Will the Z420 Workstation boot from a PCIe SSD?

[DGroves]

to "SDH" so both the pcie card that hp offers for the zx20/zx40 lines and the SSD firmware is unique?

i personally have not used a non HP labled pcie 4x SATA based ssd in the above models as a boot device but was not aware that using a sm951 SATA with lenovo or dell firmware and a non HP pci 4x M.2 card will not work as a boot device am i understanding "SDH" right?

i have used the HP based sm951ssd's (both sata and nvme) in other OEM laptops with any problems

[SDH]

DGroves,

There are different version numbers....  but I have no idea what that mean electronically.  I tested a few of the different versions and got no differences.  All of the ZTD G1s I saw had no attached aluminum heatsink.  All the STD G2s had that heatsink.

The heatsink is a nice design.... one could shift it from a ZTD G2 card over to a STD G1.

My Kingston Predator M.2 AHCI-controller based stick would work equally well in either the ZTD G1 or ZTD G2 as it would in the Kingston PCIe card it came with assuming I did not change storage controller from what I discovered to work for the Predator in the Z420 and Z620 workstations.

Finally, the AHCI version of the SM951 I got off eBay that was originally from Lenovo would work fine as a storage drive but not a boot drive using the same storage controller driver that worked for the ZTD G1.  And it would not work as a boot drive under the storage controller driver that worked for the Predator, but still would work as a storage drive.

[DGroves]

ok, here's a recap of what i have found reguarding the z800/z820 systems and SSD and this should apply to all other models in these lines

both lines can boot/use a 2.5 SATA SSD and use a SATA or NVME as a data drive, but only the zx40 can boot from nvme

the z800 can not boot from the samsung 950pro/intel 750 pcie card (i have tested and confirmed this) the z820 can

the HP Turbo Z and Turbo Z G2 both use the same PCB which is a 4x card, only the G2 came from HP with the heatsink 

both use a SM951 series ssd  which comes in both SATA and NVME interfaces using custom HP firmware 

you can use the heatsink from the G2 on a std  "z" card (or make your own) or use a 3rd party heatsink

the Turbo Z card is SATA based and the G2 is  NVME, the HP Turbo Z card will only work in the listed HP models, if installed in a non listed system the pcie card and the ssd on it will not be seen

most 3rd party M.2 4x pcie cards should work in the HP workstations and use of these cards will allow using the HP branded SSD in other systems

generally the custom firmware on OEM SSD's will work on most systems, but there may be cases where the OEM firmware may prevent the SSD form being a boot drive if used in a diffrent system, but it will still work as a data drive, i have no information on which non HP OEM models/firmware revisions may or may not work on the HP workstation lines

I have not tested other model ssd's installed on the HP turbo Z card, perhaps "SDH" can add on to this