I have one of these as my work desktop for software development. My company uses Linux and we have standardized on Quadro GPUs in every workstation because we only want to support one family of GPU drivers, and because NVIDIA's OpenGL support on Linux is by far the best performing. The Z2 Mini seems like a good fit for applications like digital signage (many display outputs) or medical imaging (want 10 or 12-bit color).
I like these systems for very niche purposes. In fact, I have a few of its older cousins in the HP Elite(desk) 800 USDT form factors. They are test systems and I have learned a lot of technical things like iommu and pcie passthrough. They are also handy (IMO) for loading new operating systems since it means I don't have to decide which of my production systems needs to be taken offline for the tests. Gaming isn't a factor for me. I've been eye-balling the Z2s but haven't pulled the trigger since the prices are too high and will likely wait until the worldwide supply chain issues are less of a problem for everyone. Nice video and hope you do more!
I have one of these that I will be upgrading next week. I bought it originally in 2020 to use as a streaming computer that has enough processing power to handle greenscreen backgrounds and my tragically-slow phone company internet. It came with a 256 Gb C: drive, now full, that I will be cloning onto a 4 Tb drive card, as well as maxing out the RAM to 64 Gbs, and adding in a 1 Tb internal SSD drive into that little tray over the original drive card. I've successfully cloned my older Lenovo desktop C: drive with an SSD and installed an extra internal SSD hard drive into that antique, but had to take out its CD drive to make room for that. No biggie, I can always look for an external case to drop that CD drive into just to keep it from gathering dust, or keep using my USB external CD drive that plugs into whatever computer I need it for. I figure that having 5 Tbs of internal drives, as well as access to another 30 Tbs of external drives for 3-teirs of backups will keep me going for quite a few more years. I'm gradually phasing out the Lenovo because it can't support Win 11 and have migrated almost all my vital programs to the HP. Considering that I started out with a Tandy TRS-80 COCO 3 many decades ago, and gradually worked my way up to this, building a few computers from scrap parts along the way, I figure that I'm not exactly a novice at this. --Dan
We have one Z2 mini G2 at work with, iirc, dual thunderbolt and an i7-6700. It was a promo unit so it's used by the security team for basic sandboxing at the moment.
Oh yeah, get that G5, and if possible, swing for the t740 (they show up on evilbay for less than 300 now and then) - it’ll remind you a little of the Z.
I use different systems in my home lab and one that I really like is the Lenovo desktop. They are very quiet and produce almost zero heat. Also, you have room for 2.5 and 3.5 drives with expansion slots depending on what I'm doing I might throw in an HBA or a quad i350 nic. However, thanks for another amazing review I could see myself using one of these for a specific use case.
For that back plate HDD light, I guess the purpose is when you need to check if the system is still working -- for example, the windows is updating, you can take a look at it. For most of the time, you may want to keep your eyes away from that blinking led. However, if you do want to see it all the time, a plastic light rail from WD/Seagate external HDD can help you.
A very good guess at why disk activity is near the power port: because you don't want to unplug power when disks are active. This is actually smart from them ;-)
I love this presentation.. I am a BIG fan of using the sort of system that you are discussing. My issue is that keeping it small just busts my personal budget so I have to think outside of the 1littre box:)…My company provided an HP Z-Book G4 14” i7 with a Radeon wx3100 discrete graphics card for work ( great to travel but at home DOH!)….$213 later I have an HPZ220 - CMT tower with an Nvidia NV400 discrete graphics and a Xeon 4 core 8 thread thingy!!!!! Swapped out the graphics card for a baby WX3100 Radeon and BINGO I have a Lovely Tower with MASSIVE disc capacity and it does not thermal throttle!!!! Guys keep up the good work whilst I molly-coddle my other ‘serve the home’ based purchase - HP Microserver gen 10.. thanks for that review as well…this the south west Britain arm of the ‘server the home fan club’. Thank you:)
Noice! I built a z230 micro-based 2u server for my comms rack using my old i5 (1150 chipset) and even found a water-cooler that fit it! So awesome with an Intel 4x1g and an old hp 522 running the latest esxi on a 128ssd for boot and a couple sub$100US TB SSD for the datastors. I even threw a couple pi4s for my multi-ISA VMware cluster. VIC is going on them shortly!
I'm watching this on my 47" monitor through my Prodesk 800 i5. I just restored a T60 laptop as my main home computer last year. Budget computers of today aren't as good as a higher end unit from a few years ago imho, mainly because performance is largely the same for less money, and you get the benefit of saving them from the e-waste bin... which in most places is just the regular landfill.
Lol for some reason the automatic caption system recognizes your voice as Vietnamese, which results in some very confusing texts. At first I just thought you were just very passionate about pho
I wish they shipped HP to Japan, but they don't. My Dell is nice, though. It has the Quadro p620 (nearly the power of the p1000 but newer technology and at half the price) and it handles Blender very well. It is in the SFF and is virtually silent.
I need workstations for software specific hardware validation, so would love to see a series reviewing some competing workstations. But as I only use HP at work, would love to see some offerings from Dell/Lenovo - I am a fan of the HP Z-Series (in a professional context). We run Z-books, z2-minis and z4's. I also managed to get the old z440's as part of the replacement - And spec on paper, they sound quite nice, just old.
This product line is offering very good value for bulk deployment, but some pros that want small pc may using ITX build combined by real desktop Graphics card like the cute A2000 or A5000 in a reasonable case like doctor zaber sentry. Anyway, I kinda disappointed that Patrick didn't hang the system on the bar like last video 😂.
Are there any options of a small PC with a kind of newer GPU? Or do i have to go to a SFF form factor? Even there the options for half height PCI-e GPU cards are getting rare.
I'm interested in RTX non-quadro MXM vga would be supported, the ones that would fit anyway, I found some "cheap" 2080 MXM's, and along with i7/i9 could be a pretty cool mini gaming system with 64GB/dual nvme SSD z-drive...
TIL how dell AIOs implement discreet GPUs. I had never heard of MXM interface before. Now I'm wondering if I can transplant the 2080 super from a broken gaming laptop to a dell AIO with an older 1050 discreet GPU. Hmmmm.
Lower bin discrete GPUs are generally soldered on the board, and there are different depth and cooling configurations for MXM as well as mainboard side whitelisting involved.
I still wonder how big of an impact the variation of (T) on the CPU side is. If I only use this as a virtualization host, will the i5-8600T run into any more limits here compared to the i5-8600 (Non-T)? Is thermal throttle a real-world problem here?
The intel T series CPUs have limited TDPs and generally don't clock as high, but in these small systems the cooler and motherboard probably wouldn't allow a non-T CPU to boost much above what the T series CPUs manage to do. The T CPUs also have some extra features like vPro you might want to have on one of these systems.
Personally, i'm waiting for AMD(or intel) to bring us the equivelant of 16 core+20CU RDNA2 in a single BGA package for mini workstations Our cad labs are a bit short on space, and having something that mounts to the back of the monitor would allow us to be ADA compliant instead of sticking slim towers on the floor Of note, it looks like the Z2 G4 supports up to i9-9900(nonK) Once these drop to ~100 that would be a nice upgrade to go from 6 threads to 16 Edit, i was tempted with the hades canyon nuc from Intel but the CPU was too lacking, and the new Intel Xtreme NUCs are just too big to put on the top of the desks or mount under the desk
@@denvera1g1 well, you cant have sff pc that can do that and be that powerull. Choose one. But I really would never ever consider to have pc mounted on monitor. Why? Because real workstation setups have multiple monitor that are either mounted on wall or special multi-monitor mount.
@@eW0LF Like i stated in my comment, this is for a cad lab, where there are 30 machines packed into a small room on parallel tables, without the room for towers and wheelchairs to exist at the same time
@@denvera1g1 the best thing that I can recommend to you is Asrock DeskMini X300 paired with Ryzen 7 5700G, 32gb RAM and m.2 SSD. That can be mounted on VESA mount and is very lightweight. It is not 16 core, but as i said, without custom build, you won't see such thing.
@@MrIagainsti120 No, you are quite wrong. Yes, RJ11 is the standard jack used in residential hookups, but that doesn't mean it's the ONLY telecommunications standard (technically Ethernet is also a telecommunications standard, just not part of the "Registered Jack" series.) RJ45 is NOT Ethernet. It is a very common misconception, but when dealing with standards, popularity doesn't mean correctness.
I run an older z440 at home that I picked up after replacing it with a z4 at work - Its the base model with a 4/8 core/thread Xeon, 32GB RAM and a Quaddro K620 (only 2GB) - I ran up Cities Skylines as a test - THe GPU runs at 100% and over 80c while the game is basically iddle.
@@seanvucich that GPU is trash and fan curves of Quadro cards are very conservative so they always get hot. I use MSI Afterburner application to change the fan control so the card stays lower than 70 I have a midrange Quadro with 8Gb vram in pcie passthrough to a Windows VM
3D rendering is 3D rendering. Yes nobody would buy it at the "brand new" price because it costs like 3x as much, but used prices are as low as the gaming cards
With all my respect, this video was a reminder of why I don't follow you closely and turn off bell notification about every video that you post. Your videos is too long, people who are watching these videos are very tech-savvy. You don't have to make a beautiful story about every system that you review. Please just give information that viewers really need to make their decision to buy or compare systems. Please stop using marketing strategies like you trying to sell products. I wish your channel success and best luck. But I always find myself with my finger on skip (arrow) button skipping most of your video talk content and trying to focus on the most important part. It is very annoying. Hope for your understanding and see youself as content creator from another point of view. Big thanks anyway for your content. And I wish you can adjust it for a better viewing experience.
