HP announced two new varieties of their entry-level workstation on Sept. 29, including the world’s first small form factor workstation. Josh Petersen, director of worldwide product management for HP’s desktop and mobile workstation business, said that these are targeted toward professional customers like product developers, CAD users, engineers, and architects who may be using CAD on a PC and are planning to move up to a workstation-class product at an appropriate price.
The two new products are the Z240 Tower, targeted for customers who may need to be able to flexibly expand their workstation, and the Z240 small form factor workstation, which is 57 percent smaller than the tower for customers with space constraints.
The Z240 doubles the memory capacity available in previous generations. Using DDR4 ECC, the workstation can support up to 64 GB memory. Intel processors using Skylake allow for faster clock feeds, more efficiency, and better graphics performance.
Both include an integrated M.2 slot, allowing customers to use HP Z Turbo Drives without having to trade off for additional graphics cards or other devices. Either one can run the user’s choice of future Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v5 product families, Intel Core, or Intel Pentium processors. The HP Z Turbo Drive G2 also allows for greater speeds and better performance using NVMe.
With many customers moving to the Z Turbo Drive, which HP introduced last year, HP decided to integrate the drive into the workstation’s motherboard. This means that it won’t take up space on the PCI Express slot.
The interior of the tower has been re-engineered too. The size of the motherboard has been reduced, clearing up the inside of the tower by 10 percent and simplifying the cabling.
Both the tower and the small form factor workstation have ambient temperature sensors on the motherboard and increased control of the system fans, allowing for better management of the system thermals and acoustics.
Another practical innovation, a dust filter, was included because of conversations between HP and customers. Both the small form factor and the tower have the option for a custom dust filter which can be removed from the workstation and washed, allowing for 47 percent reduction in dust and greater convenience in manufacturing floors or other dusty environments.
The new designs were developed based on how modern workers perform, said Jeff Wood, vice president of product management, during a press briefing. Tighter deadlines mean that people need workstations which allow for larger workflows and more memory.
“Everybody is on tight deadlines and our focus on performance and quality…that’s becoming more and more critical as people are under more pressure to meet their deadlines and complete in their marketplace,” Wood said.
Both Z240 workstations come with a choice of Windows 7, Windows 10, or Linux operating systems. They are expected to be available in November, at prices starting at $879 contingent on the price of entry-level processors.