HP announces Z2 Small Form Factor G8 and Z2 Tower G8 workstations

HP's new workstation PCs help meet the demands of professionals working from home or in an office.

What you need to know

• HP announced new versions of its HP Z2 Small Form Factor G8 and Z2 Tower G8 today.
• Both PCs offer options with powerful NVIDIA RTX or AMD Pro graphics.
• Each PC can come with either Intel Xeon or Core vPro processors.

HP announced refreshes of its HP Z2 Small Form Factor (SFF) G8 and Z2 Tower G8 PCs. The PCs feature either Intel Xeon or Core vPro processors that can be paired with professional-level graphics. The Z2 SFF is available with up to NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 or AMD Radeon Pro WX3200 graphics. The Z2 Tower can come with up to NVIDIA RTX A5000 or AMD Radeon Pro W5700 graphics.

Both new PCs were announced at NVIDIA's GTC 2021. The HP Z2 SFF G8 is expected in May 2021 for a starting price of $1,169. The HP Z2 Tower G8 starts at $1,179 and is also expected in May 2021.

HP emphasized that as people continue to work remotely, they'll need to be able to have powerful hardware anywhere. HP's vice president of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA, Bob Pette, said,

Remote work is going to continue, and employees will have a choice of where to work. The new NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPUs with Z by HP desktops will give employees the computing power they need to work from anywhere.

HP Z2 G8 Tower Workstation

Category	HP Z2 G8 Tower Workstation
Operating system	Windows 10 Pro Windows 10 Home Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux ready
Processor	Up to Intel Core i9-11900K Up to Intel Xeon W-1390
Chipset	Intel W580
Maximum memory	128GB DDR4-3200
Internal storage	Up to 2TB PCIe NVMe
Graphics	Up to AMD Radeon Pro W7500 Up to NVIDIA RTX A5000
Front ports	2x SuperSpeed USB-A (10Gbps), audio jack, 2x SuperSpeed USB-A (5Gbps)
Rear ports	Audio in, audio out, RJ-45, 2x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x SuperSpeed USB-A (10Gbps), 1 SuperSpeed USB-A (5Gbps)
Dimensions	14.6" x 6.7" x 15.2" (35.6 x 16.9 x 38.5 cm)
Power	350 W

HP Z2 Small Form Factor G8 Workstation

Category	HP Z2 Small Form Factor G8 Workstation
Operating system	Windows 10 Pro Windows 10 Home Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux ready
Processor	Up to Intel Core i9-11900K Up to Intel Xeon W-1390
Chipset	Intel W580
Maximum memory	128GB DDR4-3200
Internal storage	Up to 2TB PCIe NVMe
Graphics	Up to AMD Radeon Pro WX3200 Up to NVIDIA QUadro RTX 3000
Front ports	2x SuperSpeed USB-A (10Gbps), audio jack, 2x SuperSpeed USB-A (5Gbps), SuperSpeed USB-C (20Gbps)
Rear ports	Audio out, RJ-45, 2x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x SuperSpeed USB-A (10Gbps), 1 SuperSpeed USB-A (5Gbps), 2x USB-A (480Mbps)
Dimensions	13.3" x 12.1" x 3.95" (33.8 x 30.8 x 10 cm)
Power	260 W

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To help speed up performance, the Z2 SFF G8 and Z2 Tower G8 can be configured with Samsung's recently announced PCIe Gen4 drives.

HP states that the Z2 SFF G8 is the world's fastest SFF workstation running Autodesk and SolidWorks applications. Since the Z2 SFF G8 can come with up to an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 GPU, people can get accelerated ray tracing and AI in its relatively small body.

The Z2 Tower G8 is an entry-level workstation for professional creators. If you go with the highest-end specs on the Z2 Tower, you'll be able to run multi-threaded applications while multitasking.

Both the Z2 SFF G8 and Z2 Tower G8 have tool-less access, allowing you to add components or upgrade parts of the system over time. As an example, HP highlights that you can add specialized PCIe cards to the PCs.