Z820 spec

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Tony Quinsee-Jover

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Dec 3, 2021, 2:32:02 PM12/3/21
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Hi all,

Has anyone got a link to the 'approved' spec for a Z820 for DS?

My XW8600 is becoming seriously flaky and rather than simply replace
like for like, I figured an upgrade to a Z820 might be a good plan.

I figure I can transplant the NVIDIA and Kona but I wouldn't want the
'wrong' processors in it.

Cheers in advance,
Tone :)


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Bob Maple

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Dec 3, 2021, 4:39:28 PM12/3/21
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On 12/3/2021 12:32 PM, Tony Quinsee-Jover wrote:

> Hi all,
> Has anyone got a link to the 'approved' spec for a Z820 for DS?

[...]

> I figure I can transplant the NVIDIA and Kona but I wouldn't want the
> 'wrong' processors in it.

I don't think it really matters. The z820s are all Intel Xeons like the
z800s (was there ever a qualified z820 for DS? I thought Avid killed it
before the z820 but I could be wrong, it's been a long time...)

It's not so much that DS wouldn't work on one machine vs another, it's
just that they only had a couple of configs they would test on and
support since they couldn't buy every workstation ever made. And there's
zero official support now, so you're on your own regardless :)

One thing to watch out for in a z820 config is whether it's using air
coolers or liquid coolers for the CPUs (above a certain level the water
cooling was required.) The liquid coolers were these compact custom-made
things that fit specifically in the case and mate up with the fan
chasis. But the pumps in them tend to die (ask me how I know! :D) and
there are no replacement parts from HP, so you're stuck with used ones
off eBay if you can find them, and pray they run for awhile.

When they did the z840 they made these "Z Cooler" liquid-vapour heat
transfer cooler things which don't have any moving parts, and they are
enough the same form factor as the z820 that they will fit in the z820.
I did this to one of my z820s that had the liquid coolers fail. It just
bitches every time I reboot telling me "this machine requires liquid
cooling" and I have to hit F1, but otherwise it's been fine.

All that said, while you're looking around the used market for z820s,
you might as well look at the z840 also.


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Tony Quinsee-Jover

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Dec 3, 2021, 4:57:43 PM12/3/21
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Hi Bob,

That’s perfect, thanks. Just what I needed.

Cheers,
Tone :)

Sent by magic over t'interweb


> On 3 Dec 2021, at 21:40, Bob Maple <bob...@burner.com> wrote:
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Dec 3, 2021, 5:04:11 PM12/3/21
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There was an Avid qualified Z820-- I bought two of them. This was at the very end of DS support. In fact, if you would have cought me a month ago I could've shipped you one gratis. It was fully operational, but I took it to recycling. The dual xenons in mine were air cooled, but I can't remember which processor model they were.



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glenn sakatch

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Dec 4, 2021, 12:06:13 AM12/4/21
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I just bought my z820 through B&H photo video.  nothing special about the configuration...just dual processors and ram based on what I could afford at the time.

License might be an issue.  I know Avid said they would  allow us to  create licenses going forward, but when I tired a couple of years ago, all support said was
"this product is end of life"  That ended my DS run, as i switched to Win 10, and couldn't get it to license.



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Tony Quinsee-Jover

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Dec 4, 2021, 1:45:03 AM12/4/21
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Thanks Glenn,

I’ll stick to Win7 as I know DS is stable on it and as it’s simply an editing platform I don’t need anything more. 

Licensing isn’t a problem. Contact me off-list if you have a need, but from what you say it’s probably too late now. 

T :)

Sent by magic over t'interweb


On 4 Dec 2021, at 05:06, glenn sakatch <gsak...@gmail.com> wrote:



Dermot Shane

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Dec 4, 2021, 11:42:50 AM12/4/21
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and get one with the bigger power supply if possible
also if you can get one with the "REV3" on the motherboard, also called "version 2" that could be useful
(if the machine already has "v2" proc's then it's a "REV3" MB)







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Brian Bearg

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Dec 6, 2021, 12:35:22 PM12/6/21
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I just upgraded my z420 video card to a nvidia 3060 to run a resolve box. While doing so cloned the system drive and updated to windows 10. After doing that I didn’t expect DS to work anymore…. Licensing, video drive and card and so forth.

But to my amazement it does still work. A little buggy but it was from the get go anyways. Kinda a Frankenstein box from day one. And resolve runs better than my mac trashcan now.

 

Brian Bearg

Video Editor

Phone:   541.864.1757

Email:   bbe...@lithia.com

 

 

 

 

From: ds-...@googlegroups.com <ds-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of glenn sakatch <gsak...@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, December 3, 2021 at 9:08 PM
To: ds-...@googlegroups.com <ds-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Z820 spec

Caution: External Sender

martin

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Dec 6, 2021, 10:32:36 PM12/6/21
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Hi Brian,

 

Matter of interest, what did you use to clone your system drive”

 

Martin Lloyd

Composite Artist

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Mark Hollis

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Dec 7, 2021, 11:12:24 AM12/7/21
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Which version of Resolve?

There is a new version out that is designed to work better with Apple’s SOC silicon. And the Trash Can is limited to the Hex Core CPU and it’s rather laggy GPU graphics. One can get better performance off a 2012 dual Hex-core Mac Pro with a single Sapphire Pulse RX-580. It blows my mind that the Trash Cans have continued to sell for such a premium when their immediate predecessor was much faster.

I watched as Resolve on my wife’s M! (NOT Max or Pro) MacBook Pro outpaced many workflows on my Mac Pro. This is in an ENTRY-LEVEL laptop. Oh,  and it did it while sipping power off its batteries, able to do a complete edit in a 10-hour day without needing to be plugged in.

Obviously, DS won’t run on the new Apple laptops and I am assuming that one could not virtualize Windows and get it to run that way, either. Having worked with Resolve for a while, I still think that the DS is the best editor-compositor ever.

On Dec 6, 2021, at 12:35 PM, Brian Bearg <BBe...@lithia.com> wrote:

I just upgraded my z420 video card to a nvidia 3060 to run a resolve box. While doing so cloned the system drive and updated to windows 10. After doing that I didn’t expect DS to work anymore…. Licensing, video drive and card and so forth.
But to my amazement it does still work. A little buggy but it was from the get go anyways. Kinda a Frankenstein box from day one. And resolve runs better than my mac trashcan now.
 
Brian Bearg
Video Editor
<image001.png>
Phone:   541.864.1757
Email:   bbe...@lithia.com
<image001.png>
 
 

Brian Bearg

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Dec 7, 2021, 12:02:22 PM12/7/21
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Hello Martin,

 

I had a PC tech do the work. He transferred the data to a Samsung solid state drive. Samsung has a data migration tool that he utilized. Seems to have worked perfectly.

 

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

 

Scroll down to Data Migration > Samsung Data Migration Software for Consumer SSD.

 

The key here is you have to use a Samsung drive.

Brian Bearg

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Dec 7, 2021, 12:06:15 PM12/7/21
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Hi Mark,

 

I’ve got Resolve 17.3.1 on the mac. I believe that this is the version before M optimization.  I was hesitant to update because other collogues have noticed the latest version being buggy.  And I’ve got to update 3 computers (1 mac, PC Z420, & HP Laptop) at the same time if I do it so I wanted to have stability over the shiny cool new update. 😊

 

 

 

Brian Bearg

Video Editor

Phone:   541.864.1757

Email:   bbe...@lithia.com

 

 

 

 

Mark Hollis

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Dec 7, 2021, 12:18:56 PM12/7/21
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I hear you on stability. Save early and often. 

I found the Apple Silicon version to be stable. 

On Dec 7, 2021, at 12:06 PM, Brian Bearg <BBe...@lithia.com> wrote:

Hi Mark,
 
I’ve got Resolve 17.3.1 on the mac. I believe that this is the version before M optimization.  I was hesitant to update because other collogues have noticed the latest version being buggy.  And I’ve got to update 3 computers (1 mac, PC Z420, & HP Laptop) at the same time if I do it so I wanted to have stability over the shiny cool new update. 😊
 
 
 
Brian Bearg
Video Editor

Rob Anderson

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Dec 10, 2021, 4:46:41 PM12/10/21
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Speaking of upgrades… We’re finally replacing two Z800’s.

 

What would you buy today to run Premiere, Resolve, and a little AE? Are you sticking with HP?

Has anyone updated lately and have specs to share?

 

Thanks!


Rob Anderson
Editor/Colorist

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Igor Riđanović

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Dec 10, 2021, 5:09:38 PM12/10/21
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For Windows Resolve the 3090 GPU, but there is a lot of chatter about how fast the M1 is on macOS. There must be some side by side comparisons.

Bob Maple

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Dec 10, 2021, 5:12:10 PM12/10/21
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> What would you buy today to run Premiere, Resolve, and a little AE? Are
> you sticking with HP?

For a turnkey workstation I bought a Lenovo Thinkstation P620 a couple
months ago to replace my ~7 year old z820 for Flame. AMD Threadripper
Pro - I did just a 16 core as Flame is more GPU-centric for what I do,
but you can get up to 64 if you're so inclined.

Probably close to 1/2 the cost for a similarly configured Intel HP.

Mark Hollis

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Dec 11, 2021, 11:37:23 AM12/11/21
to Roy Janke
If one is using Apple’s 16" MacBook Pro with the Max chip and 32-core GPU, it is challenging just about everything Intel.

One gets a lot of speed out of the fact that the Apple SOC has Afterburner on the chip. So, for any workflow that involves ProRes or conversion to h.264 or h.265, it is faster than even the 2019 Mac Pro for those specific tasks. Additionally, there is a time savings with the Unified Memory, in that the CPU does not need to do any of the copy operations to send graphics to the GPU’s RAM. This makes these systems equal to or faster than really expensive (and fast) dedicated GPUs. 

Where these new machines don’t match what you can get from HP is in the playback and editing of the really difficult codecs, like the Canon RAW codecs, REDRAW and, perhaps, Sony’s XAVC. There are YouTube demos of dropped frames in both 4K and 8K. Presumably, for these systems, one would need to convert from these codecs, but that is hardly optimal for a colorist wanting to work and take advantage of a RAW workflow.

There are rumors that Apple’s pro machines may have several Max SOCs joined together (like the dual Quad-Core and Hex-Core Intel systems) and sharing unified memory. One would wonder if they can handle the more difficult codecs better but, without dedicated embedded software I doubt that they would be able to play back the more difficult acquisition footage.

That said, an Intel or AMD CPU on a laptop will not run at full speed unless it’s plugged in and, if plugged in might catch your pants on fire. These new Apple laptops run cool, even when stressed, as compared to Intel and AMD.

On Dec 10, 2021, at 5:09 PM, Igor Riđanović <ig...@hdhead.com> wrote:

For Windows Resolve the 3090 GPU, but there is a lot of chatter about how fast the M1 is on macOS. There must be some side by side comparisons. 

On 12/10/21 1:46 PM, Rob Anderson wrote:
Speaking of upgrades… We’re finally replacing two Z800’s.
 
What would you buy today to run Premiere, Resolve, and a little AE? Are you sticking with HP?
Has anyone updated lately and have specs to share?
 
Thanks!

Rob Anderson
Editor/Colorist

 
 
 
From: ds-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ds-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brian Bearg
Sent: Tuesday, December 7, 2021 9:02 AM
To: ds-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Z820 spec
 
Hello Martin,
 
I had a PC tech do the work. He transferred the data to a Samsung solid state drive. Samsung has a data migration tool that he utilized. Seems to have worked perfectly.
 
 
Scroll down to Data Migration > Samsung Data Migration Software for Consumer SSD.
 
The key here is you have to use a Samsung drive.
 
 
 
 
Brian Bearg
Video Editor
<image004.png>
Phone:   541.864.1757
Email:   bbe...@lithia.com
<image004.png>
 
 
 
 

From: ds-...@googlegroups.com <ds-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of martin <mar...@bladeworks.co.za>
Date: Monday, December 6, 2021 at 7:36 PM
To: ds-...@googlegroups.com <ds-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Z820 spec

Caution: External Sender
Hi Brian,
 
Matter of interest, what did you use to clone your system drive”
 
Martin Lloyd
Composite Artist
 
From: ds-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ds-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brian Bearg
Sent: Monday, 06 December 2021 19:35
To: ds-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Z820 spec
 
I just upgraded my z420 video card to a nvidia 3060 to run a resolve box. While doing so cloned the system drive and updated to windows 10. After doing that I didn’t expect DS to work anymore…. Licensing, video drive and card and so forth.
But to my amazement it does still work. A little buggy but it was from the get go anyways. Kinda a Frankenstein box from day one. And resolve runs better than my mac trashcan now.
 
Brian Bearg
Video Editor
<image005.png>
Phone:   541.864.1757
Email:   bbe...@lithia.com
<image005.png>
 
 

Tony Quinsee-Jover

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Dec 12, 2021, 5:38:12 PM12/12/21
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Hi Rob,

I have just shelled out to upgrade our XW8600 to a Z840.  It was Bob Maple's suggestion that suited my workflow, so may not be as suitable for you, but it supports a wide range of GPUs and, as a slightly older model, is available comparatively cheap.  I bought from a UK outfit called Bargain Hardware (www.bargainhardware.co.uk) who configure 'last year's' technology to your requirements at what appears to be very reasonable cost. They also deal with Lenovo and others.  There must be a similar outfit in your neck of the woods, I would have thought.

Perhaps that direction could suit you?

Cheers,

Tony

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Rob Anderson

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Dec 13, 2021, 1:35:06 PM12/13/21
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Thanks everyone. This list is still the best!  I like the idea of a Bargain Hardware type of place. Anyone have experience with one in U.S.?

 

BTW, I got an M1 in August (pre-Max/Pro), and the playback performance is great – better than Z800/1080Ti. But when it comes time to export, encoding takes about 3x longer on the M1. A deal-breaker for longer shows.

 

Thanks again!

Rob

image001.png
image002.png

Igor Riđanović

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Dec 13, 2021, 2:02:42 PM12/13/21
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There is a place in Irvine or Tustin in southern California where I bought a used Z820 five years ago. I need to dig through my tax records to find the name of this place.

Initially I was going to bid on their item on Ebay, but someone beat me to it. Then I emailed them and they invited me to come over. It's not really a store, just a little office and a small warehouse. They purchase auction lots and all kinds of old office computer gear. They let me browse the warehouse. It's an amazing place. It was inexpensive and the gear was in great shape.

Igor Riđanović

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Dec 13, 2021, 2:03:45 PM12/13/21
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That's interesting. People are reporting something like 600+ fps when encoding Prores on M1 running Resolve Studio.

On 12/13/21 10:34 AM, Rob Anderson wrote:

BTW, I got an M1 in August (pre-Max/Pro), and the playback performance is great – better than Z800/1080Ti. But when it comes time to export, encoding takes about 3x longer on the M1. A deal-breaker for longer shows.

 

--

Rob Anderson

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Dec 13, 2021, 2:25:31 PM12/13/21
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Yes, Prores might be fine, but I need to export Mp4 H.264 from Premiere. I haven’t compared Resolve.

 

From: ds-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ds-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Igor Ridanovic
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2021 11:04 AM
To: ds-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Z820 spec

 

That's interesting. People are reporting something like 600+ fps when encoding Prores on M1 running Resolve Studio.

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Jef Huey

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Dec 13, 2021, 3:05:19 PM12/13/21
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I had looked at the following:

https://www.servermonkey.com/workstations/refurbished-hp-workstations.html

Did not buy, but that seems like the same type of place Toni mentions.  I found it by googling:  "HP workstation refurbished"

Jef

Mark Hollis

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Dec 13, 2021, 3:42:30 PM12/13/21
to Roy Janke
Premiere on the M1 is a dog. Adobe did create a beta version that was “optimized,” but it is certainly not taking advantage of Apple’s SOC and, for export and transcode operations is, apparently, using Rosetta. I do not imagine that Adobe will have a true optimization for Apple Silicon or Microsoft’s SQ1 ARM-based chip for a good five years or so. 

The only editing software that runs natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon is Resolve and I suspect that Resolve is not completely optimized yet.

That said, I have seen the M1 Max blaze through Mp4 h.264 very quickly. This is due to the import-export codec being embedded on the Max chip. 

If Microsoft were to do this with their systems, they’d be so fast as to be frightening—but, then I recall Silicon Graphics workstations needing all night to frame-by-frame record a few seconds of animation. Today, we expect animation to render out in a few minutes.

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