XeonKyle

Replaced all of those old white zipties with smaller black ones(thanks dollar tree!!) and was even able to use a couple to fix my RX480 from sagging. Relocated SSD to to top compartment to fix the jumble of cables. It’s not perfect, but it’s mine

@82223 eBay. The dude had a bunch for sale but they're all gone now. They 4GB's pop up around 85-95 all the time on there if you keep an eye out. More for 8GB models but 4 gigs is all a 480 really needs at 1080p anyways.

Do you have a build thread for your z400? If you get that thermal cam I’d love to see how your project turns out.

They deserve more love, but I doubt anyone would mod the bios on a board this old. I’d love to get a thermal camera to see what exactly is going on.

It has an unlocked multiplier, but it cannot be accessed from BIOS on the z400, you must use a program such as ThrottleStop to edit the multiplier values. Don’t forget to also increase the max watt and max amp values in TS or it will throttle, 130W is definitely not enough. For reference, mine is stable at 4.133GHz, but I have a 92mm fan pointed directly at the VRM’s to cool them off and a 320W rated cpu cooler.

I left the backplate on and got some screws from the hardware store that would fit it and the new cooler properly. If you’re looking for a cooler, the Arctic Freezer 13 would be a good choice.

My MoBo does not allow me to control speeds from the OS, and automatically changes the speeds from a bios level. The problem is, the lowest setting it wants to work at is 1280 rpm, which is annoying as all hell for an 80mm fan. I can't use a resistor, as it will just increase PWM to accomodate, and if I run this second fan as a slave to the CPU fan then it will beep at me on startup and require me to press f1 because it detects a missing case fan. Is there a simple circuit to mimick the PWM's rpm signal? Is it voltage or pulse based? I love you Hewlett Packard but you're getting on my nerves.

@Jaxzzzzz @fasauceome 475W 80+ Bronze PSU that came with the computer. It is an older HP Z400 workstation that I’ve repurposed for light gaming. Right now it has a Xeon W3690 at ~160W, 6 sticks of 4GB DDR3 1333MHz, an m.2 SSD, and the aforementioned RX480. I assume I’ll be coming close to the limit of the PSU?

I purchased a MSI RX480 Armor Edition, which has a 8 pin socket. However, my power supply only has a free 6pin plug. I have been using the 6 pin plug for the past couple of weeks and can confirm that the card at least works, but will I gain any kind of stability or OC headroom by using a 6 to 8 pin adapter? I’m just wondering if the GPU detects the 6pin and puts on a current limit or something. Thanks.

I just finished a similar build to what you’re trying to do, with a W3690(same as X5690) @4.133GHz and an RX480. If I were you I’d skip the R9 290 and go for a newer RX480 or 580, that 290 sucks power and spews tons of heat into your case.

1 laptop, 1 gaming desktop, 1 modified laptop running a MC Server and running theatre duties in basement.

What went wrong with it? i was considering making this a Z800 build and running dual x5687’s but I figured I’d be better off with a simpler single CPU setup.

EDIT 23 February 2019: -Replaced VRM fan with Arctic F9 PWM -PC beeped at me and required me to press F1 on boot because I was using an arctic 4pin CPU fan instead of their proprietary 5pin connector so i soldered the old plug to the new fan -Added 6 to 8 pin GPU adapter ------------------------------------------------------------- -Xeon W3690 (6c12t @4.133GHz) -MSI RX480 4GB Armour Edition -24GB(6x4) Mystery DDR3 -512GB Micron 1100 SSD in M.2 to 2.5inch adapter -Stock HP Z400 everything else I’ve gamed casually on and off, mainly World of Tanks, Battlefield 2, and Skyrim on an old toshiba laptop with an A4-3300m APU. Horrendous, I know, but recently I purchased a Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming with a 960M for college and my desire to play games was revived. The poor 960M had no chance of playing BF5 so I set out to build a worthy machine out of eBay parts. I started with an old HP z400. It came with a trusty Xeon and 24 gigs of ram, but was lacking in the cooling and graphics department. A few days later I had an Arctic A30 cooler and an RX480 in the mail. I OC’ed the processor from 3.466 to 4.133GHz with no problem on Throttlestop, and is even stable at stock voltages! I did however remove the side panel and mount the rear casefan up against the motherboard to suck air past the VRM’s and blow away the hot air from the giant cooler. I have to leave the sidepanel off to fit the cooler, but looks aren’t usually the goal in a budget build. It is a stock PSU, and I’m using a 6pin connector on an 8pin card, so I left the GPU close to stock clocks to be safe. To top it off, I purchased a Micron 1100 512GB SSD. It comes in an M.2 form factor, so I put it in a cheap m.2 to 2.5 inch drive adapter. All in all, I get ~50° CPU in BF5 and the GPU stays cool enough to run at full boost clock. I run BF5 ~100 FPS with mostly High and a couple settings on Medium, but I only have a 75hz 1080p monitor so I could crank the settings slightly more. $219.40 - Z400 Workstation $81.75 - RX480 Armour Edition $13.55 - Arctic A30 Cooler $61.47 - Micron 1100 512GB SSD + Adapter TOTAL-$376.17 Original photo:

@aisle9 this is what my speedfan looks like. Looking through all of the other chips, i see no more mention of PWM1 and PWM2. thanks

If you download some type of monitoring software such as MSI Afterburner and turn on the On Screen Display, you’ll be able to tell if you are CPU or GPU limited.

When I open Speedfan, it has PWM1 and PWM2 at the bottom where you can change percentages, but the only fan showing by the left in the RPM section is the GPU fan. Also, when I go into the advanced tab to change fan control to manual, the only option is to “reverse fan logic” for those PWM’s. its an x58 motherboard from an HP Z400, and I checked and both of the fans are 4pin PWMs. As of right now the computer is completely stock. I don’t know why Speedfan wouldn’t support an x58 motherboard, especially when there are threads online about people using on z800’s. I just can’t seem to make it work on my z400. I’m running the latest bios 3.61

I’m planning on using an Arctic F8 fan, which draws 160mA. I read somewhere that the most common resistors were rated at 1/4 watt so I think I’ll be going with a series of low resistance resistors so I can keep the dissipated heat per resistor down and fine tune the ratio of fan speed. On that note... who even sells resistors? I live in the US btw.

If I use a PWM splitter but want the slave fan to run slower than the main, could I run a resistor in series on that slave fan’s +12V main? New user here! Currently doing a HP Z400 build, more posts on that later... I’m needing this solution because I would like to run a small fan on my motherboard’s VRM but I lack another PWM slot. I’m going to use a PWM splitter and run it with the CPU’s heatsink fan, but I don’t think the vrm fan needs to blow full tilt to be of use, and the less noise the better. Do you think this will work for my purposes?