HP Z230 with Z Turbo Drive G1 Slow

[chrismcv]

Hi,

I recently purchased a z230 workstation, and added a HP MS-4365 Z Turbo Drive G1 PCIe - M.2 SSD adapter to it. I use a Seagate Firecuda 510 NVMe SSD in the adapter.

I'm experiencing poor IO speeds, nearly an order of magnitude worse than expected. e.g. Sequential Reads on CrystalDiskMark/fio are around 370-400MB/s, whereas the disk and adapter should be capable of 2500MB/s or more.

I've tried on both linux and Windows, with similar results, with makes me think something hardware related is at play.

I've updated BIOS and firmware as far as possible, and not sure where else to go.

Help appreciated.

Chris

[SDH]

Hey Chris.... sorry for your troubles.  So, you bought a HP PCEe ZTD G1 card that was meant to serve the ZX20 and Z230 generation via specifically only several HP certified AHCI-controller-based M.2 stick, with special HP firmware loaded into that stick to match the special BIOS modifications HP did for these workstations for them to be able to work with those specific HP M.2 sticks.

And you're wondering why a NVMe M.2 stick that does not have special HP firmware installed to allow it to work with its NVMe controller that HP never was involved with and did not engineer for?  Are you aware that the NVMe sticks that HP developed firmware for that mesh with the BIOS that HP developed BIOS for are for the ZX40 generation and above?

I'm assuming you want to boot off of your NVMe M.2 stick?

I'm hoping you can return that NVMe M.2 stick and get a HP AHCI based controller M.2 stick that was designed by HP to work with your workstation and that HP PCIe card you bought.  Otherwise, trade it in for a nice fast modern SATA 2.5" form factor SSD.  Those do work very well... I'd currently recommend a Samsung 870 EVO, 1TB because I believe your time is worth money, and the path you are on will truly waste a lot of both.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16480/the-samsung-870-evo-ssd-1tb-4tb-review/6

[DGroves]

you also need to keep in mind that the market speak "up to 3450/3200MB/s sequential read/write speeds" for the 1TB ssd is market speak for a number you will never achieve in the real world what counts is the STEADY STATE SPEED, a number consumer drives never publish because it's so much lower than a theoretical peak speed

next your lower numbers are due to the z230 only having a pci-e 2.0 x4 slot (the only 3.0 is the x16 slot for video)

pci-e 2.0 is only capable of half the speed of a pci-e 3.0 bus

• 1 PCIe Gen 3 x 16 slot
• 1 PCIe Gen 2 x 4 slot/x16 connector
• 1 PCIe Gen 2 x 1 slot/x4 connector
• 1 PCIe Gen 2 x 1 slot
• 1 PCI slot 32-bit

the sm951 ahci ssd was a enterprise/datacenter ssd, not a consumer model, that HP certified for the zx20 workstation line and while it could work in non HP devices, compatibility was not guaranteed ( i know because i ran into this with a Lenovo laptop)

enterprise/datacenter ssd's published numbers are usually lower than the so called consumer performance/gaming ssd'd but those enterprise/datacenter ssd's will actually reach or exceed the posted numbers during sustained data xfers

[chrismcv]

Thanks @SDH.

1) Is there a list of compatible M2 sticks somewhere? I haven't been able to find one, and I don't fancy buying a used one.

2) I wasn't particularly wanting to boot of it.

[SDH]

You will have to do the hard work... You want to search the net to find pictures of the actual HP PCIe M.2 adapter card and harvest the HP part number off of the HP M.2 stick on the card.  It is handy that the G1 ZTD did not use the aluminum heatsink over the stick... you'll see that on the G2 ZTD, which is NVMe based.

You'd want to look for the 256GB and the 512GB versions.  As DGroves has posted here HP ran out of the earlier original ones and needed to go back to Samsung and get another later faster M.2 stick I believe also in 256 and 512 versions.  His enterprise worked with these through the two generations.

Which brings me to... why do you even want to do this when you hear that your workstation has no available PCIe generation 3 slots to offer for that interface card?  Your PCIe generation 2 slots run at truly 1/2 the speed that you could get from a spare PCIe generation 3 slot in the Z420 workstations.... get a version 2 of the Z420 so it can run v2 processors if you choose to make this upgrade.  We have posted here exactly how to tell the difference between the v1 and the v2 Z420/Z620 workstations.

I'm not going to do the math, but I'd bet a beer that the SATA SSD I recommended hooked to your Z230's SATA3 boot port 0 (all SATA ports in that box are 6Gb/s) would give you better performance than a correct HP M.2 stick would run in in your card plugged into one of the PCIe generation 2 slots you have available.  It sure would be easier... and it would work.

Personally I'd buy a Z420 v2 and upgrade that if you are on a tight budget, and a Z440 if you have extra cash to spare. Go take a look in eBay for Z420 bare bones or Z440 bare bones... with the Z440 you don't have to think about the version 1 vs version 2 motherboard issue.  Those all run the v3 and v4 processors.  I bought a used E5-1650 v4 processor when I did this for a project a few years back... about 150.00 USD today.  The Z440 will get you W11 compatibility too.

[DGroves]

i personally recommend a mid range SATA ssd for the z230, but if you want a orig HP card/SSD pm me i have the original Samsung xp941 ( less than 50hr usage) and the ahci sm951 in the 256 size 

the xp941 is a pci-e 2.0 x4 pci-e and the sm951 is a pci-e 3.0 x4 (will work in a pci-e 3 x2 config but speeds will be slower)

https://www.anandtech.com/show/8006/samsung-ssd-xp941-review-the-pcie-era-is-here/2

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9396/samsung-sm951-nvme-256gb-pcie-ssd-review

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/high-end-sata-ssd-shootout-samsung-860-pro-vs-kingston-dc500...

[BambiBoomZ]

Chrismcv,

If I understand the original post, the idea is is to use a Seagate FireCuda M.2 NVMe as a data only drive.  This is not complicated.  Consider buying a Lycom DT-120 M.2 to PCIe adapter, plus a thermal pad mounted Aluminum or Copper heatsink, and installing in the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot- it's the same length as the GPU lot but is wired as x4- the required number of lanes for M.2. 

Results should be quite good, but not the maximum performance possible in a PCIe 3.0 slot.

If you want to use an M.2 as a boot drive in the z230 this is possible with certain drives.  Here are Passmark Performance Test results for M.2 boot drives in the z230:

Samsung PM981 256GB NVMe = 14263

Samsung SM 951 256GB AHCI = 12732 , 12506, 7110

Samsung 950 PRO NVMe =  10415, 10170,

Samsung XP941 M.2 256GB = 9409, 8316, 8053, 7981, 7091, 6718, 6668, 6602 

The requirements for configuring these drives will have a range of difficulty, moreso with the NVMe drives.  The SM951 AHCI will be the easiest and appears to have better results than the XP941. Whatever the choice, it would be installed in the PCIe2.0  x16 , wired as x4 slot.  The data drive(s) would be conventional mechanical 3.5" HD or 2.5" SATA SSD on SATA connection.

Compare the results from the Samsung SM951 256GB AHCI with the Disk score for that drive in the z420 listed below- which is running on all 6-cores at 4.6GHz and a Disk score of 13905 on PCIe 3.0- and it's possible to see that with the Samsung SM951 AHCI, the 2.0 slot score in a z230 running at 4.0GHz of 12732 is not a dramatic penalty.

BambiBoomZ

HP z620_2 (2017) (R9) > Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.6GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) /GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / Samsung SM951 M.2 512GB AHCI + Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB + 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 = 6412 / CPU rating = 16283 / 2D = 846 / 3D= 13735 / Mem = 3107 / Disk = 14614 / Single Thread Mark = 2550 [7.3.21]

HP z420_3: (2015) (R12) Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.6GHz) / z420 Liquid cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/ Samsung SM951 M.2 256GB AHCI + Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB / ASUS Essence STX + Logitech z2300 2.1 / 600W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (HP OEM ) > Samsung 40" 4K
[Passmark System Rating: = 6186 / CPU = 15845 / 2D = 819 / 3D = 11216 / Mem = 3047 Disk = 13905 /Single Thread Mark = 2525 [7.3.21]