[1]

In late 2023 I reviewed the [2]HP Z6 G5 A workstation that at the time was built around the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 series and NVIDIA RTX Ada Generation graphics. More recently, HP has revised the Z6 G5 A workstation for the latest Threadripper PRO 9000 series and NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell graphics. HP sent over the upgraded Z6 G5 A workstation that I've been benchmarking the past few weeks. This workstation remains Linux-friendly down to convenient LVFS/Fwupd support and delivers stellar performance with the Zen 5 Threadripper and NVIDIA Blackwell combination.

[3]

The [4]HP Z6 G5 A workstation is air-cooled and its design is the same as when I checked it out back in 2023 with the prior Zen 4 Threadripper configuration. This is a premium workstation configuration for content creators, software developers, AI inferencing, and others looking to leverage many cores, high-end performance while in a tower chassis and with a noise level that is adequate for running under or on your desk.

[5]

Back in 2023 the HP Z6 G5 A base configuration was around $3240 USD for the Threadripper PRO 7945WX, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, and running Windows 11. Now in 2026 amid the high PC component prices, the base configuration is $5537 USD for the PRO 7945 WX or just $42 more for going with the Zen 5 based Threadripper PRO 9945WX, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD with Windows 11. The review configuration that HP sent out for testing was the HP Z6 G5 A workstation with the Threadripper PRO 9975WX 32-core, 8 x 16GB DDR5-5600 memory, 1TB NVMe SSD, and the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell graphics card. This configuration as of writing is retailing for about $24,935 USD.

[6]

While the review unit shipped with Microsoft Windows 11 Pro, the HP Z6 G5 A is a Linux-friendly workstation. In fact, HP even offers Ubuntu LTS pre-loaded on the workstation or a "Linux-ready" option that is without any operating system pre-loaded onto the system. Going for Ubuntu or the Linux-ready option will shave $270 USD compared to going with Windows 11 Pro.

[7]

With the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000/9000 series support being mature on Linux for a while, there were no surprises in the Linux support. Similarly, even the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell support on Linux works out-of-the-box with the Nouveau open-source driver with the GSP firmware while the best support is using the packaged NVIDIA Linux graphics driver stack. So with any modern Linux distribution it should be a pain-free experience running on the HP Z6 G5 A: it worked out fine in 2023 and is all the more polished and performance-enhanced now in 2026. Notably, the HP Z6 G5 A workstation even supports system firmware updating under Linux via LVFS/Fwupd. Awesome!

[8]

As back in 2023 having tested the HP Z6 G5 A workstation with the flagship Threadripper PRO 7995WX 96-core processor while testing this updated model being just the 32-core Threadripper PRO 9975WX, it didn't make sense comparing to the old benchmark figures from 2023. Plus with the review units being returned, unable to compare these workstations on the same 1:1 software stack.

[9]

With no other similar ~32 core workstation stack in the lab at the moment, for the HP Z6 G5 A workstation I had been testing it out on a variety of different workloads. Among those recent tests featuring this HP Z6 G5 A workstation while it was in my benchmarking lab included:

[10]Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R595 Linux Driver For Workstation Graphics Performance - If you are curious how the Nouveau/NVK fully open-source driver stack performs with the NVIDIA RTX PRO graphics on this workstation relative to the official NVIDIA Linux driver stack.

[11]GCC 16 Compiler Delivering Some Decent Performance Gains Over GCC 15 - For software developers that may be considering the HP Z6 G5 A workstation due to scaling up to high core counts and lots of RAM with the eight channel Threadripper PRO, here is a look at how the new GCC 16.1 compiler is working out on this AMD Zen 5 workstation.

[12]Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Leads Over Windows 11 In Creator Workstation Performance - Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is outperforming Microsoft Windows 11 Pro on this workstation in a variety of relevant benchmarks. No surprise there really.

[13]CachyOS Linux Performance Leading Over Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Fedora Workstation 44 - For those really wanting to maximize the performance of the HP Z6 G5 A under Linux, the Arch Linux derived CachyOS works out very well on this workstation and was delivering performance exceeding that of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS as well as the recently released Fedora Workstation 44.

[14]



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=hp-z6-g5-a-2026&image=hp_z6g5a_1_lrg

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/review/hp-z6-g5-a

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=hp-z6-g5-a-2026&image=hp_z6g5a_2_lrg

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/search/HP+Z6+G5+A

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=hp-z6-g5-a-2026&image=hp_z6g5a_3_lrg

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=hp-z6-g5-a-2026&image=hp_z6g5a_4_lrg

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=hp-z6-g5-a-2026&image=hp_z6g5a_6_lrg

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=hp-z6-g5-a-2026&image=hp_z6g5a_10_lrg

[9] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=hp-z6-g5-a-2026&image=hp_z6g5a_9_lrg

[10] https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-nouveau-nvk-may2026

[11] https://www.phoronix.com/review/gcc-16-benchmarks

[12] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-windows-11

[13] https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-ubuntu-2604-fedora-44

[14] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=hp-z6-g5-a-2026&image=hp_z6g5a_7_lrg