Z Turbo drive G2

[SDH]

When you say "Samsung SSD980 NVMe M.2 SSD" I assume you mean the consumer "Samsung 980 Pro" which has a NVMe controller. What slot  in your Z800 did you put your "Q1-out" modified Z Turbo Drive G2 into (with that 980 Pro M.2 stick in it)? Or, did you mean the Samsung 950 Pro DGroves wrote about?

Please confirm you did the Q1-out modification we talked about, and how did that go? How many GB is that Samsung 980 Pro?

Did you do anything else with the BIOS of the Z800? Almost all of us would say this could not work unless you discovered something about the Samsung 980 Pro that none of us knew existed. Please update us, and thanks.

p.s. Based on your answers I'm ready to go buy a Samsung 980 Pro to experiment with in my Z600. I want to buy the same M.2 SSD you have...

[Yannis6]

Ha ha , this is so funny. I hope my workstation won't end up burned tomorrow morning!

I put the Z Turbo G2 (with the q1 transistor removed, as you mentioned)  at slot 5. I did nothing with my BIOS, which is:

System BIOS: 786G5 v03.61

Previously i had a pcie card with a SATA III SSD (2.5') installed. I don't think that i had done something with my BIOS in the past, either. If you need any confirmation for my BIOS settings , please let me know.

See attached the NVMe drive and the Z turbo G2 installed in my computer.

Next step to install the LSI 9260-8i raid controller.....

Z turbo G2 (Q1 removed)Samsung 980 recognised on Win10Samsung NVMe

[SDH]

That is very interesting, and helpful.  Here is a good review on that type of Samsung M.2 SSD:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16504/the-samsung-ssd-980-500gb-1tb-review

It is not a Samsung 980 PRO... interesting read. AnandTech is one of the best review sites. I'll get one and post back after it gets here. It will be interesting to see if Samsung snuck in the necessary code to allow this to run as a boot drive like the 950 PRO in a non-UEFI workstation like the Zx00 versions... I doubt that. Yours is a1TB stick and there is a 500 and a 250GB version. What you have accomplished is valuable to build on. I recall DGroves making a clear differentiation between if a M.2 stick can be booted vs just be used as a documents drive. Regardless, what you show is significantly better than the performance a SATAII SSD or HDD documents drive can achieve (which is exactly what you were looking for).

The best speed from this in a Z800 will be if your ZTD G2 modified adapter card is in a PCIe Gen2 slot with x4 (or greater) electrical lanes. It might also work in a more generic adapter but maybe that ZTD card from HP has some special magic inside. In my Z600 the top #1 slot is a PCIe Gen2 holding my HP USB3 2x2 card. Next one down is a PCIe Gen2 x16 video slot. Next is a PCIe Gen1 slot that is empty. Next down is the second PCIe Gen2 x16 lower video slot that holds my Q1-transistor-out modified ZTD G2 card with the Predator card in that, as the boot drive. Then come the 2 bottom PCI (not PCIe) legacy slots. Your Z800 has more PCIe Gen2 slots than I do (see below). I've run out and I'd hate to lose my USB3 capability just to have a somewhat faster documents drive.

You have more slots....

You may be interested to know that I have one Samsung 980 PRO M.2 NVMe stick here, which is quite different from your M.2 stick. It is in the upper of two M.2 sockets of a Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro in my testbed Z440... I just ran Crystal Disk Mark like you did. The 980 PRO M.2 SSD rates a little over 2x the speeds you showed, but that is expected in a Z440 that is souped up, and the PCIe slot there is PCIe Gen3. I'll add a pic of that tomorrow. Thanks for the added info.

[Yannis6]

Thank you SDH.

i am trying to find a HP usb 3.0 adapter to put into z800, too.

One last question. What is the purpose of the 2pin cable that came up with my z turbo g2 card?  I have an empty 2 pin slot in my motherboard ( hdd led) so I think to place the cable there. But I do not know the correct “direction“ of the cable. 

[DGroves]

the HP z800 does not require the  turbo z"q1" transistor mod, the card will work fine as a boot/data drive as is just remember for boot you need a AHCI based ssd and the z800 boot drive must be under 3.84 GB (when formatted)

many 4GB grives meet this requirement check the drive makers model spec sheet to confirm

rather than the LSI raid card card i strongly recommend the adaptec ASR-6805 or better yet the ASR-71605 card while both work well the 7xxx series is more future proof just get one with the cache module/battery backup (supercap)

here's one that's a great price!!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/195865435323?epid=20035934285&hash=item2d9a7d5cbb:g:0tYAAOSwyTFlZ9Mk

the 71605 has the same feature set as the z800 onboard raid, but as it has battery backup and cache it's a extremely fast raid/sata III 6GBps card that can run non raid drives and raid at the same time and if you use male to male sata adapters the card can connect to the z800's 4 internal hotswap bays

as for USB 3, i use cards that have onboard plx chips that allow each port on the card to run at full USB 3.0 speed (5GBps) instead of the cheaper cards that share a single 5GBps speed across all devices which will really cripple xfers if more than one usb high speed device is connected (like usb based Hard Drives)

Startech PEXUSB3S44V

or

Highpoint RocketU 1344x (x = A to D board revisions) i personally use both, and prefer the highpoint

search on ebay, for used card's they sometimes appear quite cheap

[Yannis6]

DGroves

Thank you for your response.

Without the q1 transistor removal the Z800 didn't even recognized the Z turbo g2 card.

I do not want the NVMe for doot disk. Just for a secondary disk with the highest possible speed.

Thanks for the USB info. I might go for these two proposal but i want the card to have adapter for the two front usb ports, too.

Just like the HP cards with [Personal Information Removed]

[SDH]

Yannis6,

DGroves has a tremendous amount of experience with these workstations but agree he appears to have mixed up the Z800 with what does work without modification on the Z820. I, like you, could not get the unmodified Z Turbo Drive G1 or G2 cards to be recognized by both of my Z600 v2 workstations here until I got the Q1 transistor removed during my project to use the Kingston Predator M.2 card as a boot M.2 drive. My understanding is that the Zx00 workstations don't know how to send out the signal to those cards that allows the cards to work (an issue you circumvent when you remove the Q1 transistor). Makes sense... the ZTD cards did not exist when HP was engineering the Zx00 generation.

Regarding the HP 2x2 USB3 cards that you provided the two part numbers for (assembly and spares part numbers) some of those are available on eBay currently from the Alan guys for about 20.00, new including shipping in US. You might be across the pond, however. My post on that project is HERE. Any 5.25" to 3.5" floppy/media card reader adapter would work to hold the Akasa front 2 USB3 port device I used. Startech has a nice rear-USB3-port-to-front desktop if you want to use a card that does not have a front ports header (USB3SEXTDKB... sure is easier to find). There is a blue or black USB3 earlier version from them I like the quality of better.

I've found that even with W11 23H2 the USB3 connection to an inserted drive is not maintained through sleep. I just unplug the inserted thumb drive and replug in that case.

EDIT: Two pics... first, the StarTech older type desktop USB3 adapter I like best to extend USB3 access from a rear-only USB3 card to out front. There are some all black USB2 versions of this... make sure to at least get one with the internal blue plastic as shown. They also made a gaudy all-blue USB3 early version.

Earlier better one...

Samsung 980 PRO in PCIe Gen3 slot in Z440

[Yannis6]

Thank you for the info SDK.

Any info about the 2pin cable of the Z turbo G2, that i issued yesterday?

Yannis

[SDH]

Remember that 980PRO m.2 stick is different from yours, and that shows the benefit of running one in a PCIe Gen3 slot.

Yes, that is a drive activity cable. It is not necessary but does provide some visual feedback on the front LED of the case. I've found that works better on the later workstations.

As you know most LEDs are polarized so their cable has to be inserted correctly for it to work. Not so with this HP engineering. There is no A/B end to the cable, and it does not matter what orientation the cable ends are to the headers on the card/motherboard. The diagram on your inside left case panel will show the position on the motherboard where the HDD_IN header is, and the HDD_OUT header on the card is obvious just below the 3 green device ID jumpers. Agree, it is wise to be sure when attaching cables to motherboard headers... with a flashlight and a magnifying glass you'll also see the tiny printing on the motherboard next to that LED-activity 2-pin header.

[SDH]

That motherboard header was originally intended for being attached to a RAID card but it works also for the ZTD G1 and G2 cards (because they have a drive activity signal output header too). I don't know about the RAID cards but the Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro and Quad Pro cards actually have two headers (for both IN and OUT attachment). So, if I'm running a ZTD Dual Pro plus a ZTD G1 or G2 I run a cable from the smaller card over to the IN port on the ZTD Dual Pro, and from its OUT port I run one to the motherboard header.

Hopefully your RAID card will have an IN and an OUT header... Things really light up out front when all 3 M.2 sticks are going at the same time on this Z440. 

EDIT: For the Dual Pro to work that way it needs to have its PCIe 3 x8 electrical lanes slot "bifurcation" turned on to x4x4... same concept if in a Zx40 x16 PCIe 3 slot but there you set it to x4x4x4x4. That option does not exist in your BIOS. It is only present in the Zx40 generation with relatively new BIOS versions, and on.