HP Unveils GB300 Workstations And RTX Spark Windows Laptops
HP describes its ZGX Fury G1n AI Station as a liquid-cooled, 5U-rackable tower built around NVIDIA's GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra platform. That means a 72-core Arm Neoverse V2 Grace CPU paired with a Blackwell Ultra GPU packing 160 SMs. HP equips the system with 496GB of LPDDR5X system memory running at 396 GB/s and 252GB of HBM3e GPU memory delivering 7.1 TB/s of bandwidth, for a total of 748GB of coherent memory. The LPDDR5X isn't soldered directly to the board, either; HP uses four 128GB SOCAMM2 modules to provide the system's CPU memory.
Storage is likewise built for an enterprise AI workstation rather than an ordinary desktop. The ZGX Fury has four embedded M.2 slots, with two PCIe 5.0 drives dedicated to the operating system in RAID 1 and two additional drives for data storage in RAID 0 for speed. HP offers 2TB and 4TB drives, which should theoretically result in storage configurations ranging from 6TB to 12TB, with self-encrypting-drive capability available as an option, although that seemingly limits you to 2TB per-drive capacity.
The machine also offers three PCIe 5.0 slots: one full x16 slot and two physical x16 slots running at x8 electrical. That's where customers can add an optional discrete GPU, with HP offering NVIDIA's RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell 16GB or RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell 24GB. The point isn't really to add more AI compute, of course, but to handle display output while leaving the GB300 GPU focused on AI workloads.
Networking is suitably ridiculous for something wearing a workstation badge. In addition to 10-Gigabit Ethernet and a dedicated 1GbE management connection, the ZGX Fury has two QSFP112 ports connected to an NVIDIA ConnectX-8 SuperNIC, each capable of 400Gbps. HP is positioning the system as an on-premises AI development and inference platform that can serve multiple concurrent users and larger models without sending data to the cloud.
The firm hasn't published consumer pricing for the ZGX Fury, likely because the price is in "if you have to ask" territory. Other firms are asking six digits for their DGX-like configurations. HP's ZGX Fury Windows configuration is being offered through HP's sales organization exclusively. The company's standard ZGX Fury machine is actually already listed with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and NVIDIA's AI developer tools, although HP's announcement confirms that Windows is now being demonstrated on the platform.
On the more conventional PC side, HP's two RTX Spark laptops will go on sale October 16. The OmniBook Ultra 16 starts at $3,199.99, while the smaller OmniBook X 14 starts at $2,999.99. Both laptops use NVIDIA's RTX Spark N1X platform and are available with either an 18-core Grace CPU and 40-SM Blackwell GPU or the full-fat 20-core CPU and 48-SM GPU.
Memory capacity for these laptops ranges from 32GB to 128GB of LPDDR5X-9400, while storage is available in 1TB or 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSD configurations. Both machines use a 120Hz 2880x1800 OLED touchscreen with HDR support and full DCI-P3 coverage, along with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, dual USB4 ports, dual 10Gbps USB-A ports, HDMI, and a 5MP IR webcam for Windows Hello.
Likely the biggest difference between the two, besides the screen size, is that the 16-inch OmniBook Ultra has a 99Wh battery, while the 14-inch OmniBook X gets an 80Wh pack. Both include 140W USB-C GaN chargers and support fast charging, reaching roughly 50% capacity in 30 minutes.
HP's pricing gets considerably steeper at the top end: a maxed-out OmniBook Ultra 16 with 20 CPU cores, 128GB of memory, and a 2TB SSD will apparently run you $6,229.99, while the equivalent OmniBook X 14 reaches $5,819.99. They're available for pre-order now at HP's site.
HP is also adding Perplexity Computer to its consumer PCs, with eligible systems getting a one-month Perplexity Pro trial beginning in November. The company says the software is intended to help users research information, complete tasks, and create content while taking advantage of the local compute available in its new RTX Spark systems. Of course, Microsoft's new onboarding experience for the RTX Spark machines includes Perplexity as one of the agents it can set up, too. Hit our coverage from yesterday to read more about that.
