HP Z Turbo Drive “G1” Questions

[lastmile77]

I’m looking to upgrade the SSD boot drive in my Z620 (V2 motherboard, full specs below). 

I am considering a HP Z Turbo Drive (512 GB or 1 TB). Luckily I did some reading on these forums before grabbing one from eBay.

Questions:

1. Apparently only the original, “G1”, version will work in a Z620. What’s the part number for that version? I keep finding G2 versions on the web or part numbers that I can’t be sure belong to the G1 version.

2. Is there a cable (I assume it’s for the drive activity light on the front of the case) with the G1 version? If so what’s the part number? 

3. Will the heatsink from the G2 version fit on the G1? Any real benefit? I just think it looks cool. 🙂

4. Are the following statements correct?

a. The Z Turbo Drive G1 is highly unlikely to work (as a boot drive) in a non-HP PC. 

b. The G1 will work witha  non-HP AHCI M.2 SSD but not with a nVME SSD. 

5. Any recommended alternative, bootable PCIe-based SSDs for my Z620? I see really cheap PCIe cards but I don’t want to end up with something that has compatibility problems or is just junk.

Advice is much appreciated!

This forum led me to build my slightly unconventional liquid-cooled Z620 and has been a great source of info on this workstation.

Z620 V2

Intel E5-1660 V2 3.7 GHz CPU

Z420 Liquid CPU cooler

32 GB DDR3 ECC Reg RAM (2x 16 GB)

Crucial MX100 512 GB 2.5” SSD boot drive

Western Digital Red 4 TB data drive

8 GB Sapphire Pulse AMD RX580 graphics card

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

[SDH]

Here's your answers, but I'll need to do a followup post after I can get to some notes:

1.  There are a number of part numbers both by generations of the G1, assembly part numbers vs spares part numbers (for the same exact part), and yet you'll see the pattern that the part numbers for the G1 are lower than for the G2.

2.  That cable does exist, and it is just a 2-wire cable.  Same thing was used by the LSI cards to get drive activity info over to the motherboard.  I'll get you the part number but it is nothing special and any 2-wire cable with proper end plugs would do.  It was pretty much a waste of time because the G1 does not put out drive activity signals like a HDD does.  Who looks at that anyway, but I do at times.  Problem is that the G1 puts out way less signals that light the drive activity LED out front than a HDD so for me it became a low priority.

3.  Yes it does, and cooler is usually better.  The thermal pads get real tight on the original HP M.2 card, so be careful.  The G2 drives needed those to prevent heat throttling but the G1 M.2 is different and does not.  Don't spend too much on it.  I run my G1s naked and they never throttle down.  Cool, but pretty much a waste of money unless you get it for free.  I got a great deal on a G2 card with no M.2 so I tried it out.  The G1 M.2 runs just fine in the G2 PCIe card with or without the heatsink.

4a.  How about 100% unlikely?  So, the answer is yes.

4b.  You're talking about taking off the M.2 drive and just using the HP G1 PCIe card, with two questions in one question.  So, 4b1 is yes (I did that) and 4b2 is I don't know.

5.  I only know one alternative that will work reliably, the original Kingston Predator M.2 drive that I have posted about in here.  It is not being made any more but can be found at 3 sizes IIRC.  I discovered that required a very specific Intel storage controller driver that I detail in the post, and if you used the alternative that HP has on their Z620 driver download site it will blue screen at the moment of booting beyond BIOS.  One works and the other does not.  Kingston did not know that.  I got no swag out of the discovery.  There are other AHCI Samsung M.2 drives that may or may not work in these.... it is a M.2 firmware/workstation BIOS thing.  My non-HP Samsung M.2 AHCI drive does not show as a boot drive (from Lenovo originally) but DGrove's does.  Mine shows up only as a data drive but not as a boot drive.  My Predator solution was 100% reliable once I figured it out, both in the Z600s and in the Z620s.

6.  Not what you want to hear:  a modern SATA III SSD such as the latest Samsungs or Intel 545s SATA SSDs feel about as fast.  The Predator shined in the ZX00 SATA II generation of workstations but now with the SATA III generations it is not as big of a benefit.  I'll learn more about the later M.2 G2 version as I proceed with my Z440 how-low-can-I-pay project.

[DGroves]

just a quick follow up, as "SDH" covered the most important points

the HP turbo Z card (G1/G2) is the exact same card, the only diffrence is the SSD installed by HP the G1 is SATA and the G2 is NVME only the "G2" cards with nvme were sold with a heatsink by HP but you can use the heatsink on a G1 card using a SATA SSD

the HP card is unique in that it has jumpers to allow up to 4 of these cards to be installed in the z820/z840 and several cards in the z4xx/z6xx lines

the HP card does not appear to work in a non HP z workstation, but the SSD's on the card can be removed and inserted into a generic pci-e card and  used in just about any computer that supports  a x4 interface

Update: 1/7/20  HP designed a circuit on the turbo card that prevents it from working on non HP z workstations, this hardware lock can be bypassed by removing or cutting the trace (s) going to the "Q1" transistor beware q1 is a surface mount transistor (quite tiny) near the drive ID jumper block if unskilled in this type of rework leave it alone!!

"SDK" is correct that something like a samsung 850 pro SATA drive will work fine for most people  the benchmark numbers posted for the fast sm951 drives are only of use if you do large file xfers...... in all other cases the fast samsung SATA drive will match the pricy pci-e x4 based ssd's so save your money and place it towards a larger SATA drive rather than a smaller x4 based ssd is my advice

last, i'm currently testing the adaptec ASR-71605 SAS/SATA cards in the z820/z800 as they have the ability to match or exceed the pci-e based ssd's (AHCI-SATA or NVME) and allow much larger SSD based drive sizes via raid modes or plain "RAW" JBOD setups using software raid

Update: 1/7/20

I have finished testing and for most people doing the REFIND+DUET nvme boot loader is a better way unless you require several large capacity  mech drives along with a boot SSD

the ASR-17605/asr-6805 on the z820/z800 while close in speed to a nvme boot drive using REFIND+DUET  offers no real benefit for most home users

[lastmile77]

Thanks SDH and DGroves

Based on your responses and reading more posts about these cards, it sounds like finding a cheap Z Turbo Drive on eBay wouldn’t be too difficult...but I’d either be stuck buying a used SSD or paying a high price for a new, discontinued product (eg the Samsung 850). Correct me if I’m wrong.

I want a bigger boot/application drive and to free up the drive bay my current SSD is occupying. I’ve got a Blu-ray burner in the top 5.25” bay and a card reader in the lower one. I’m wondering if my best best is to stick with a 2.5” SATA SSD, stick it to the bottom of the optical drive (I’ve used sticky-backed Velcro to hold SSDs in odd places in other systems) and use the power and SATA cables that I think are in place for a second optical drive. I’d prefer to save a PCIe slot if I’ll be limited to SATA III speeds.

In all my searching I came across Fusion IO IOdrive2 PCIe cards on eBay. $150 or less for the 1.2 TB versions. Not bootable but potentially useful for video capture/editing without a RAID. 

[SDH]

Don't forget you have only two 6Gb/s SATA ports on the Z620 one of which you'd want your SATA III current generation boot SSD attached to.  Those are the two gray ports along the bottom right edge of the motherboard.  All the rest are 3Gb/s.  You can see the attached pic of the board architecture when a moderator releases it.  It's in the Service Guide also. 

Stamped in the vertical metal by the drive drawers are the default drive designations of 0, 1, 2 bottom up.  The BlindMate cables from the rear of each drive bay can be switched around on the motherboard as you know, and by default the bottom drawer 0 cable normally would lead from your boot 6Gb/s SSD over to the 6Gb/s gray SATA port 0 at the bottom farthest right corner of the motherboard.

3 of your 4 memory channels are empty.  Better to get to 32GB of RAM by using 8 x 4GB of the HP 1866 MHz RAM to optimize memory performance and to match the max speed of your processor.  Our favorite HP workstation engineer has emphasized how much a benefit that "fill 'em all equally" approach is, and how few know it.

[lastmile77]

I’d forgotten that only two of the SATA connections were 6 Gb/s hopefully I’d be paying enough attention to see that when I opened it up. 

I’ll have to look into what it will cost to buy more small RAM sticks after selling off the 16 GBs. I just read the Z620 memory confit document. I had two (slower) processors in the Z620 and I think that’s when I bought the RAM but 16 GB isn’t listed in the configurations for even a dual processor system so I don’t know why I did that! The RAM is 1866 so I did get that right. 

I still have my liquid-cooled Z800 sitting idle. I get tempted to max out the processors (X5690?) and return all the parts Ive stripped from it but it seemed so much louder and hotter than the Z620 - 2 130W processors vs 1 so there’s that...

[SDH]

Regarding that drive activity cable.... officially it is 225537-009.  Nothing special.... just two wires and female slip on connectors each end.  The "pitch" is the o.c. distance of the two pins each end.... it is either 0.1" (2.54 mm) or 0.114" (2.90 mm).... you can measure that on the card.  The official HP one is too expensive unless you got lucky.  These are nothing special at all.

I'd search for STA-IDC2PIN18 from StarTech.com first.

It is a LED circuit so if no flashes just rotate one of the two connectors 180 degrees.  And, don't expect the normal number of LED flashes as you'd see from a HDD.

[flamearama]

I have been in your situation.

I recently abandoned my attempt to get a Z420 to boot from a PCI-E NVMe drive and bought a Z440.

Supposedly it can be done with an HP Z Turbo card or sometimes with a generic card and a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drive, but I don't want to spend the time.

The Z440 worked instantly with a generic card and a Samsung 950 Pro loaded with win 10 Pro workstation.

There are a world of adapters on ebay to help with your various issues.

The boot drive issue.

There are PCI-E cards which can mount standard 2.5" hard drives, and connect using a SATA data cable. I have seen cards which will hold as many as four drives. Any of the drives can be bootable or a RAID  or whatever. This would release the 3.5" bays for other drives.

There are PCI-E cards which hold up to four MSATA drives. They function the same as M.2 SATA drives

You can buy PCI-E cards which hold up to two M.2 SATA drives. 

A PCIe card with a SATA M.2 drive uses a SATA port on the motherboard and plugs in with a data cable like any other hard drive. This will boot in just about every computer there is.

There are PCI-E cards which mount up to five M.2 NVMe drives. Getting a NVMe drive to boot in an older computer can be very difficult, but they will usually work as storage drives. I won't get into that discussion here.

There are cards which hold 1 SATA AND 1 NVMe drive. I usually buy these because they cost about the same as single drive cards.

I have a card which hold 1 SATA, 1 MSATA and 1 NVMe drive.

I have ordered an HP Z Turbo card to test what works best.

The 5.25 bay issue.

As previously mentioned if you are using one or more of your 5.25" bays for a hard drive, a PCI-E adapter card can give it back.

DO NOT STICK AN SSD TO AN OPTICAL DRIVE. They get very hot and that is not good for the SSD. Pick somewhere else.

There are also many adapters for the 5.25" bay including up to four 2.5" drives, card reader plus two 2.5" drives and many variations of hot swap adapters. I have one that will install into two 5.25" bays and turn them into three 3.5" hot swap drives.

I am installing an adapter in my Z440 which holds a card reader with four USB 3.0 ports and a laptop(9.5mm) slot load DVD drive. The Z440 has a spare USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 port on the motherboard and comes with a dedicated laptop bay on the front which I have swapped to a slot load DVD. This gives me two DVD burners and an empty bay for something else.