Z2 G4 SFF M.2 nvme pcie adapter

[locutus_of_borg]

Machine in question is a Z2 G4 SFF with i5-8500.  Will a generic (the kind that is just a pass-through, without any sort of on-board controller) pci-e m.2 adapter card work for adding more nvme ssd storage? It won't be used as a boot drive.  Both of the board's m.2 slots are already populated.

[NonSequitur777]

@locutus_of_borg,

Welcome to our HP community forum!

Yes, you could indeed use all M.2 NVMe SSDs in each of your HP Z2 Small Form Factor G4 Workstation four PCIe slots (one PCIe Gen3 x16 slot, two x PCIe Gen3 x4 slots, and 1 PCIe Gen3 x16 wired as an x4 slot):

Using M.2 NVMe to PCIe 3.0/4.0 x4 adapter cards (using the low-profile PCIe bracket), such as this purchase example:

Hope this was helpful.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[DGroves]

yes, windows 8-11 support using a nvme drive as a data (non boot) device

using a pci-e m.2 adapter card will work fine, however there are differences in the cards build quality better cards will have onboard power conditional circuits try to stay with major name brand adapters

i recommend the HP Z turbo card if you feel comfortable modifying it by removing transistor "Q1" which allows it to work on any system

https://www.ebay.com/itm/334517765781?itmmeta=01HX3C3VV5255A3ETXTQJ4B4EN&hash=item4de2d00695:g:LLAAA...

[locutus_of_borg]

Thank you!

[locutus_of_borg]

Thank you for the info.  As far as the Z drive vs a basic adapter, what benefits would I see with the Z drive? There's no critical data going to be stored on the drive in the adapter card, if that matters. Just more storage for my steam library.  It's a living room gaming/htpc setup with a low profile rtx 3050 in the top x16 slot, 

[locutus_of_borg]

Thank you for the info. As far as the Z drive vs a basic adapter, what benefits would I see with the Z drive? There's no critical data going to be stored on the drive in the adapter card, if that matters. Just more storage for my steam library. It's a living room gaming/htpc setup with a low profile rtx 3050 in the top x16 slot.

[SDH]

HP introduced an unnecessary level of confusion into their naming of the "Z Turbo Drive G2". Their literature refers to that as a PCIe card, but also as M.2 NVMe-controller SSD sticks without the card. The issue is that those are quite different pieces of hardware and yet in the QuickSpecs documents they don't clearly differentiate between the two.

Regarding the card issue, which you are asking about:

The ZTD G2 PCIe card is technically identical to a ZTD "G1" card except that it has a nice quality quite large heatsink included atop the M.2 stick. Both have several high-quality capacitors to improve data integrity during transient power fluctuations. You generally don't see this in generic PCIe M.2 cards. HP sold these as "loss leaders" to capture integration of their M.2 sticks at HP prices, and as such they are highly engineered with quality components throughout. They are now sold at very reasonable recycled prices on eBay, etc. 

We prefer these over all no-name or lower engineered M.2 PCIe interface cards. As DGroves notes they were engineered to work only on HP workstations which have BIOS enabled to recognize them and turn off an auto-shut-down of the card if it was on a non-HP motherboard, or on a HP motherboard that did not have the ability to recognize the card and turn off the auto-shut-down. A "Q1-out" mod was discovered which allowed these cards to be usable in all other workstations of all types, posted about here in this forum (and my technique is documented here also).

That takes me under 1 minute using an Exacto knife to remove one tiny transistor.

The cost of these HP cards recycled is low, the quality is high, and I'd recommend trying one in your HP workstation and letting us know if that worked. I have these working perfectly, both modified and unmodified in our Z440 and Z640 workstations and also in my Z4 G4 workstation. Of interest, there also is a HP "Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro" PCIe card that allows one to run two M.2 sticks through one PCIe slot if that slot has bifurcation enabled in BIOS. The slot needs to be at least a PCIe3 x8 or x16 true electrical lanes slot... I doubt your x16 slot has that capability nor that you'd be willing to give up its bandwidth for your video card even if you could.

However, you could go into your BIOS and see if that PCIe3 x16 slot has an option to turn bifurcation on. If that is present, then it is likely you could run a ZTD Dual Pro the way I do with 2 M.2 sticks in place.

Those ZTD Dual Pro cards work very well in our Zx40 and Z4 Gx workstations. We like to use those with their primary (upper) M.2 stick as the OS/apps/boot drive and the secondary (lower) M.2 stick as a documents drive ... very fast combo because the two sticks are in close proximity, side-by-side.

Bonus speed tip: PCIe4 rated M.2 quality sticks work faster than PCIe3 rated M.2 quality sticks in PCIe3 rated sockets in the HP workstations noted above.

[SDH]

A bit of clarification to what NonSequitur777 noted in his post above showing the 4 PCIe slots. Here is a picture of the 7 total PCIe sockets on your motherboard in more detail from HP's web page on the Z2 G4 SFF workstation:

7 total PCIe sockets...

The 2 dedicated M.2 sockets are PCIe3 generation technology, and both have 4 true electrical lanes... Your M.2 sticks will run at full speed in those (assuming they have at least a PCIe3 controller on board). Current M.2 technology needs 4 true electrical lanes to run at their full speed and can also run fine in slots with more than 4.

Note also that you have two PCIe3 x16 sockets that are x16 in their form factor but only the upper one has 16 true electrical lanes. The lower one has only 4 true electrical lanes. However, that is good enough to fully serve one M.2 stick in an adapter card. Generally, you'd want to save the better (top) socket for your fast high bandwidth video card.

Finally note that your two remaining PCIe3 sockets do have a x4 form factor but that each only has 1 true electrical lane and thus will be crippled severely if used with a M.2 adapter card inserted.

So, that lower PCIe3 x16 mechanical x4 electrical slot is your only good slot to use a M.2 adapter card in if you want full M.2 speed performance (assuming you want to save your highest bandwidth slot for your video card).

EDIT: Regarding the "Q1-out" modification. I've had the opportunity to try the HP Z Turbo Drive G1 and G2 cards on multiple HP workstations and even HP business class PCs and have found that in some cases even if there is no documentation in the QuickSpecs that those cards will work (without modification) they may. My advice is to try one first without the mod. One HP workstation family that I know that they won't work in without the mod is the Z400/Z600/likely Z800. With the mod you can use a NVMe M.2 stick in those ZTD cards as a very fast documents drive in a spare PCIe2 (fastest those have) at least x4 true electrical slot, under W10 and W11. You can't boot from those for all practical purposes, however.

EDIT 2: I used to think that the ZTD cards might work only with HP M.2 sticks but that is not the case. I've gotten recycled low hours NVMe HP Lenovo and Dell M.2 sticks, Samsung recent high speed PRO sticks, WD_Black sticks, up to 2TB, off eBay for testing purposes and all have worked fine in these cards. Lenovo has a single up-to-date robust firmware upgrade utility for its M.2 sticks. Samsung Magician and WD's M.2 utility also work well. I prefer the ZTD G2 for its excellent heatsink over the hotter NVMe sticks and its single-slot width.