Hp z640 problem with nvme

[Minh_Nhut]

Please help me . Thank all.

When i plug nvme 970 evo plus in hp turbo z adapter g2  into slot 5 , fan rear run >2500 prm, very noise.

My hp z640 use ssd sata crucial , fan rear run normal, quiet.

my hp z640 

- single cpu e5 2620 v4

- Ram 8x4=32G

- vga m2000

....

Please help me problem nvme. Thank all.

[SDH]

It should work...unless it is a "raw" drive.  Many don't know drives are usually bought new without partitioning and formatting.  When I buy used drives of any type I'll do a low level wipe, partition the wiped drive, and then do a long-type NTFS format.  For a new drive you only usually need to do the last two steps. A few ideas:

First, you want to update the BIOS to the very latest.  HP released a Z440/Z640 BIOS updater just last month.  They seem to sneak in some improvements beyond what they officially list because after that update some of my recent ZTD G1/G2 work has gone more smoothly.  You want that upgrade.  The BIOS is smart enough in these workstations to connect to the internet if BIOS is set up correctly and update BIOS from within BIOS over the internet (without an OS being loaded yet).  I still do my USB stick approach usually, harvesting the BIOS .bin file from the HP SoftPaq and nesting it down in the set of folders that needs to be made to use it that way.  It is a bit more complex than what you need to do for the ZX20 workstations, but I trust that approach the most.

You want to first set your BIOS to factory defaults... you can change things back to your personal BIOS settings after all your ZTD work is done if you have some.

1.  The HP-advised best slot for the ZTD in a Z440/Z640 is slot 4, not slot 5.  I'd shift yours up one.

2.  ZTD installs for me at least have been a bit fiddly, maybe because I run our workstations with MBR partitioning and in legacy mode, still.  If I have a SATA 2.5" form factor SSD as my boot drive and want to prep a ZTD G1 (HP AHCI M.2 SSD) or ZTD G2 (HP NVMe M.2 SSD) for becoming a documents or boot drive I'll initially put the ZTD in slot 4 of these workstations and still boot off the 2.5" form factor SATAIII SSD.  Then I clear all partitions off the M.2 drive (sometimes needing to use DiskPart via admin level CMD approach) and then do a MBR partition of that, and then a long type NTFS format.  It then is ready to be a very fast documents drive as is, or become a fast boot drive.  Between the major steps I have found doing a full shutdown and cold boot seems to keep BIOS happier...

3.  Sometimes the ZTD will not initially be recognized or cause a subtle BIOS hang.  To get out of that I'll do a 5 second power button push/hold and then cold boot.  That usually improves things.  This even can happen after fully clearing the M.2 drive of all partitions and reformatting.  It seems that BIOS can better recognize the drive after doing that, as if BIOS needed to get to know the M.2 drive initially.

4.  To do a clean OS install onto that ZTD you want no other SSD or ZTD attached internally.

5.  I have been able to get some Lenovo PM981a 512GB and 1TB M.2 sticks lightly used off eBay and use them in the ZTD G1 and G2 PCIe cards this way.  DGroves is right... there are a few differences mechanically between the cards but I've seen no functional issues at all.  I like the G2 heatsink, and replacement thermal pads such as Gelid Ultimate (15W/mK thermal conductivity) is easy to find via Amazon.   The bottom one clearly is thicker than the top one in official HP G2 cards.

I don't know yet what the best bottom/top pad thicknesses are... if anyone knows please advise.

6.  Is there a firmware update for your M.2 SSD?  There is a big 2/22 universal Lenovo SSD updater but for the Lenovo M.2 sticks but it wants to see them in a laptop with a battery check done as part of the process.

6. To clear "stuck" partitions it is handy to learn how to use CMD as admin and DiskPart built into the Windows OS.  It is not that hard to do.

Recently I've done some work with 2 ZTDs in a test Z440 running latest W10... the boot one being a ZTD G2 in slot 4 and the secondary ZTD being a G1 or G2 type PCIe inserted into slot 5.  I've used the latest Samsung Magician utility software to do some benchmarking and will post soon on the differences between the two official AHCI M.2 sticks (XP941 vs SM951) vs NVMe M.2 sticks, all 512GB, all tested in the same Z440 workstation with 8 x 4GB fastest memory... it was an exercise I've been wanting to do and the work helped me understand how to get the ZTD G1 and G2 M.2 sticks running reliably together in the same box, using a E5-1650 v4 processor.

Those 512GB and 1TB Lenovo M.2 NVMe sticks appear to have come from corporate laptops wanting bigger sticks.  I'll recycle their 300-hours-old castoffs happily.

[ZFox]

Hi,

I have the exact same problem. Two years ago I managed to fix this by turning on bifurcation on Slot 2, where the NVMe is installed. https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Z640-workstation-r...

Right now I installed a new GPU now and the problem has returned. My NVMe is in Slot 2 with bifurcation 4x4x4x4x and GPU is in Slot 5. The GPU is in that slot because of its unique liquid cooling and can't fit in Slot 2 anymore.

I tried everything you suggested, but the max-fan-problem goes only away when I remove the NVMe drive. Clearing CMOS will not help and even fresh OS can't help as the problem does not seem to be tied with the OS.

[ZFox]

Hi, did you manage to fix your problem? I have the exact same problem right now. Rear fans are at MAX

[SDH]

1. You running the latest BIOS?

2. You sure your Hard Drive LED cable from the ZTD G2 is plugged into the correct motherboard header? For the Z640 that is component #30 shown just above the rear end of the bottom slot 6 (PCI slot), from the manual. That also should be laser etched on the inside of your workstation's side cover. Also maybe try removing that cable... shot in the dark.

3. HP states the preferred slot to put a ZTD into a Z640 is slot 4.. you have yours in slot 5.  I have a Z440 running a ZTD G1 card with a HP AHCI M.2 stick in slot 5 plus a ZTD G2 card in slot 4 with a Lenovo boot NVMe M.2 stick, and yet still find these ZTDs to be a bit picky/fiddly.

4. Maybe try switching your BIOS settings to factory defaults.

At least check/fix these and try again. Good luck, and let us know if you get a solution.

[SDH]

5. Does that M.2 SSD have the latest firmware on it? Samsung Magician 7.0.1 is available and would be able to detect that if the drive can be seen either as a boot or added drive.

[ZFox]

Thanks for the quick reply!

1. Latest Bios, reflashed. Checked.

2. I don't have the ZTD G2, but instead a 3rd party PCIe NVMe card - ASUS HYPER M.2 X16 CARD V2
So no, I have not plugged anything to any wrong headers. I tried another cheap 4x NVMe card and it had the same effect.

3. I have GPU in Slot 5, because it's water cooled and can't fit in Slot 2. I have NVMe card in Slot 1 because it's PCIe 16x with 4 NVMe's. I also tried it in Slot 3 with same results. Can't fit in Slot 4 unfortunately.

4. I tried, but it's not helping.  Factory resetted, CMOS resetted, same.

5. Yep, all up to date

So the only correlation now is that when the NVMe card is in Slot 2-3 and GPU is in slot 4, the fans ramp up. I have to continue testing by trying to move the GPU. I remove the NVMe completely, the fans stop. When the GPU was in slot 2 and the NVMe in slot 5, there was no problem before. I suspected that I messed up the BIOS somehow or made it panic to make the fans go max speed.

But the "Hard Drive LED cable from the ZTD G2" sounds also intriguing. Would it really error out some BIOS logic to make the rear fans go at max speed? Do you have any more documentation on that? 

[SDH]

May I suggest:

Buy a used ZTD G2 and be very clear with the seller that you MUST have the used thermal pads and the little brass/black plastic M1.6 M.2 HP-engineered hold-down device that comes with those cards (and also the ZTD G1 cards). I can confirm that the screw used is 1.6mm threading, and both it and the entire device are easily lost if dropped. Don't ask how I know... The usual screw size is metric 2.0mm, for a M.2 stick hold-down... confusing.

That might make a difference. The actual PCIe card from HP can be from G1 or G2 era and work equally well with an AHCI or NVMe controller M.2 stick but that nice heatsink HP designed for the G2 card really works well and it still is a single slot card. Best I have tested, and they truly are different. The HP one has a circuit that will not work with a non-HP computer (unless you know the trick). I'd stick to a HP PCIe ZTD G2 card for your situation...

You can get these now for about 20.00 USD from eBay. Do not forget to communicate clearly with the seller because if they screw up you'll likely end up with what you got for free.

[ZFox]

Thanks for the suggestions, again.

I have a ton of spare M2 screws because I live in Europe, and we use metric here. 

Sorry, I'm not convinced. The problem existed even for Minh_Nhut, when they had ZTD G2 card.

Besides, those cards in Europe start around 50-60€. And I have four NVMe's, so I'd need at least a HP Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro and that starts from 300€. Besides the install manual instructs the card to be installed in Slot 5. Not sure if it's even going to work in slot 2.  http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05803541.pdf

Any other suggestions?

[SDH]

All out of ideas. I was thinking you were wanting to use a single NVMe M.2 SSD in your Z640.

For others... the Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro PCIe card is different from the ZTD G1/G2 cards. It has a PCIe x16 interface, which is longer than that used on the ZTD G1/G2 cards. See pics below. As such it needs to be plugged into a matching slot (slot 5). For the ZTD G2 the advised slots are (in order of HP's stated preference) Slot 4, Slot 5. My setup that works fine with 2 Z Turbo Drives has the 1TB Lenovo NVMe-controller M.2 SSD in a ZTD G2 card in slot 4, and a HP 512GB AHCI-controller M.2 SSD in a ZTD G1 card in slot 5. I've tried running two NVMe M.2 SSDs simultaneously and that works fine too. The ZTD G2 pic below shows the default position of the green jumpers. When I'm running a second one I just shift the top green jumper over to bridge the other pin option for it.

I've heard that some non-HP M.2 PCIe interface cards work with HP workstations and some don't... I have no experience with that. Here are those pics and I have also attached two HP FAQs for the ZTD G1 and G2 single-M.2 SSD PCIe cards for you: