is HP Z4 tower really limited to 2 HDX cards?

[rockafella]

Was thinking of getting an HP Z station, used or new, to save some time... I realize building my own will save a good bit, but if financed, the time savings might be worth it.

The thing is, the pricing on the Z4 seems reasonable, although the case is not as wide as the Z8, so I am concerned the cooling might not be quite as good, as well as noise levels.

Furthermore - why is it that on Avid's computer support page/document, they seem to only list the Z8 as supporting three HDX cards? The HDX only requires an x4 slot, right - of which there are more than three on the Z4.

I probably will never need more than 2, or even more than 1 (and maybe will switch to HD Native) - but it would seem silly to limit myself in the future to adding that third card, "just in case".

On the other hand - I guess there's no downside to simply using a Thunderbolt 3 card, and running the three HDX cards in the Sonnet chassis, which is what I am going to be doing anyway to get started with my laptop? I was hoping the computer tower would cool them better and keep the fans from running, but perhaps it's the same (or worse!) than using a chassis. (and at least a Thunderbolt chassis is easier to relocate if needed, rather than relocating the entire workstation tower)

Any feedback/thoughts? Thanks!

Also, if any specific advice on which TB3 PCIe cards are good, vs ones to avoid - I know this comes and goes as a sticking point. Hopefully nowadays there are none "to avoid"? (yeah right, lol!) I mean in terms of compatibility with HDX and anything else audio gear-related.

[AUM Yogi]

Hello there,

Just saw your post and thought I might comment.

I have been running a Z4 workstation for over a year now and use one HDX card. I also use an HP TB3 card to interface with my Lynx Hilo.

Regarding the noise, the computer by itself is quiet. I do baffle the computer with some foam pieces when I'm mixing and the HDX card is maxed as the fan makes some noise, but I do have the computer just a few feet away.

I will be adding a second HDX card in the future as you can easily max out a single card with a 96K session if you want all you plugins to be DSP. I use a mix of DSP & native and it seems to work well for my needs. Just keep all the plugins on your master bus DSP I found. If you don't you will get some latency when tracking.

Something I found out about the HDX card is that they are quite long and prone to bending a bit when installed. My HDX card sits above the UAD card and when I first had the machine after a while the UAD card stopped working. I opened up the cover to investigate and saw that the HDX was flexing down to touch the UAD card. I ended up propping up the end of the HDX card with a stiff bit of foam block that caught the back end of the card and the other end rested on the bottom of the computer case. No dramas since.

My attraction to the Z4 was that AVID specifies this machine as approved to work with Protools providing you configure it with what they recommend. You can find the exact specs on the AVID site.
A basic rundown of my machine is thus; W-2145 CPU, P2000 GPU, 64Gb RAM, HP TB3 card, HDX card, HP memory cooling solution [ a fan unit that cools the ram], UAD quad card. I have some m.2 SSD's for system and recording and regular SSD's for work backup and system restore back up. OS is Windows 10 for workstations.

After having worked with the machine for the last year or so on a couple big projects with lots of tracks, some VI's and many an overdub or re-track mid mix I couldn't be happier. In my 15 years of working with Protools I have not had a better computer to use it with. I don't have the little issues I used to have and no major session stopping ones either.

The computers are not inexpensive but worth the price if you are after reliability and a machine that actually works as promised. HP work with AVID to make sure their hardware and software packages are fully supported.
HP also have some programs that come with the computer such as HP Performance Advisor and HP Support Assistant that help with configuring the computer for Protools and keeping drivers and BIOS up to date.

Hope this helps and all the best in the New Year.

[rockafella]

Sorry for the multiple posts - for some reason, on only some threads on the DUC, I get an HTTP error when I post, so I have to cut my messages down into small chunks... not sure if it's being a newer user or not.

Originally Posted by AUM Yogi

Hello there,

Just saw your post and thought I might comment.

I have been running a Z4 workstation for over a year now and use one HDX card. I also use an HP TB3 card to interface with my Lynx Hilo.

Hi there! It's the funniest thing - I was posting a new thread last night (put it in the Mac forum since it's more about thoughts of which HD interface should come first, MADI or HDIO16x16), and I saw how little traffic the PC section gets, as I still saw my thread (this one) near the top! :)

...continued...

[rockafella]

Anyway, thank you for answering! In the time since, I've acquired two HDX cards, since I figured that way I can have the MADI and the HDIO (I didn't really feel comfortable having only the MADI to my MOTU and other cheaper interfaces as the ONLY Pro Tools interface), plus I figured from my forum surfing that, like you said, if I work at 96 kHz, HDX2 will probably take care of anything (stereo format anyway, maybe not surround), whereas one card might hit that limit.

My plugin collection grew this year even though I swore off of it and told myself I'd use more hardware and only AAX plugins (and especially only ones that are DSP-compatible). We shall see how that works out! (just added some exciting outboard though, so it might work!) Anyway I figure since I went out of my way to acquire almost all plugins that do still have AAX DSP versions, I might as well make sure I have the DSP power to use them for whole projects if needed, like you said. And, from my research, seems like 96 kHz is ideal with HDX to get the full benefit of the low latency of the mixer-on-DSP... at 48 kHz, some studies seemed to show that Native was about the same.

[rockafella]

Anyway, as to my computer - I didn't really like HP's waiting time (3-4 weeks when I looked), nor the Apple-like pricing for RAM/HD upgrades... not that I can't put my own in, but I realized they charge so much even for just one stick of RAM/one simple HD for system install. I will probably wish I went with it for ease of maintenance in the future!

Other thing is, I was pricing mostly Z8 to get the extra airflow and slots... Z4 would have been much more affordable. (Z8 requires the scalable Xeon chips and they don't let those go for cheap.) If I was sure I would only use HDX, then the same CPU as you or much less would be fine... but I am sure I'll still use Ableton Live/Studio One/Cubase sometimes, so I wanted more CPU power. I knew my old laptop didn't really get taxed easily and its Passmark CPU multi-core score was about 13,000, so I really wanted something that was a MULTIPLE of that score just for more years ahead of not worrying, hopefully.

[rockafella]

Anyway - I tried to build my own Xeon, but it proved difficult to get a Xeon motherboard on short notice, and same with the Xeon CPU... doable but would have waited weeks. Plus the price was higher than the price guides indicated (I had anticipated it being the same cost as 10980XE, around $1k even... but only saw the CPU for $1,500 and up).

In the end, I went with the 10980XE - I would have liked the ECC RAM, but my NAS has Xeon and ECC RAM so I figure for long term storage, where bit rot counts, I'm covered. I went with 128 GB of RAM, and set up a quad SSD array, "just in case", lol. But decided to keep the boot drive a single NVME SSD. (wasted a lot of time trying to get the Intel VROC bootable RAID 0 working - just not worth it, and then not really future proof if changing motherboards)

[rockafella]

I went with the Be Quiet tower case... at low fan RPMs, it does seem almost silent... not too bad at maximum either.

I stuffed the two HDX cards in there - unfortunately, the video card is sandwiched in between them, so I am not sure I really love the amount of heat therein (GPU is blower fan design so it doesn't mind being in tight quarters, but the HDX pull air in from their sides). I saw that Sonnet made a new TB3 chassis that has a switch to work with HDX cards now (to reduce it to PCIE 2.0 or 1.0 I believe), so I have that on hand also in case I decide to separate the HDX cards for noise or cooling concerns.

They are indeed very long like you said - one of them rubs against some of the headers and the cables coming off those headers on my motherboard... the other one doesn't quite reach the front, and it does hang! Had to prop it up with one of my drive cables. I feel pretty sure I will end up putting them in the Sonnet chassis instead... only worried that maybe they'll be more muffled as they are in the case vs. the external chassis... but external chassis can be put into a separate room or quiet box of its own. (and will be better cooling wise for everything if split up)

Anyway, Happy New Year to you too, and thanks for your response! Glad the Z4 is working out for you! Hopefully I don't regret my decision to self-build. :)