HP ZBook 17 G3 Owners Lounge

Hi,
im wondering, that no one is talking about the new Zbook 17 G3 and there is no thread for it? So i just opened one, please report your experience or thoughts about this workstation.

Im pending between ordering an old 8770w (looks more robust) with the maxed out specs or waiting for the new zbook 17 with the Xeon CPU and the M5000M (but it has some weak points for me like: design, quality issues etc)

Has someone already tested the machine or are there some real user reviews anywhere i cant find anything about it, only the usual marketing stuff...

What do you think?

best
chris

 

Curious as to why you want an HP Zbook when Dell's 7510 and 7710 seem to rate well with forum members? They look better than any hp as well.

 

Do they? There is a lack of tests and reviews for the HP models (usually because of limited availability) , but why do you assume that Dells workstation are better?

 

Where is the review (at least one) for the HP Zbook G3 17 inch workstation? Would be nice if it included all the good specs the 4K (Dream Color) and Thunderbolt. Then I compare it to the Lenovo P70, and Dell 7710.

What actually would be the best thing is if there was a store I could walk into that has the HP Zbook G3 17 inch, Dell 7710 and Lenovo P70 (all with 4K and with HP zbook include the Dream Color. Then I will make a decision right there and purchase.

Now I know that is impossible so I just have to use reviews (and if possible) youtube reviews for them?

 

I don't think you'll find the dreamcolor screen in a store model unless maybe if there is a store that has customers from movie studios.

 

I know that wishful thinking on my part It would be nice though. I think the best I could do is to hope I can find reviews of those workstations on youtube (fast because my Internet Security software runs out in 10 days) and I was hoping to have purchase one the them by now.

 

Hi Everyone, new member here... Found the forums recently when sweeping the internet for information on the ZBook 17 G3. Actually I was reading in the ZBook 15 g3 Owners Lounge recently.

Well I got delivery of one of these today. Ordered on 2/16, shipped 3/16 from Shanghai (original quote 3/1) delivered on 3/21.

$2,078.77 + Tax, Free Shipping (6 days)
Intel® Core™ i7-6820HQ (2.70GHz w/Turbo, 8MB L3 Cache)
Intel® 530 HD Graphics
Product number: M9L92AV
•No Microsoft Office Software
•Elite Services Card
•3 year Battery Warranty Card
•Upgrade to Foxit Phantom PDF Business Software
•ENERGY STAR Qualified Configuration
•17.3 inch LED FHD UWVA Anti-Glare flat (1920x1080) for Webcam
•Integrated 720p HD Webcam
•8 GB 2133 DDR4 SDRAM (1 DIMM)
•1 TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
•Intel 8260 ac (2x2) + Bluetooth 4.2
•No HP Mobile Broadband
•6-Cell (96 WHr) Long Life Battery
•Integrated Fingerprint Reader
•Intel® vPro™ Technology Enabled
•Back-Lit DualPoint Keyboard
•Destination Country Kit Localization
•Power Cord - 1.8 Meters
•200 Watt Smart PFC Slim AC Adapter
•Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
•Intel® Core™ i7 Processor vPro Label
•AMD FirePro W6150M with 4 GB dedicated GDDR5 video
memory
•No Secondary Internal Storage
•3/3/3 Warranty
•Drivers for Windows 10 (Driver Media)

Some of that stuff is still a mystery, I may ask support. I was told by sales that 'Drivers for Windows 10 (Driver Media)' was a USB Flash Drive, but didn't see one. Also, no idea what the Elite Services Card does, there was nothing physical in the box about it. The PDF Software was $1, I'll see if it is any use.

My immediate plans are:
Create recovery USB Flash (used a 16GB) (done)
Remove 1TB rotating drive (done)
Install SSD (this one is just for testing right now)
Fresh install of Win10 from USB Flash Drive
Replace 1TB rotating drive from another system that has my data on it. As secondary storage.

Run it for a week or two.

I may not keep it, as it seems a touchscreen version will be out later. It depends on how I like it. Free returns for 30 days on my deal.

Future plans:
Add another 8GB RAM Module (one bank out of four is populated now, HP was price gouging on the RAM, max with my CPU is 32GB)
Possibly M.2 SSD, there is room for 2 I beileve, the one I want is a little pricey now, the Samsung 950 is about $180@256GB now.

What I have now is a HP Pavilion DV7-6195US, i7-2630QM (SandyBridge), 16GB, SSD boot drive, rotating drive for storage. It was very snappy with Win7, not such good boot with Win10. It's at least 5 years old.

I was intrigued by the powerful CPU, FOUR DRIVE BAYS, FOUR MEMORY SLOTS, the USB 3.1/Thunderbolt, and the other power features. I hope I don't miss the optical drive. Already the external one is giving me a problem using it as the source for the Win10 clean install. I'm prepping the USB media while I type this, so I haven't had success with the OS replacement operation yet.

First reactions. The brick is still heavy although a little smaller than the DV7, at about 1x4x8in. The notebook is about the same weight as the DV7.

The keyboard is satisfactory so far, no sagging as reported on the 15 G3. There is a pointing stick between G H and B. Hasn't gotten in the way yet, we'll see, I'm a touch typist. I think I'm gonna like the backlit keyboard because I sometimes work in natural light indoors.

There are four indicator lights, very small and not easy to see, but thank goodness they're there, especially the HDD activity light, I use the feedback from that a lot. The others are battery charging/full, Power, and WiFi (which is a little odd because there is s dedicated WiFi on/off button that is lighted too). One other dedicated button is a sound mute. The power button is lighted also so that's another duplicate. There's also a light near the power jack, doesn't change color like the other one does with battery charging/full.

Initial performance reaction is not available yet, I didn't want to run it with the factory OS on a rotating drive, and as I said am still on the mission of loading a fresh Win10 onto a (2.5 inch) SSD. I'm hoping it's pretty fast, but time will tell.

One bonus, the hard drive parts kit (pn 847863-001) required to add a second 2.5 in drive was included in the box. The kit included four screws to mount the drive to the frame, a frame to mount the the drive into the chassis, and the cable to wire it to the motherboard. VERY NICE HP!!!! I was prepared to accept that because I ordered it with one 2.5 in drive that the hardware to add a second was not going to be in the chassis. Well it wasn't in the chassis, it was in a baggie with the docs.

One PITA so far is the access to the internals. HD/RAM/WiFi/M.2/Battery, everything is behind one large cover, essentially the whole bottom of the chassis. There are 11 screws to loosen and re-tighten each time you go inside! (To HP's credit, they are 'captured screws' so they don't fall out if you do it correctly.) I've been in there three times today already, and will be back in there a few more. The screw tip is a Torx M8, for the nerds among you. The battery is not a removable module like most. Yes you can swap it, but only after fighting the 11 screws.

I'll probably visit back here with more reactions and to read what y'all have to say.

-VT

 

Hey! Ordering my Zbook G3 17in on Monday. Core i7 6820HQ 2.7ghz Quadro M5000M 8gb vram 16gb Ram 256gb z turbo. I want to add a Samsung pro SSD after purchasing.

A video comparing this laptop with Dell and Lenovo mobile workstations would be nice. I was also really tempted by Mythlogic and their build options for their laptops. They actually have desktop CPUs and GPUs as options in their laptops.

Also wish I could of opted for Dreamcolor monitor.

 

Anyone have zbook with DC?

 

the HP rep assisting me told me that DC wont be available for the G3 models until June of 2016 or summer 2016. It will also only be in 4k...

 

Please write more about your model when you test your zbook.

 

Just ordered my Zbook G3 17in today. I forgot to ask the rep if the DIMM of ram that ships with the laptop is ECC. Does anyone here know?

 

If you ordered a Xeon Processor, your machine will ship with ECC ram. Mine came with an 8GB SK-Hynix DDR4-2133 stick, part number HMA41GS7AFR8N-TF. I ordered a second stick from eBay for $55, as they wanted an additional $160 for the second stick direct from HP. I will post back on Friday when it arrives to let you know how it works.

 

He ordered with Core i7 6820HQ 2.7ghz so it wont be ECC.



Is that true both processor and gpu are soldered to motherboard?

 

Just the processor. The GPU is MXM 3.0b for the Zbook 17 G3.

I do not know if HP uses a whitelist for the MXM slot but it would be pretty interesting if they do. You have the option of ordering it without a GPU if you customize the machine. You could then, in theory, pick up a heatsink and fan from HP Spare Parts, 970M / 980M GPU from a reseller, then have a nice "gaming" business class laptop.

 

I thought about doing that but then I just went with the Quadro m5000m.

So it looks like I have to order my own ECC ram from crucial. Also I'm planning on installing a Samsung 950 pro m.2 SSD. Anyone know of an installation guide that may help?

 

The i7 6820HQ does not support ECC. If you need ECC, you must order a Xeon processor.

Installing a Samsung 950 Pro should be easy. The bottom cover has ~7 capsized torx screws. With those loosened, the entire cover comes off and you have access to the M.2 slots. The service manual in the support section on HP's website shows the procedure.

 

That's great to know Thanks! So I'm guessing it was the previous generations that had the back cover that easily slid off after releasing the latch?

 

Yes, the Zbook G1 and G2 series both had a very easy to remove back cover. It was a nice design but I think they had to change it to slim the machine down. It really doesn't add much time to component replacement.

Out of curiosity, why did you go with HP vs. Dell or Lenovo on your purchase?

 

I'm converting from Apple and I'm looking for an NVIDIA GPU with cuda cores to take advantage of OpenGL (the talk of the town).

I'm attracted to the M5000M because of the 8gb of vram. The Dell Precision 7710 didn't have a Quadro M5000m configuration on their website. The Lenovo looked really nice but at the same exact configuration as the Zbook I bought today it was like $300 more.

Plus in the video editing world HP has always been praised highly. Specifically the tower workstations z820, z840 etc... I read interviews on blog sites about how professionals making Hollywood movies utilize and trust these HP machines so their laptops must pretty good!

My spec'd out 2011 iMac struggles while using Davanci Resolve and BCC title studio. I really can't wait to put this Quadro card to work. So basically I chose HP because word of mouth and all the discounts they had lol

 

Cool. I think you will be impressed with your new laptop. The Quadro M5000M is definitely a powerful GPU and should be perfect for your applications. HP is usually a pretty tough sell here because everybody thinks they are paying twice as much for a rebadged Pavilion. It is pretty surprising to see all of the discounts they are offering right now. I suppose it is because they still don't have Dreamcolor displays and the high end Xeon options available yet.

 

is the PCIe port 4 lanes or 2 lanes? I want to install a Samsung 950 pro m.2 in my Zbook G3 when it arrives.

Plus I was looking at the cost of ram on the Zbook configuration page and it's over $300 to add 24GB of Ram while crucial charges under $100 for the same ram. That's crazy...
Any big difference between 2133 vs 2400?

 

Zbook 17 G3 use only 2133. About M2 Interface PCIe GEN3X4. So it looks like 4 lanes.

 

Thanks. If you don't mind me asking, where did you find this information? In the user's manual?

 

You can check in service manual zbook 17 G3

 

It also says in the quickspecs on page 26 the ZTurbo drive uses a "PCIe GEN3X4" interface. My Zbook Studio has two PCIe 3.0 x4 connectors (that are SATA compatible too) so no reason why the flagship 17 inch model shouldn't have the same.

 

.

 

My Zbook came today and I am really impressed! So far it's everything I thought it would be. A couple things that stand out so far:

Apple customer service>HP customer service
I guess Apple goes above and beyond sometimes and I'm a bit spoiled but it's no biggie. Performance wise HP is winning!

The 256gb z turbo SSD in my G3 arrived with 50GBs already used up by Windows 7. Wow. The Samsung 950 pro is now top priority after installing all my Avid and Adobe apps.

I'm so happy I got the M5000M and 17in screen. My laptop is putting my 2011 spec'd out 27in iMac to shame....SHAME!

The fan is loud but not louder than my iMac during video exporting in Premiere. So fan noise doesn't bother me at all.

My Zbook boots up very quickly thanks to the z turbo SSD,but some of my Adobe apps took 10mins+ To install. When I added a Samsung 850pro SSD to my iMac Adobe apps literally took 1 minute to install probably less. But maybe it's just a hiccup. The real magic happens once the app is open. It doesn't disappoint!

That laptop is huge. Bigger than I thought it would be. It's not as heavy as you'd think though. I love the way the laptop looks. The full keyboard is perfect. This laptop is amazing.

 

About the fan noisy. For typical use word, music, browsing www, watching sth. Is this typical loud? I mean you can hear the fan but it is not annoying.

 

If you do any type of work on this laptop even just browsing through the folders on your computer then the fan will kick on.
It's as loud as my iMac during video editing. You'll definitely notice the fan is on unless your watching tv while you're on the laptop at then the tv might drown out the fan noise. Of course it's dependant on how loud the tv is, but if you're downloading and installing apps on the G3 or editing videos or exporting videos or watching HD videos on YouTube... The noise from the fan will definitely grab your attention.

 

@Artkidtek

Sorry to break into this thread as an HP Zbook Studio G3 owner.

Zbook Studio G3, FHD, i7 6700hq, 16Gb RAM, 256 Gb Zturbo drive (Samsung SM951).
I'm running Windows 7, 64 bit.

I have a question for you...

Yesterday I did install the 512 Gb Samsung Pro 950 NVMe SSD in the second M.2 slot.
This resulted into very, very slow booting times.

This has to do with the NVMe drivers which are installed under 'storage controllers', which you can find in the device manager.

Windows automatically installs the Windows NVMe drivers (from 2006 > yes, these are the latest) and are needed for the already supplied Samsung SM951 (Zturbo drive).
But the Samsung 950 Pro needs the latest Samsung NVMe driver.
If I install this Samsung driver, both of the slots are now running with this driver.
And yes, again the very same, slow booting times.

Something goes very wrong somewhere.

Don't know I have to adjust some settings in the BIOS.

Did you already install your Samsung 950 pro?
And if you did, how did you configure your system running both NVMe SSD's smoothly?

Hope you can help me out . . .


Kind regards,

Sander

 

I'm sorry to hear about your booting issue. It sounds like you spent A good amount of money on your equipment it must be frustrating to not have it work properly. However, I havent even ordered my 950 SSD yet but after reading your post I'm now hesitant. Call HP and speak to a Zbook specialist they should be more helpful than I am. Sorry bro let me know if things work out for you.

 

Thanks for your quick reply.
Tomorrow I'm going to call HP about this.
I'll keep you posted about this.

I did read in the Zbook Studio owners review that @Billy Cantor did install this drive properly, alongside his Zdrive into his Zbook Studio.
I did ask him about it in that thread.
Don't know how to send private messages... Seems that he hasn't been on the forums lately.

Talk to you later...

 

@Artkidtek
I've had contact with HP support today, but the person I spoke to wasn't very helpful.
He sad that if the accessory wasn't in the list of spare parts, HP wouldn't officially support it.
I asked him: "What if I had a Zturbo drive. How would I configure the drive?"
He didn't answer that question.

I also can't find any settings for hard drive options in the BIOS.

Also I've sent @Billy Cantor a direct message, but he doesn't seem to be around much lately.
So, no answer yet unfortunately.

I wonder if I better send this 950 Pro back and order a SM951 instead.
Seems this is the exact same unit used in the Zbook G3 series.

I think the Samsung SM951 is a better bet for now.
Samsung SM951 MZVPV512HDGL m.2 PCI-e, 512 GB or Samsung SM951 MZVPV256HDGL m.2 PCI-e, 256 GB
Just be sure you order the NVMe version of this SM951 units.
This units are also available as AHCI.
As far as I understand the HP Z Turbo drive uses NVMe technique.

See for reference: http://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-ZBook-15u-G3-Workstation-Review.160815.0.html

That's all the info I can find about this.

Hope it helps . . .

 

I think Billy was using Windows 10 Pro on his Zbook Studio which is likely able to run each drive with a specific driver. You could try loading it before sending back your 950 Pro. Otherwise I would probably say just go with a SM951, as they generally seem more stable and supported by the included OS drivers. I have a 256GB ACHI SM951 on the way that I am going to play around on next week.

 

@win32asmguy
Hi. Thanks for your reply.
I know Billy was using Windows 10 Pro.

Yesterday I've upgraded to Windows 10 Pro as well, but that didn't work out. same driver issues.

Booting up is taking just a little more than 2 minutes now since I've added the 950 Pro in the second slot, with both the standard Windows NVMe driver and the dedicated Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drivers and on both operating systems (Win 7 Pro 64 bit and Windows 10 Pro 64 bit).

When I took advantage of getting back to Windows 7, there was an error report: nvme.sys... Can't repair computer.
Luckily I could restore an earlier made image of the system.

Maybe it's because Billy is on a Xeon processor and has another motherboard.

I still haven't found out about BIOS settings for setting up RAID or AHCI.
There seems to be no possibillities to set up the 2 hard drives... Only the boot order.
Also UEFI mode doesn't show any hard drive at all.

Maybe I have to reset everything back to factory settings and install the factory image first to have a new starting point.

Thanks for reading...

 

Thanks for sharing this very valuable information. I'm definitely staying with Windows 7 because of the software I use which isn't stable on Windows 10 yet. So the 950 looks like a no-go for me.
However, you reported issues with boot speed. What if I kept my 951 as my boot drive and then installed the 950 as my secondary PCIe SSD, will I still have any issues?

 

@Artkidtek

Hi.
That's the exact config I have now.
Doesn't work with my Zbook Studio G3.

During boot up the computer is searching for the right nvme driver. Because the SM951 uses only the Windows NVMe driver and the 950 Pro must have his dedicated Samsung driver installed. But as far as I know now the storage controllers can either use the Samsung or the Windows driver. With installing the Samsung driver (it's an installer .exe) you alter the storage controller of the built in SM951 too. If you deinstall the dedicated Samsung 950 Pro NVMe driver, than Windows automatically detects the hardware again and installs the Windows driver for both controllers.

But @Billy Cantor has it working under his Xeon on Windows 10.

So, I really can't advice you what to do yet.

Maybe you can inform with your HP Customer Support...

 

anyone here has got thunderbolt networking working for them? it seems that the chipset for thunderbolt in zbooks has very limited connectivity.
so far I haven't been able to connect to QNAP.
the only devices that had been able to connect are
1) apple's firewire adapter
2) lacie PCIe SSD
3) akitio dual HDD
3) via apple's firewire, phaseone IQ180 and h4D, h5d hasseblad.
4) dell 2713H
5) z27x screen
6) daisy chain 2713H
7) Black Magic BMPC 4k
8) intensity shuttle

 

Still no Dreamcolor option in configure to order.

 

@Artkidtek
I've sent the 950 Pro back and ordered the SM951 NVMe OEM version (MZVPV512HDGL) instead.
It's (approximately) the same SSD module HP uses, branded as HP Zturbo drive.
Just installed it, and it works like a charm.
Read and write performance are on spec, according to the CrystalDiskMark benchmarks.
However slower than the 950 Pro, but fast enough (2.150Mb/s read, and 1.550 Mb/s write).
Booting up is normal again.
No extra drivers needed.
Happy now!
It really is a driver problem as I did describe earlier.

Hope this helps . . .


Kind regards,

Sander

 

Has anyone done this successfully with any of the other Zbooks? I was thinking of doing this exact thing. Grab a 17 G3 and maybe keep the low end M1000M card if it used the same cooler as the M5000M and then drop in a 980m. I hate to drop an extra $800 for the M5000M when I wouldn't really use the thing for anything more than an occasional game or some Adobe CS work.

 

Supposedly the Zbook 17 G2 could take a 980M, as long as you did not have a dreamcolor panel. I can't find the post in the Zbook 17 Owner's Lounge about it, but I am pretty sure somebody had tried it.

On a similar note, I had considered trying a 970M in my Lenovo Thinkpad P70. Its got the Quadro M3000M heatsink, which should fit the 970M / 980M just fine, but I don't have the extra money right now to spend on a card. Its a shame that Dell / HP / Lenovo don't just rebrand their workstation laptops as high end gaming laptops. I think Dell proved it about 10 years ago with the Inspiron 9400 / Precision M90 that such a lineup can sell well in both markets.

 

Thanks for the information. I found a 17 G3 with the 6820 and a M3000M that was cheaper than the customizable model I was looking at with the cheaper GPU and I confimed that the M3000M-M5000m all have the same heatsink/fan combo so I grabbed it. The M3000M is about equal to the current gaming laptop I have so worse case it does the same as what I have now, new job and IT uses HP laptops so I can get away with having my own if it blends but not my razer. I am going to order a 980m and see if I can swap it, I will let you guys know if it works.

 

Cool. The M3000M is not a bad performer. It has the same memory bandwidth as a 980M and is not significantly underclocked like previous Kepler Quadro's were. The Quadro drivers can lag behind the Geforce driver, however, so recently released games may have issues at first.

I think another fun upgrade path would be to go from a Firepro W6150M to mobile Polaris once they are released. Heck, AMD might release a full mobile Polaris Firepro variant to compete with the M5000M anyways. If they did, HP / Dell would likely add it to their workstation lineups. The great thing about the AMD cards are you can load the standard Radeon driver, and get all of the game specific tweaks needed for current titles.

 

I ordered a GTX 980m that should be here next week, probably a few days after the laptop. If it works I am going to just pull and sell the M3000M. I have had bad luck with my last few AMD cards so I have stayed away from them.

 

Yup, and it is being shipped right now.

 

Success, I have my new Zbook 17 G3 working with a GTX 980m. I wrote up some notes from the install in case anyone else wants to try it. Here are the system specs in case anyone cares.




Here is the inside after pulling the bottom cover (you need a T8 driver). You only need to loosen the eight numbered phillips screws on the plates with the heat pipes.


Then you should see this, CPU on the left and GPU on the right.


The 908m next to the m3000m for comparison.


After swapping the cards I cleaned the old heatsink compound and put some new stuff on there, made sure the heat tape all lined up properly and then put it back together. At this point you should see the device in device manager as "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" or something similar and all that is left is gettting the driver installed (see notes section for instructions).

Notes

1. If you are running bitlocker you may want to disable before you do the swap, you will have to put your recovery key in to get the system to book after the GPU swap. If you have to swap back for some reason this will be a pain.

2. If you are running Windows 8 or later you will need to disable DSE to install a modded graphics driver. You have disable DSE every time if you follow most procedures online (reboot a few times to try to get the driver working) and it is a pain. Here is how to disable DSE permanently (at least until you are done and re-enable)

Run cmd.exe as administrator and enter the following commands

bcdedit /set testsigning on
bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON
​

3.You will probably need to modify an NVIDIA driver if your laptop doesn't ship with the card as a stock option (obviously the Zbook doesnt but you could use these directions for other systems as well). All you are doing is adding the hardware ID from the device to the .inf file with the proper GPU ID so it knows what to install, pretty straight forward and you are not running a driver that someone has modified the code for.

Here is a good walk through on how to update the .inf file so the driver will install.
How to Modify NVIDIA Notebook Driver .INF Files
​

4. Other tools that are useful when doing this.

DDU this is good for uninstalling old NVIDIA drivers or driver versions that don't work properly and wont uninstall (I had this problem with driver 368.22)
HWiNFO64 good tool to look at your hardware, it will show you details about your GPU before the drivers are installed.​

 

Wow, that is great! Thanks for trying the swap out. It looks like its not too complicated. By any chance you tried seeing if dedicated graphics mode still works in the bios, and if external displays can still be used via the TB3 / HDMI ports?

 

This thread started in February with an inquiry about whether anyone had seen a review of the ZBook 17 g3. Now, 4 months later there is one...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-ZBook-17-G3-Workstation-Review.166334.0.html