Does HP Z420 compatible with SATA M.2 or NVMe M.2 ssd?

[NS68]

Hi! I have an HP Z420 workstation. I would like to upgrade it but need to make sure that if this pc is compatible with SATA M.2 or NVMe M.2 SSD. Or should I use SATA 3 SSD?

I'll appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks in advance...

[savvy2]

its a real desktop NO PRODUCT ID # told makes answer super hard. and 100 versions exist.

I guess you want the m.2 to boot. very good Dgroves  has vast post on topic here/ and the endless hacking fixes etc ,wild.

upgrading from what form?  Desktops have vast loads possible of drives of vast types.

to be frank I off the lid and look  first, omg boots to SAS RAID card, or see M.2 PCI-express card there. omg.

looking always matters first, in all cases. even photos posted works 10x better than guessing what is inside any machine.

any hDD/SSD drive at all will work there, mounted and 2 cables plugged in.  ANY 2.5' or 3.5" SATA DRIVES

most 420s do NOT have m.2 slot others added PCI-e  card with M.2 slot and boots (results vary)

if reading all post on topic it was told that older BIOS fails for M.2.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktops-Archive-Read-Only/Simplified-Installation-of-M-2-NVMe-Drives-...

I googled for 15 minute to find the illusive v2. (I failed)

there is a version 2 mobo? for Z420s, rarely seen, by me or sold used.  a 2012 to 2015 reversion it seems to me.

this is the v1 mobo manual,, can not find v2 as bambi claims later.

the hp parts surfer shows 100s of 420 there,  vast product ID not told by you yet.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04205252

your mobo bottom right edge has 6 sata slots, I could put 6 hdd there or 6 SSD or any mix.

the far 2 right ports are fast SATA-mark6 speed.best for SSD !

v1 z420,  no m2. there. no  m.2 stud there, so any M.2 here needs outrigger card PCI-e or near.

I do not have your product Id# code so above is just 1 guess of many mobo inside. z420

photos are nice no,  so others can SEE what is there and what is NOT.

[BambiBoomZ]

NS68,

Yes, the z420 may use M.2 drives, AHCI for the boot drive and NVMe for data drives.  The z420 may boot from the Samsung 950 PRO M.2 NVMe drive with a couple of extra steps to load the drivers. The office z620 uses both M.2 AHCI to boot and NVMe drives:

HP z620_2 (2017) (R7) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / Quadro P2000 5GB _ GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB AHCI + Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB + HP/HGST Enterprise 6TB / Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound interface + 2X Mackie MR824 / 825W PSU / Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit (HP OEM) > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)

[ Passmark Rating = 6280 / CPU rating = 17178 / 2D = 819 / 3D= 12629 / Mem = 3002 / Disk = 13751 / Single Thread Mark = 2368 [10.23.18]

The easiest solution to M.2 in a z420 is to use the HP Z Turbo Drive AHCI 256GB or 512GB, or, find a Samsung SM951 M.2 AHCI and mount it  in a PCIe M.2 adapter. The Samsung 970 EVO in z620_2 NVMe data-only drive is mounted on a Lycom DT-120 adapter.

The situation changes if the system is using Windows 10, as there is a way to use M.2 NVMe as the boot drive in zX20 systems.  There is extensive discussion in other post on how that works and suggestions for particular drives that are easier to install. Look for the thread in which our friend  Mr. Raven details the way this is done and the drives selected.  However, the cost and time to install Windows 10 and choose and configure particular drives seem a bit inconvenient for the performance gain over AHCI. There are quite a number of z420's on Passmark Performance Test results using drives such as Samsung 970 EVO NVMe mostly on Windows 10, but a couple on Windows 7.

Also, be certain that the applications used will benefit from M.2. I would say that startup time is about 10-15 seconds faster and compiling and rendering will benefit some, but overall a fast 2.5" SATA SSD is not so bad.  The office has the z620_2 and z420_3 with the OS/Programs  drives cloned one to the other:

HP z420_3: (2015) (R11) Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/ Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 4TB / ASUS Essence STX + Logitech z2300 2.1 / 600W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (HP OEM ) > Samsung 40" 4K

[Passmark System Rating: = 5644 / CPU = 15293 / 2D = 847 / 3D = 10953 / Mem = 2997 Disk = 4858 /Single Thread Mark = 2384 [6.27.19]

The few seconds here and there  in the ways in which z620_2 with two M.2 is faster than the Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SATA in z420_2  is simply not important, and not really noticeable except that z620_2 seems to start up faster. One real advantage using an M.2 for the boot drive and data drive as in z620_2, as M>2 is PCIe, that will leave free the 2X SATAIII motherboard connections available for mass storage HDDs. Z420_3 has had a 6TB drive added recently. Using an HP LSI 9121-4i provides a total of 4X SATAIII connections and that is recommended if there are several drives that need high speed. The 4th, spare SATAIII connection is going to be run to a back panel eSATA port so the portable backup drive will have the best possible speed. With a USB connection, that drive was copying at 30MB/s, installed on the LSI 9212-4i it ran at 130Mb/s.

These days,  system performance concentration, especially for 3D CAD modelling use is on the single-thread performance.  Rendering times are different every time and there is no sensation of being penalized by the z420_3 times.  If the subject z420 is a Version 2 motherboard, having a Boot Block Date of 2013 instead of the first version 2011, consider a Xeon E5-1650 v2 or E5-1660 v2, adding a liquid cooler,  overclocking the CPU using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU)(XTU-5.2.0.14 Setup-exe.exe) which is very easy to use.

BambiBoomZ