Build advice for replacement for HP z440 series (CPU-compute workloads)

[philstopford]

Budget (including currency): Sub-3K ideally.

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Organ simulator (Hauptwerk)

Other details : The plan is to replace a 4C/8T Xeon-based HP z440 workstation, but to keep the 128 GB ECC RAM (8x16 GB DDR4 2400 MHz modules, which is where I start running into some trouble - Ryzen seems to stop at 4 slots). The old box is quite underpowered at 4C/8T for the organ simulator as the newer datasets require more computation to handle all of the samples. The 128 GB RAM is needed to host the organ models in memory, reducing latency and interruptions in the output, and it would be helpful to be able to carry that over to a newer system. It's not clear that an E5-1680 v4 upgrade will be sufficient, so I was looking for advice in the 2-3 K range (ideally) about a CPU/mainboard combination that would work with the existing memory configuration and provide major uplift in the CPU performance. There is no need for any kind of sophisticated GPU in this set-up: the old card in the z440 model can be lifted to serve in the new system - there's no 3D usage, just two basic monitors. The current SATA SSD will also transfer over and the hardware integration is via USB to the keyboards, mixers, etc. in the current set-up.

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

4 minutes ago, philstopford said:

Budget (including currency): Sub-3K ideally.

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Organ simulator (Hauptwerk)

Other details : The plan is to replace a 4C/8T Xeon-based HP z440 workstation, but to keep the 128 GB ECC RAM (8x16 GB DDR4 2400 MHz modules, which is where I start running into some trouble - Ryzen seems to stop at 4 slots). The old box is quite underpowered at 4C/8T for the organ simulator as the newer datasets require more computation to handle all of the samples. The 128 GB RAM is needed to host the organ models in memory, reducing latency and interruptions in the output, and it would be helpful to be able to carry that over to a newer system. It's not clear that an E5-1680 v4 upgrade will be sufficient, so I was looking for advice in the 2-3 K range (ideally) about a CPU/mainboard combination that would work with the existing memory configuration and provide major uplift in the CPU performance. There is no need for any kind of sophisticated GPU in this set-up: the old card in the z440 model can be lifted to serve in the new system - there's no 3D usage, just two basic monitors. The current SATA SSD will also transfer over and the hardware integration is via USB to the keyboards, mixers, etc. in the current set-up.

 

Maybe look at epyc 7551

About ~600$ on ebay and it has 32 cores

 

The boards are around 300$ though id suggest buying one with 16 ram slots instead of 8 just in case you decide to upgrade to 256gb, you might even wanna look at dual socket for 64c but that might be abit overkill

 

The cpu + board will be around 900$ though if you go dual socket its more like 1500 or 1600$

 

 

Btw if you need more computing power you can get an old bios with agesa 1.0.0.3 or below and p state overclock the cpu via a modded zenstates software

 

I do suggest getting an elmor evc for controlling the volts and other sht

 

And definitely some vrm heatsinks + a fan over them

 

The board will prob have ocp at around 1.3v, keep that enabled so you dont fry your board on accident, though i only suggest upto 1.25v just to keep temps reasonable and to not have the vrms catch on fire

 

 

And if you do go dual socket i suggest going octa channel as any less seems to hamper the cpu performance, atleast in der8auer vid on ocing amd epyc