HP Z Workstations Dominate With Dual 28-Core Xeon Muscle, Up to 3TB RAM, Dual NVIDIA Quadro GPUs

We enthusiasts might boast about Core X-Series processors from Intel or Ryzen Threadripper chips from AMD; but for the professional workstation market, Intel's Xeon family of products have been laying waste to the competition for years. Hewlett-Packard is embracing the expanded Xeon family with its latest "Z" Workstations, which include the Z8, Z6 and Z4.

As you might expect, the Z8 is the most powerful of the bunch, and can be equipped with everything but the kitchen sink when it comes to high-end processing power. The system can accommodate up to dual 28-core Xeon Platinum processors and up to 3TB of RAM via a staggering 24 DIMM slots. Since "dual" seems to be the name of the game today at HP, you can also install dual M.S SSDs and dual NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics cards (up to a Quadro GP100 with 16GB of HBM2 memory onboard).

HP Z8 Workstation

Dual GbE is included (of course) along with 2 PCIe x4, 3 PCIe x8 and 4 PCIe x16 expansion slots. There are four 2.5-inch/3.5-inch internal drive bays and two 5.25-inch drive bays to handle a plethora drives, along with a full assortment of USB 3.1, USB 3.1 Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 ports onboard to address your external expansion needs.

If your needs are little less demanding, the Z6 Workstation can accommodate "only" 384GB of memory via 12 DIMM slots, and cuts back on the number of available expansion slots. However, you still have the option to run dual Xeon processors if you so choose and a Quadro P100 GPU. Lower down on the totem pole is the Z4, which has a single CPU socket (supports up to a 10-core Xeon W2155), can pack in up to 256GB of RAM via 8 DIMM slots and up to a Quadro P6000 graphics card.

HP Z4 Workstation

 “The stakes for world-class security have never been higher or more important for workstations,” said Xavier Garcia, vice president and general manager, HP Z Workstations, HP Inc. “Workstation users create the most valuable IP for a company and HP is meeting the security needs with the world’s most secure and manageable desktop and mobile workstations. As the most powerful desktop workstation in the world, the HP Z8 Workstation can deliver the extreme power and the security demanded by our customers.”

The Z8 and Z6 workstations will be available in October starting at $2,439 and $1,919 respectively. The Z4 Workstation will bow in November with a starting price of $1,239.