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Workstation Review: HP Z200 Small Form Factor July 8, 2010
Measuring 13.3 by 15 by 4 inches, the Z200 SFF can sit either horizontally or (with a $5 optional stand) vertically on your desk. In addition to four USB 2.0 ports and microphone and headphone jacks located up front, our test unit had a five-slot flash-card reader mounted in the front-accessible 3.5-inch bay, plus a LightScribe DVD±RW burner in the 5.25-inch bay. Around back are six more USB 2.0 ports, PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports (although our Z200 came with a USB mouse and keyboard), an Ethernet jack, a serial port, and VGA and DisplayPort connectors -- the latter two for use with the Intel integrated graphics provided with a variety of dual-core Pentium, Core i3, and Core i5 processors on the options list. Quad-core CPU choices include one Core i5, two Core i7, and six Xeon processors. Our workstation's was in the middle of the Xeons -- the 2.66GHz Xeon X3450 with 8MB of Level 3 cache, a numeric match for the system's Intel 3450 chipset. Graphics-card options include Nvidia's Quadro NVS 295 (256MB) for 2D and a pair of 512MB low-profile cards for 3D -- Nvidia's Quadro FX 380 or AMD's ATI FirePro V3800. Our HP had the ATI card, which provides one DVI and one DisplayPort connector. Removing the system's lid, you'll see the graphics card occupying the lone, half-height PCI Express Gen2 x16 slot. There's also a PCIe Gen1 x4 (electrical)/x16 (mechanical) slot, a PCIe Gen1 x1 slot, and a single PCI slot. The last held a FireWire adapter in our test unit. A USB 3.0 adapter for the PCI Express x1 slot is a $49 option we'd recommend.  The 240-watt, 89-percent-efficient power supply tilts up to provide access to the lone 3.5-inch internal drive bay, occupied by a Seagate 500GB, 7,200-rpm SATA hard disk. Other choices include a 1TB 7,200-rpm drive and a 300GB, 10,000-rpm SATA drive; the system storage ceiling of 2TB is reached by placing a second hard drive in the bay that held our system's flash-card reader. The optical drive bay tilts up to facilitate access to the four memory sockets, filled with 2GB DIMMs for a total of 8GB of non-ECC DDR3/1333 memory. Up to 16GB of ECC memory can be fitted. Z200 SFF prices start at $664 for a more nettop- than workstation-caliber Pentium G6950 configuration with a skimpy 1GB of RAM and 160GB hard disk. Our well-equipped test unit came to $2,086 on HP's online configurator. A VGA Workstation?If you've heard about vendors sending carefully optimized, hand-tweaked systems to get good benchmark scores from review sites, we can reassure you that HP did no such thing: Whoever installed our Z200's FirePro V3800 card forgot to install its driver. Windows' Device Manager reported that the workstation had a "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter." Its Windows Experience Index performance score was the lowest possible at 1.0 on the operating system's 7.9-point scale. Downloading and installing AMD's latest driver made a considerable difference. The Experience Index rose to 5.3 for Aero graphics and 6.5 for gaming graphics, while the HP's processor and memory scored 7.4 and 7.5, respectively. The HP posted a 3DMark06 score of 5,383 and PCMark Vantage score of 8,923, ranking among the fastest desktops we've tested. The system took a quick 54 seconds to render Cinebench R10's sample scene and played Cinebench R11.5's OpenGL animation at 23 frames per second, posting a CPU score of 4.2 points. It managed 11 fps in the OpenGL Heaven benchmark and averaged 14.4 fps in the eight SPECviewperf 11 tests at 1,600 by 1,200 resolution. The Z200 came with 64-bit Windows 7 Professional with, happily, none of the usual bloatware. HP does preload its workstations with several useful utilities, such as an HP Performance Advisor that helps monitor and optimize installed hardware, software, and drivers. What do we make of the Z200 SFF? Like all workstations, it's expensive compared to mere mortal or civilian desktops. And its compact case restricts one of the main attractions of shopping for a workstation -- a plethora of fire-breathing professional graphics cards -- with only a few low-profile cards to choose from. (By contrast, there are more than 15 CPUs to choose from, although we don't consider the entry-level Pentium and Core i3 to be really workstation material.) But the Z200's build quality and component accessibility are first-class, and its performance is solidly ahead of many much bulkier desktops'. It's also pleasantly quiet. Most of all, it fills a niche for CAD and financial pros and IT managers seeking serious power in a small package. 
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Want a cute little compact with a big V-8 engine? Ford or Chevy won't oblige you, but 
