Pcie Gen5?

[5urg3]

I’m super confused about this — this computer uses a W680 chipset, along with either 12th Gen or 13th Gen Intel CPUs 

both offer PCIe gen5 support, for the graphics card and m.2 storage lanes, I believe there are a total of 16 gen5 lanes available all together

So why are the m.2 slots only Pcie 4?

And why is the PCIe riser only PCIe4 as well?

was this a deliberate decision to just cheap out by HP?

[DGroves]

in a sense, yes HP did cheap out on PCI 5 as making a compatible motherboard with PCI-E 5 speed on all slots requires a more expensive motherboard design and signal shielding of the traces and more expensive parts

do you really want to pay for slots/parts that currently have no need for pci 5 speeds and a lack of pci 5 devices to fill said slots..............

[5urg3]

With a motherboard as small as the Z2 Mini G9, the costs you speak of would be in the fractions of cents.

The M.2 slot traces in particular are already within one inch of the CPU.  There is probably enough headroom to run gen5 speeds on those slots as it is, however there is no way to enable it, so it’s purely a software / bios lockout on this particular board — in my opinion.

Gen 5 storage drives came out almost a year ago.

The GPU riser would be where the actual costs would come from, however — that is a modular component.

[DGroves]

first, when you sell hundreds of thousands of a item even fraction of a cent add up quickly to large sums

second, when designing a board for high speed signals, yes even millimeters can make a difference between a working board and a unstable or non working board

gen 5 ssd's are cutting edge and as this is written only 5 or less are currently on the market and quite expensive offering no real world speed increased over gen 3 or 4 ssd's

perhaps you might want to spend some time researching this subject before stating it's a simple bios lockout in your opinion

https://www.eetasia.com/18061502-pcie-45-higher-bandwidth-but-at-what-cost/

https://www.rambus.com/blogs/pci-express-5-vs-4/