HP Z6 G5 A Makes For An Incredibly Powerful AMD Workstation For Creators & Developers

[Adarion]

It seems to "lack" some PCIe which is probably due to the lot of PCIe attached NVMe-Slots. It's an impressive box, however, it has its price and you can't just install your standard run-off-the-mill parts (e.g. PSU cables are different,...). And if, then I'd go with the all-AMD+Linux version.
It would be fun for a short ride compiling Gentoo, for sure, but then, I couldn't really put this beast to good use. You really need to be deeply in to 3D-animation / movie making / compression or development and constant compiling, or some sort of scientific calculations. I need this power once in a while but it wouldn't justify such a beast for me. Still, it is impressive.

[sophisticles]

Why do I get the feeling that someone is in love?

Seriously though, i went to HP's website to see how much this system costs, turns out there are two versions, the HP Z6 G5 which comes with a Xeon or the HP Z6 G5 A which comes with a TR.

The site would let me configure a maxed out HP Z6 G5 but there were no options for configuring a HP Z6 G5 A. The best i could do was find a lower spec system with a lower tier TR for about 9 grand.

It would be interesting to see if this thing is capable of decoding 4k DCI JPEG2000 in real time or 4k ProRes 4444.

Michael, If you are looking for an idea for another short article, how about downloading some of the sample footage in the below links and seeing if this system is powerful enough to decode it in real time without dropping frames.

You can either check by looking at it during playback or use ffmpeg to see how many fps it is decoding at:

https://mango.blender.org/

https://www.dji.com/ronin-4d/samples

In the first link you are looking for the 4k DCP sample(s) that are used to test Cinema Media Servers, in the second link you are looking for ProRes 4444 but not ProRes RAW, only Apple's are able to play those back.

[uxmkt]

it's just so weird seeing PCIe slots both above and below the CPU.

It only gets weirder: server boards have PCIe slots left, right, back and front of the CPU!

[kobblestown]

Thermal benefits for multi-GPU systems is how HP played it up at the AMD event with better separation/distribution.

With PCIe 5 I would think signal integrity plays a role too. I think you cannot implement PCIe 5 (or even 4) to the lowest PCIe slot (#7 on a Full ATX board) without additional circuitry (redrivers/retimers/whatever). But if you place the slots on boths sides of the CPU the longest traces will be much shorter and this probably makes for a cheaper board.

[linux89]

I guess only companies are willing to buy workstations from Dell, HP and Lenovo, as they don't care about the outrageous price tags, vendor lock-in and limited upgrade capacity/replacement due to proprietary parts which these ODMs insist in using on desktop PCs.

[creative]

That's a really nice kit.