last Edit: September 06, 2016, 08:01:35 am by BenGman
NEW BIOS AVAILABLE - 14th APRIL 2016 3.60 Rev A

http://h20566.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=3912036&swItemId=wk_164134_1&swEnvOid=2104#


Anyone tried it yet? I have a V3 Motherboard that works decent right now... I don't want to spoil a good thing.

Update:
The BIOS was listed as a critical so I ran it, the update was pain less.

Andy Brown

I was going to give it a miss because it looks like just a single bug fix. But then you say it's critical so I'll probably install it at the weekend.
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!