HP Z820 Motherboard & NVMe Compatibility?

[JohnBA · Accepted solution]

Thanks guys,

I addition, the E5645 6 Core Xeon (with hyperthreading) CPUs from the HP Z800 are not compatible with the sockets on the HP 820 mother board.

This project is scrapped based on that issue.  It simply does not pencil if the CPUs cannot be re-used on the 820 board.

Best,

John

[Big_Dave]

@JohnBA

OK John, it's time for the 840 as I had previously suspected only had the NVMe support.  It's time for new Xeons anyways, right?

[JohnBA]

Well, the system I have is still doing the job I need it to do.  It would just be nice to have an ultra fast PCIe SSD drive working with it.  As this cannot be accomplished in the manner I had hoped, it will be necessary to skin the cat a different way!  There is always more than one way.

I really appreciate your efforts Dave!

Best,

John

[exiob]

Hi, I reached this thread trying to understand if Z600 supports Nvme tech. Obiously not. But.....using Passmark test software and selecting the  baseline on z600 I found an astonishing performance on one  of the Z600  using ramdisk. This may be of your interest. Anyway  I have no skill to understand how is possible to boot from a ram disk on a stand alone machine (apart network booting from a server ramdisk).

[JohnBA]

Hello exiob,

There are issues with ramdisk as well when it comes to interfacing with older systems, though I agree with you.  It is a cool technology.

Here is the solution I came up with to achieve both speed and data security for older media heavy systems:

1)  Star Tech 6G SSD Controller card (PCIe 2.0 based) StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express SATA 6 Gbps eSATA Controller Card - Dual Port PCIe SATA III Card - 2 Internal/2 External Card PEXESAT322I

2)  SanDisk  SanDisk Extreme PRO 960GB SATA 6.0GB/s 2.5-Inch 7mm Height Solid State Drive (SSD) with 10-Year Warranty- SDSSDXPS-960G-G25

3)  Star Tech 6G RAID 1 Controller card (PCIe 2.0 based) StarTech.com 4 Port PCI Express 2.0 SATA III 6Gbps RAID Controller Card with HyperDuo SSD Tiering - PCIe SATA 3 Controller Adapter

4)  4 Toshiba 3.5 inch 3TB 720 RPM HDD's in RAID 1 (Striped Mirror) yields a very fast 6G RAID that optimizes both speed and data recovery Toshiba 3.5-Inch 3TB 7200 RPM SATA3/SATA 6.0 GB/s 64MB Hard Drive DT01ACA300

The SanDisk SSD can be used to launch the operating system at bootup according to StarTech using their controller.  The SSD will also hold all the media software, etc.

The RAID will hold all the data.  SSD drives have a limited number of writes, so this configuration gives the best of both worlds.  It will also work as long as the system has two available PCIe slots.

I have not completed the installation yet, but the parts are on the way.  According to StarTech, this should all work well.  I will update this post when the installation is completed with a report of performance.

[bulls4ever]

does the PSU (in my case 850W) from the Z800 works on the Z820?

[MtothaJ]

The Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drive works fine as a boot / Windows installation drive in the Z420 (on both the 2011 and 2013 bootblock systems). I am using a cheap $5 m.2 to PCIe adapter card from Ali Express. Operating system is Win 10 Pro.

At the time of installing Windows its worth to also install the x64 Samsung drivers since these work the best.