HP Z400 Workstation to Gaming PC

[DeadSmiley]

GTX 780 has both 6 and 8 pin connectors. I have tried powering the GTX 780 with a new 650 watt power supply (dedicated 6 pin and 8 pin PCIe connectors), but every time I get the beeps and red light. I have tried with just the 650 watt PSU to power everything (motherboard, CPU, GPU, HHD). I even tried using the stock Z400 475 watt PSU to power the motherboard and CPU while using the 650 watt PSU to strickly power the GTX 780.

You are sure this GTX 780 works? You have tried it in another system?

 

[Que]

I am not entirely sure the GTX 780 works. It lights up and the fan comes on, when powering on with the Z400. I don't have another system to try it in right now. Maybe this weekend if my son-in-law comes to visit, I can ask hime to bring a one of his desktops that is running a GTX 770.

Thanks, it will suck if my GTX 780 doesn't work.

 

[Que]

Problem was the GTX 780. When I tried the GTX 780 in another computer and the screen remained black, I decided to take the GPU a part to try to find any issues. I took the heat sink and fan off and inspected and tested the capacitor.s There were no issues so I cleaned the GPU up with rubbing alcohol. I figured I might as well try re-flowing the solder by baking the GPU in the oven at 385 deg F for 9 minutes. Let it cool completely, applied new thermal paste and put the card back together. I wasn't expecting the GPU to work, but the Z400 booted right up with no video problems. I updated the NVIDIA drivers and the GTX 780 has been working for the past week.

Thanks to everyone who replied with suggestions.

 

[Wesso]

Wow this is impressive. I know it’s been some time since this post but I’m just starting out with my Z400 build and shiesh I’m running into some minor roadblocks when trying to move the computer to another case!

Anyways, the tips you’ve provided seems great! I’ll be sure to remember them if I run into similar issues.
I intend to use the stock CPU cooler so I shouldn’t run into the CPU fan error. I will also be using the case’s front audio header so no issues with that either. I’ve got an adapter for the motherboard power from the PSU.

My question with regards to your build is, what fans are you using (CPU cooler fan and case fans), how are they connected up and have you run into any issues with them spinning at 100%?
I’ve been looking at other posts and some of them are suggesting that HP has their own proprietary cooling so if the MB detects that the fans you are using are not the stock HP fans, it will down throttle the RPM but run at 100% or something.

I look forward to your reply .

 

[Helgaiden]

Wow this is impressive. I know it’s been some time since this post but I’m just starting out with my Z400 build and shiesh I’m running into some minor roadblocks when trying to move the computer to another case!

Anyways, the tips you’ve provided seems great! I’ll be sure to remember them if I run into similar issues.
I intend to use the stock CPU cooler so I shouldn’t run into the CPU fan error. I will also be using the case’s front audio header so no issues with that either. I’ve got an adapter for the motherboard power from the PSU.

My question with regards to your build is, what fans are you using (CPU cooler fan and case fans), how are they connected up and have you run into any issues with them spinning at 100%?
I’ve been looking at other posts and some of them are suggesting that HP has their own proprietary cooling so if the MB detects that the fans you are using are not the stock HP fans, it will down throttle the RPM but run at 100% or something.

I look forward to your reply ��.

You wont be able to use the stock cooler as it requires the stock case backplate to mount to through the mounting holes of the motherboard. Went through this myself. You can use any cheap cooler on it though. I've had a Deepcool Gammax 300 and CM Hyper212+ on 2 different Z400 builds. Rear fan needs to be a PWM fan on the rear PWM fan header and you'll solve one F1 to boot error, get a spare front panel wire from a different case that has one single contact that slides over a pin and put that on the 5th (lowest pin, if looking at it mounted in the case) pin of the CPU fan header and route it somewhere where you can ground it to the case. I usually just find a screw hole, strip the end of the wire, wrap it around the screw and screw it in. You'll need to put a jumper on the sense pin of the yellow USB header as well, and then in the BIOS just set the rest of the devices causing the system to halt on boot to "hidden" and problems solved. I haven't had any issues with fans running weird utilizing the stock headers on the motherboard.

 

[Wesso]

You wont be able to use the stock cooler as it requires the stock case backplate to mount to through the mounting holes of the motherboard. Went through this myself. You can use any cheap cooler on it though. I've had a Deepcool Gammax 300 and CM Hyper212+ on 2 different Z400 builds. Rear fan needs to be a PWM fan on the rear PWM fan header and you'll solve one F1 to boot error, get a spare front panel wire from a different case that has one single contact that slides over a pin and put that on the 5th (lowest pin, if looking at it mounted in the case) pin of the CPU fan header and route it somewhere where you can ground it to the case. I usually just find a screw hole, strip the end of the wire, wrap it around the screw and screw it in. You'll need to put a jumper on the sense pin of the yellow USB header as well, and then in the BIOS just set the rest of the devices causing the system to halt on boot to "hidden" and problems solved. I haven't had any issues with fans running weird utilizing the stock headers on the motherboard.

Is there a way to still use the USB 2.0 slots for a case’s front USB panel and not have the boot hold up of ‘USB not connected’?
I’m assuming that if I put a jumper on, I can’t plug the USB connectors.

Same with the audio, I use the front audio jacks and plugging my case’s front audio cables into the front audio slot of the motherboard works but I still get the hold up on boot indicating that the audio is not connected.

 

[Helgaiden]

Is there a way to still use the USB 2.0 slots for a case’s front USB panel and not have the boot hold up of ‘USB not connected’?
I’m assuming that if I put a jumper on, I can’t plug the USB connectors.

Same with the audio, I use the front audio jacks and plugging my case’s front audio cables into the front audio slot of the motherboard works but I still get the hold up on boot indicating that the audio is not connected.

There is more than 1 one USB 2.0 header

 

[Wesso]

There is more than 1 one USB 2.0 header

Ah! Indeed there is! I’ve been so caught up all this I just completely forgot about this.

So this will solve the USB issue at boot (adding a jumper to the yellow USB socket).
Do you know how I could get around the audio issue? I don’t want the pop-up at boot but still want front audio ports.

Thanks.

 

[xHOLDx]

Hey guys! Notice the builds here are from the Z400 v2 which feature 6 ram slots. I am having the z400 v1 which only has 4 ram slots and a memory max cap at 16GB. I have read the offical manual to see what CPU and ram I could max out. Any others here own a Z400 v1 could assist on this questions?

1) Could I I use the W3690 on my mobo. Understand offically z400 v1 does not support 6 cores CPU and v2 supports W3680 only
2) Currently running 12GB triple channel on the z400 v1. If I max it out at 16GB it will only run at dual channel. Could I run 3x8GB for a 24GB triple channel config?

 

[Helgaiden]

Hey guys! Notice the builds here are from the Z400 v2 which feature 6 ram slots. I am having the z400 v1 which only has 4 ram slots and a memory max cap at 16GB. I have read the offical manual to see what CPU and ram I could max out. Any others here own a Z400 v1 could assist on this questions?

1) Could I I use the W3690 on my mobo. Understand offically z400 v1 does not support 6 cores CPU and v2 supports W3680 only
2) Currently running 12GB triple channel on the z400 v1. If I max it out at 16GB it will only run at dual channel. Could I run 3x8GB for a 24GB triple channel config?

No, I believe the v1 boards only support a few specific Xeons listed in the HP support/specs document you can find online. I would not venture outside that. Check BIOS update notes for additional CPU support, but I'm sure they are more limited.

Triple channel will work if you use only three dimms. I forget which, but you can just move the sticks around to figure it out.

- - - Updated - - -

Ah! Indeed there is! I’ve been so caught up all this I just completely forgot about this.

So this will solve the USB issue at boot (adding a jumper to the yellow USB socket).
Do you know how I could get around the audio issue? I don’t want the pop-up at boot but still want front audio ports.

Thanks.

Just finished building another z400 custom system. The front audio issue on the 6 dimm board shouldn't be an issue at all actually. I hooked up the front audio cable and installed the latest realtek audio driver, front audio works great and no boot error. Even the presence pin in the diagram from the first page of this thread is not present, so it should be fine. But I can only speak to the 6 dimm boards.

 

[xHOLDx]

No, I believe the v1 boards only support a few specific Xeons listed in the HP support/specs document you can find online. I would not venture outside that. Check BIOS update notes for additional CPU support, but I'm sure they are more limited.

Triple channel will work if you use only three dimms. I forget which, but you can just move the sticks around to figure it out.

- - - Updated - - -



Just finished building another z400 custom system. The front audio issue on the 6 dimm board shouldn't be an issue at all actually. I hooked up the front audio cable and installed the latest realtek audio driver, front audio works great and no boot error. Even the presence pin in the diagram from the first page of this thread is not present, so it should be fine. But I can only speak to the 6 dimm boards.

Hey thanks for the reply. I was wondering if anyone here has any success of the z400 v1 as I would want to test how far can I push it to. I do not want to o/c just wanting to run it at the max specs of the z400 v2 if that can be done since it is using the same socket type.

 

[thee_oddball]

Recently, I decided to work on a hack job build. For $200 I bought an HP LGA1366 Z400 motherboard, W3520 Xeon (came with hp board), X5687 Xeon, Antec 500w Earthwatt PSU from ebay, & 2x8gb Mushkin 1600mhz DDR3 from newegg. The Z400 workstation manual says that this board only supports the W35xx Xeon series but has the hardware to support the X55xx & X56xx Xeons. I did some research and found that the bootblock says yay or nay on what cpu the board will accept. I updated to the latest bios using the W3520 then slapped the X5687 in and voila, it posts. I installed windows 7 and it boots up. CPU-Z shows everything but the Vcore which seems odd. The manual also says that this board only accepts 16gb (4x4gb) of ram so I tried a 2x8gb config and again, it posts. I ran Prime95 for quite a few hours and everything seems stable, but there was still a lot of work to be done. To get this board to work right you will have to modify some pinouts due to HP proprietary. It will thow boot error codes for everything that has a disconnected sense pin (Front Audio Header, Front USB, CPU Fan, Front & Rear Chassis Fan). You can still boot with these errors you but you will have to press F1 every time you turn the computer on. It took me days of searching to find the pinout schematics for this board. In fact, I made some pinout sheets myself because half of the ones I found had broken links. To make it easier on someone else I will provide schematics for the pinouts so you know exactly what to change where and how.

Here is the ATX to HP Z400 PSU Pinout. It doesn't really matter where you get your 12v but I have seen people jumping 12v from other 12v on the main connector or using two female molexes with one 12v wire on each. I decided to chop all the molexes off since I have no use for molex. I terminated and tucked away all but the two remaining 12v and butt connected them to the +4 connector wires.
View attachment 180011
View attachment 180015

I tried using other usb headers but the "front usb not connected" boot error refused to go away and the headers don't work for some reason. So jumper this pin to fool the system in to thinking it is connected.
View attachment 180012
View attachment 180016

Here is the known front panel pinout.
View attachment 180013
View attachment 180017

Here You can fool the system into thinking the front audio is connected or just disable in bios and add dedicated audio. I used a dedicated SB Live! 24bit.
View attachment 180014

Ground this pin so CPU fan error goes away. I used a eyelet connector and attached it to the chassis.
View attachment 180018

This motherboard is like 90% ATX compliant because my case has a mount where there is no hole and the top right hole is off to the side. The HP cpu backplate sticks out more than a normal one so I couldn't thread the lock nuts on the 212 evo bottom bracket 100% but its all tight. The only downside is that the board doesn't sit perfectly flat it is at a 1-2 degree angle on cpu side in the case which doesn't seem to hurt. I can also get another board since this one was almost dirt cheap anyway.
View attachment 180019

Here is the motherboard tag and some screenshots from windows.
View attachment 180020
View attachment 180021
View attachment 180022

Here is some of the source information.
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Busine...ower-On-Off-Switch-and-LED-Cable/td-p/5053149

Tell me what you all think. Thanks

Thank you very much for your work, I registered just to thank you. Today I bought a HP Z400 workstation - Intel Xeon W3565 3.2GHz, 750GB HDD, 12GB Ram. NO OS for a $180 and a GTX9604GB for $82 and knew I would have to change the PSU but as I was about to buy the Seasonic bronze 620 I sensed a disturbance in the force (I remembered the proprietary nature of the big manufactures) and did some research which led me here . I am building this system as a entry rig for my GF's grandson so he can learn CAD/Blender and maybe some lite gaming.

For anyone else who finds this post this may make it easier for you to change PSU's. $14.99 https://www.moddiy.com/products/ATX...dard-ATX-Pinout-Main-Power-Adapter-Cable.html

 

[Napieracz]

Same with the audio, I use the front audio jacks and plugging my case’s front audio cables into the front audio slot of the motherboard works but I still get the hold up on boot indicating that the audio is not connected.

Solution to 6 DIMMs front audio error notification, where connecting pins 2 and 7 does not work: connect pins 2 and 4. Works with mine moterboard.

Just by the way. Did anyone had PSU problem like mine: in the morning i was assembling PC based on Z400 parts with Delta DPS 650LB B rev. 01 PSU. I had plenty of errors but none concerned PSU and I finally got it working. Later aftrernoon, when I put all of it into the case motherboard indicated PSU overload error and PSU didn't started ever since (even completly unplugged). There is no visible damage, I corrected all soldering with new tin solder. Still when shorting green and ground wires it starts for a fracture of a second and it dies... gren led in the back of PSU is also dead then. The same PC works on different PSU, but I'd love to save the Delta.

 

[echinguun]

What did you do with the power switch?

I got a Z400 board, the cpu, RAM, cooler. I need the PSU and your thread has helped me a lot, thank you. But I also need a power switch, how did you find one? Is it just standard stuff, if yes, what standard is it?

 

[Helgaiden]

I got a Z400 board, the cpu, RAM, cooler. I need the PSU and your thread has helped me a lot, thank you. But I also need a power switch, how did you find one? Is it just standard stuff, if yes, what standard is it?

I plug the new case's power button switch right to the power switch pins. Works fine.

 

[Fattyfatchops]

Hey Fang508,

Loved the write up you've done on this, originally thought i had a BIOS setting that was prompting the F1 halt on start up, but alas, it was not.
I transplanted a z400 into a fractal design define R4 case (had to retrofit the mobos backplate thing in with it) an using a freenas server (the 24G of ECC memory is the balls)

So after reading your thorough post, I managed to get all but 1 of the warnings to disappear, all but the pesky 1394 header or as I later learned, the Firewire header.
Before I go poking around an end up shorting something an causing permanent damage, I was hoping you, or someone else here has had some experience with this error an knows which connector to bridge?
Want it bridged as I have no need for firewire, plus the only actual cable I can find is almost $40 AUD which Im not wanting to buy (plus its shipped from the UK an will take weeks to get here no doubt)

If I have left anything out lemme know an I'll do me best to rectify.

Cheers

 

[Helgaiden]

Hey Fang508,

Loved the write up you've done on this, originally thought i had a BIOS setting that was prompting the F1 halt on start up, but alas, it was not.
I transplanted a z400 into a fractal design define R4 case (had to retrofit the mobos backplate thing in with it) an using a freenas server (the 24G of ECC memory is the balls)

So after reading your thorough post, I managed to get all but 1 of the warnings to disappear, all but the pesky 1394 header or as I later learned, the Firewire header.
Before I go poking around an end up shorting something an causing permanent damage, I was hoping you, or someone else here has had some experience with this error an knows which connector to bridge?
Want it bridged as I have no need for firewire, plus the only actual cable I can find is almost $40 AUD which Im not wanting to buy (plus its shipped from the UK an will take weeks to get here no doubt)

If I have left anything out lemme know an I'll do me best to rectify.

Cheers

Just turn off the firewire controller in BIOS. Go into BIOS, under security (i think), set 1394 to "hidden." Voila. ive turned transplanting Z400s into a guide actually if you wanted to check it out.

 

[Fattyfatchops]

Just turn off the firewire controller in BIOS. Go into BIOS, under security (i think), set 1394 to "hidden." Voila. ive turned transplanting Z400s into a guide actually if you wanted to check it out.

Wait, it couldn't be that easy could it?

""Goes into BIOS an checks""



Yep, it is..... wow, so special.

Thanks Helgaiden, really appreciate the info on this, saved me some well needed $$$ (was gonna buy the connector)

Although I had the USB not connected error come up once I disabled the 1394 one, which got me a little stumped,
but after a little fiddling I just decided to bridge the sense pin for now.

I am curious though as my cases front USB cable header has a blank (empty) pin in number 10, so may look at bridging it to pin 8 within the actual
USB connector so can have working front USB ports.

Thanks again to all you great people for the informative thread

 

[Ambisagrus]

Recently, I decided to work on a hack job build. For $200 I bought an HP LGA1366 Z400 motherboard, W3520 Xeon (came with hp board), X5687 Xeon, Antec 500w Earthwatt PSU from ebay, & 2x8gb Mushkin 1600mhz DDR3 from newegg. The Z400 workstation manual says that this board only supports the W35xx Xeon series but has the hardware to support the X55xx & X56xx Xeons. I did some research and found that the bootblock says yay or nay on what cpu the board will accept. I updated to the latest bios using the W3520 then slapped the X5687 in and voila, it posts. I installed windows 7 and it boots up. CPU-Z shows everything but the Vcore which seems odd. The manual also says that this board only accepts 16gb (4x4gb) of ram so I tried a 2x8gb config and again, it posts. I ran Prime95 for quite a few hours and everything seems stable, but there was still a lot of work to be done. To get this board to work right you will have to modify some pinouts due to HP proprietary. It will thow boot error codes for everything that has a disconnected sense pin (Front Audio Header, Front USB, CPU Fan, Front & Rear Chassis Fan). You can still boot with these errors you but you will have to press F1 every time you turn the computer on. It took me days of searching to find the pinout schematics for this board. In fact, I made some pinout sheets myself because half of the ones I found had broken links. To make it easier on someone else I will provide schematics for the pinouts so you know exactly what to change where and how.

Here is the ATX to HP Z400 PSU Pinout. It doesn't really matter where you get your 12v but I have seen people jumping 12v from other 12v on the main connector or using two female molexes with one 12v wire on each. I decided to chop all the molexes off since I have no use for molex. I terminated and tucked away all but the two remaining 12v and butt connected them to the +4 connector wires.
View attachment 180011
View attachment 180015

I tried using other usb headers but the "front usb not connected" boot error refused to go away and the headers don't work for some reason. So jumper this pin to fool the system in to thinking it is connected.
View attachment 180012
View attachment 180016

Here is the known front panel pinout.
View attachment 180013
View attachment 180017

Here You can fool the system into thinking the front audio is connected or just disable in bios and add dedicated audio. I used a dedicated SB Live! 24bit.
View attachment 180014

Ground this pin so CPU fan error goes away. I used a eyelet connector and attached it to the chassis.
View attachment 180018

This motherboard is like 90% ATX compliant because my case has a mount where there is no hole and the top right hole is off to the side. The HP cpu backplate sticks out more than a normal one so I couldn't thread the lock nuts on the 212 evo bottom bracket 100% but its all tight. The only downside is that the board doesn't sit perfectly flat it is at a 1-2 degree angle on cpu side in the case which doesn't seem to hurt. I can also get another board since this one was almost dirt cheap anyway.
View attachment 180019

Here is the motherboard tag and some screenshots from windows.
View attachment 180020
View attachment 180021
View attachment 180022

Here is some of the source information.
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Busine...ower-On-Off-Switch-and-LED-Cable/td-p/5053149

Tell me what you all think. Thanks

This is a great guide , the 1394 header on my board was different, it has 14 pins with pin 2 and 14 missing, for that you use a jumper between 11 and 12 pins .

 

[miladr23]

hello every one i have z400 hp case and i wanna add 1080 card and i change power bur its give me red light and i dont have atx 24 pin any one can help me create atx cable or how can i put new power on my z400