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Windows 8.1 on HP Z Series Workstations


Jody Thornton

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Hi Folks:

 

I am looking into one of two new workstations to eventually replace my HP xw8200.  I tried installing Windows 8.1 x64 Pro on it but my system isn't suitable.

 

The Z600 and Z800 from HP look like really nice systems, and on the off lease boxes I've come across, the systems have SAS 15K rpm drives on them and between 12 to 16 GB of RAM.  Nice!  But it appears they do not have UEFI BIOS interfaces on them.

 

I've read up on the recommendations from the HP website for carrying out clean installations of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.  It's hard to get a clear answer but from what I can decipher, you can install Windows 8.1, but without UEFI capability, some of the processor security features will not be available.  That in itself doesn't bother me, as long as Windows will run.

 

Does anyone have any exprience installing or running Windows 8.1 on a Z600 or Z800 workstation?  Any help or insight would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Cheers!

:)

Edited by JodyT
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Good idea, buying an off-cutting-edge workstation.  That's what I do as well.

 

I have no specific experience with HP workstations, but I have Win 8.1 x64 Pro upgraded to MCE on a Dell Precision T5500 workstation (same general genre but I prefer Dell to HP) and it works great.  This system has dual Xeon x5690s, and just BIOS - no UEFI capability.  I had to do nothing special to install Windows on it, which I did from a Win 8.1 DVD back at the end of 2013.

 

I'd suggest that if you're going to invest in a workstation that you put some budget aside for some big SSDs and don't even consider booting from an HDD.  Ideally, make a RAID 0 array of them and run everything from it - OS, swap, scratch, applications, and data.  That's what I do and it yields an unbelievably interactive experience.  Everything happens pretty much instantly and it's difficult to load up a system like this with so much work as to even notice the slightest slowdown.

 

Try to get the workstation cheap with a junk video card (outdated workstation cards are generally not that good), and get a new low- to mid-range "gamer" video card, such as an ATI R9 270 or nVidia GTX 960 for a couple hundred dollars.

 

-Noel

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  • 4 weeks later...

Now I have an additional question.  This might be another route I can take.

 

If I wanted to upgrade my existing HP xw8200 machine, would going with the original Windows 8 be a valid choice to make? With Windows 8, it appears that I could still run the x64 version without the need for SSE2 and NX capabilities on the CPU. Is that correct?

Would I still receive patches and updates for the original Windows 8? And if I installed with Classic Shell, could I force Windows 8 to boot to the desktop?

Any other "gotchas" that I'd run into by opting for the original Windows 8?

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