Are HP z220 CPU's proprietary?

[davidstvz]

I was recently dismayed to find that 4 HP z220 workstations I bought have a proprietary motherboard and power supply. Not only can you not use off the shelf parts to upgrade the PSU.... HP doesn't even make anything better than a 400 Watt PSU for this thing. Anyway, I definitely need more power since we're installing dual GTX 660's for graphics work.

My current plan is to simply buy a 3rd party case, mobo (already have the PSU's and GPU's) and combine them with the CPU, memory, drives/SSD from the HP's. Then take the HP chassis and downgrade them to basic machines for word processing and Internet. When I'm done I'll have 8 PC's instead of 4 which is fine.

My only question is the CPU. I'm not sure if those are off the shelf parts or not. I hope so as the CPU's I got with the z220's are fairly meaty and I'd definitely like to rescue them.


This is the CPU in the machines. HP Part No.: B1R48AV

Description: Processor - Intel® Core i7-3770 3.4 GHz (up to 3.9 GHz)
8MB HT 4C 77W GT2 CPU

 

[Arkaign]

No problem. It's just an OEM 3770. Pair with good Z77 mobo. Ditto the other stuff mentioned.

 

[davidstvz]

Thanks for the reassurance!

 

[NTMBK]

Yup, just buy any motherboard which supports Ivy Bridge processors.

This also gives you the option of reusing the mobo and chassis for some bargain basement machines- put a Sandy Bridge Celeron or Pentium into that motherboard, and it will make a perfectly decent office worker/receptionist's PC.

 

[sm625]

You you're going to reuse the old HP motherboards? What CPU are you planning on installing? And... are you sure the bios will accept it?

 

[KompuKare]

You you're going to reuse the old HP motherboards? What CPU are you planning on installing? And... are you sure the bios will accept it?

+1. But it should be easy to find this out because the Z220 are HP business machines and not the consumer c**p HP put their name to.

Here's the hardware manual:
http://bizsupport2.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c03678225/c03678225.pdf
Then it should just be a matter of seeing what other CPUs HP ship your Z220 with and that CPU should be compatible.

Having said that, a 400W PSU should be plenty for a single GTX660. Not sure what you are intending to run which actually needs two of them though. Surely any workstation software would also require Quadro drivers?