Technical white paper HP Z440 Workstation Expand your power Take your business to the next level of performance, expandability, and no compromise reliability in one complete package. The HP Z440 Workstation features a perfect mix of HP Z DNA in a performance workstation package with up to 8 discrete processor cores, up to 128 GB of RAM, and multiple storage and PCIe configuration options. Table of contents Chassis and system highlights .....................................................................
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Chassis and system highlights The HP Z440 Workstation is a single processor system, delivering high performance and outstanding value in a newly redesigned expandable minitower with integrated front and rear handles. The innovative HP Z440 architecture supports the latest professional graphics and single socket multicore processor technology.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Quiet and reliable Acoustic performance is essential to HP and our customers because a noisy environment increases user fatigue and reduces productivity. HP has extended its leadership in this area with the new HP Z440. With the additional performance and capabilities, one might expect the HP Z440 to be louder than its predecessor. However, through innovations in engineering, the HP Z440 Workstation performs significantly quieter than the HP Z420.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Next generation Intel® Active Management Technology New features for Intel® AMT 9.1 include: • The Intel® AMT network can now be enabled and disabled. • Any configuration software can now synchronize the Intel® AMT network time to coordinate with UTC. • The ability to configure a headless platform remotely without the need for local user-consent has been added.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation I/O and storage Internal I/O The HP Z440 provides a total of five high-performance graphics and I/O slots. Regardless of the processor configuration, the HP Z440 provides two PCIe3 x16, one PCIe3 x8, one PCIe2 x4, and one PCIe2 x1 dedicated electrical slots. All slots match the mechanical lengths to their electrical lengths and are open ended.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation HP Z440 vs HP Z420 feature comparison Table 1. HP Z440 HP Z420 Operating System Windows 8.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation I/O slot optimizations The HP Z440 Workstation utilizes PCI-Express 3.0 technology. This section provides guidance on optimizing the performance of your system when using PCI-Express and PCI cards in the I/O slots. Integrated PCI and PCI-Express 3.0 The HP Z440 provides one 32-bit/33 MHz PCI slot that can accommodate a full height, full length PCI card. The HP Z440 uses the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v3 series, with integrated PCI-Express 3.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation I/O slot options In addition to the 32-bit/33 MHz full height and full length PCI slot, the HP Z440 provides a total of up to five highperformance graphics and I/O slots, including support for up to two PCIe 3.0 graphics cards in PCIe 3.0 x16 slots. The remaining three PCIe slots are open ended and can accommodate a variety of different cards and configurations. Figure 3.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Table 3: HP Z440 I/O slot recommended load order Load order (Depending on slot availability) Slot 1* CPU Slot 2 Slot 3 PCIe3 x16 Slot 4 Slot 5 PCIe3 x8 PCIe3 x16 Slot 6 Load priority Card description 1 1st Graphics or GPU 2 2nd Graphics or GPU 3 3rd Graphics 4 NIC – 10G 4th 3rd 2nd 1st 5 Z Turbo Drive/PCIe storage 4th 3rd 1st 2nd 6 SAS Card 3rd x 1st 2nd 7 HP Thunderbolt™ 2 8 NIC < 10G 4th 3rd 2nd 1st 9 Audio 4th 3rd
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Storage configurations and RAID The HP Z440 Workstation includes a 2 port, 6 Gb/s Intel® SATA RAID controller (SATA) and a secondary 4 port, 6 Gb/s Intel® SATA RAID controller (sSATA).
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Per port Enable/Disable of SATA ports [SATA and sSATA controllers only] Individual SATA and sSATA ports can be Disabled or Enabled individually from the BIOS menu under Advanced > Device Configurations. Select Enable or Disable from the pull down menu for the Port that you would like to Enable or Disable. External SATA (eSATA) External SATA (eSATA) is supported on the SATA and sSATA controllers with an optional eSATA bulkhead adapter.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) AHCI is a technical standard developed by Intel for the hardware mechanism that allows software to communicate with SATA (Serial ATA) devices. It is enumerated as a PCI device and transfers data between system memory and SATA devices. AHCI provides many benefits over the legacy IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drive interface. Some of the benefits include: • Elimination of master/slave handling.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Creating RAID Arrays on the SATA and sSATA controllers RAID arrays on SATA and sSATA controllers can be created through Option ROM (OROM) at power on, UEFI driver within 3rd Party Option ROM Management from the BIOS Startup Menu, DOS utilities, EFI shell utilities, Windows command line utilities, or from a graphical user interface (GUI) within the Windows OS. 1.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation 2. RAID creation using the UEFI driver within 3rd Party Option ROM Management in BIOS setup In order to create RAID arrays using the UEFI driver within 3rd Party Option ROM Management in the BIOS, the Option ROM Launch Policy in BIOS must be set to All UEFI or All UEFI Except Video. This can be changed in BIOS Setup under Advanced > Option ROM Launch Policy.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation For the latest commands use “/?” option when executing the command. Example: > RCfgSata.exe /? Press Enter Results in: Intel® RAID Utility for Serial ATA - vn.n.n.nnnn RCfgSata.exe [/?] [/Y] [/Q] [/C:vol_name] [/SS:strip_size] [/L:raid_level] [/S:vol_size] [/DS:disk_id] [/D:vol_name] [/X] [/I] [/P] [/U] [/ST] [/V] /? /Y /Q Displays Help Screen. Other options ignored. Suppress any user input. Used with options /C, /D, & /X. Quiet mode/No output.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Performance considerations Power settings The default “Balanced” and “Power Saver” plans in Windows Power Options may result in power management settings that may adversely affect performance of your applications. If the workstation is being used for a high demand application, consider choosing the “High performance” power plan or choose custom settings that better fit your use model.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Memory configurations and optimization The purpose of this section is to provide an overview of the memory configurations for the HP Z440 Workstation and to provide recommendations to optimize performance.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Optimize Performance Generally, maximum memory performance is achieved by evenly distributing total desired memory capacity across all operational channels. Proper individual DIMM capacity selection is essential to maximizing performance. Refer to Optimal configurations table below for more information.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation New UEFI BIOS and features/ legacy support This section describes the new features of the HP firmware (BIOS) installed on the HP Z440 Workstation. Additional information is available in the Maintenance and Service Guide for this workstation. New BIOS core The HP Z440, Z640, and Z840 Workstations all share the same BIOS image, for which the family name is M60.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation New Computer Setup graphical interface The Computer Setup (“F10 Setup”) user interface is now graphical, with variable-width text, drop-down boxes for item selection, and mouse support. Figure 5.
Technical white paper | HP Z440 Workstation Resources, contacts, or additional links This site includes white papers on USB 3.0 Technology, Battery Charging technology, Thunderbolt™ 2 Technology, etc. hp.com/go/whitepapers New performance settings Processor snoop modes The Xeon E5 v3 processor supports four different snoop modes: Early Snoop (also known as: ES mode), Home Snoop (a.k.a.: HS mode, Broadcast Snoop), Home Directory Snoop (a.k.a.