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HP jumps on the Virtual Reality bandwagon

by on07 April 2016


Starting at $4,363

HP has released a virtual reality PC range which costs an arm and a leg.

HP's new Z Workstations are designed to help create VR content rather than just allow you to play games and they start at US $4,363, and that doesn't include a VR headset, or a monitor. HP does not even throw in a keyboard or mouse.

If you don’t want to use VR the desktops can also be used for movie-making, engineering, taking over the world and other resource-heavy applications.In the past HP's line of Z Workstations have been used to make movies like Deadpool, but virtual reality requires more graphics grunt than movies and a budget like Waterworld.

The Z Workstation desktops can be configured with Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 chips, which have up to 22 cores. The 22-core Xeon E5-2699 v4 chip is typically reserved for servers and draws 145 watts of power. This means a cooling system with some juice too. Heat is a problem with the high-end Z840 system. Theoretically it can be configured with dual CPUs but if you two 22-core chips in one system the heat would melt steel.

The desktops can be configured with dual Quadro M6000 24GB graphics cards in an SLI (scalable link interface) configuration. The desktop also takes advantage of Nvidia technology that allows the graphics to flow smoothly and ensure the VR experience isn't more sickening than an instalment of Twilight.

The system supports up to 256GB of DDR4 memory or 1TB of LRDDR4 memory. This is slightly slower but means more can be jammed under the bonnet. The system has a wide range of hard-drive and SSD storage options. There are provisions for six SATA, eight SAS (serial-attached SAS) or two PCI-Express 3.0 NVMe storage ports.
It has five USB 3.0, three USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and supports 850- and 1125-watt power supplies.

Last modified on 07 April 2016
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