HP Workstation Z640 Intel Xeon 8-Core E5 Grade A

HP Workstation Z640

With a solid chassis and plenty of customisation options, the HP Workstation Z640 is a great choice for a wide range of design visualisation and simulation workflows. Whether you’re a mechanical engineer working on an aerospace project, or a product designer creating complex mechanical systems, the HP Z640 offers the processing power and flexibility to tackle your tasks efficiently.

Performance and storage

The HP Workstation Z640 is a powerful dual Intel Xeon processor machine. With a base frequency of 3.2GHz and Turbo Boost to 3.6GHz, the CPUs in our test unit are fast enough for a demanding 3ds Max render in about half an hour. They’re a little noisy on idle, but not too loud and don’t get much worse under load.

RAM and storage

The default 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive is a good choice, but you can upgrade to either a 512GB PCIe SSD or a 5TB SATA hard drive for faster performance. The 512GB PCIe SSD is good for boot and operating system installs, while the 5TB SATA drives are better for video edits and general file spooling.

Increasing the memory capacity is another big consideration for many workstation users, especially those running high-end CAD or rendering software. The HP Workstation Z640 supports DDR4 SmartMemory and can accommodate up to 256GB of memory, which will allow you to run a large number of applications at once.

Connectivity and port options

The HP Z640 is well equipped with a variety of ports. It features a front-mounted USB 3.0 port that’s always on, along with four more USB 3.0 ports on the rear. It also supports Thunderbolt 2 via an optional PCIe card.

Expansion slots

The main system board has eight expansion slots, which are divided into two groups – three active and three mechanical. The main system board is located underneath the hard drive bays, with the second group of expansion slots situated above and behind the graphics cards (NVIDIA Quadro M5000 in our test machine).

As is typical with workstations, there are lots of optional ports available, allowing you to add things like an external monitor, a sound card, an HDMI cable or even a Blu-ray Disc drive. The redesigned internal drive bays can hold four 3.5-inch drives, or alternatively eight 2.5-inch drives, enabling you to use more than double the standard number of hard drives in your machine.

Riser boards

In addition to the standard system board, HP has created a clever riser board that can be installed on top of the main system board for additional CPU and memory capacity. The riser board attaches to the motherboard via a bracket that’s designed to clip in to the back of your hard drive bay and clips to the top of the GPU(s) when installed.

The riser board allows you to add a second CPU and memory module as your needs change. This is a clever way to build a workstation that can grow with you without having to pay for the full price of a second CPU and more memory, a situation that’s common in high-end workstations with multiple GPUs.