Z400 - Is there a connection for this 3.5" card reader

[FairwayFatty]

That W3690 is 3 times faster! I see a lot of them on eBay but - they are all shipping from China is there anything I should be leery of when ordering? I have Samsung 870 EVO 1TB SSD as my boot and a Seagate 3.5" HDD for storage.

I bought this machine on Amazon and it came preinstalled with Win10. Within 3 or 4 days it developed an issue where it wouldn't update and said the the license key was not valid. The Amazon seller was a bit shady to say the least and refused to provide copy of Win10. Anyway I'm reluctant to wipe the machine as I do a lot of CAD and have it all setup. I would be interested in upgrading to Win11 and have read some of the "Workarounds" here but not ready to get into it right now but definitely want to try it in near future (let me know if you have any advice on that!)

I don't remember the RAM I added but I got some information on here and did an "upgrade". I filled all 6 slots to get to 32MB but oddly it only it shows 28GB  (Triple-Channel DDR3 @ 533MHz (7-7-7-19).

Quickspecs is helpful! In hindsight I wish Ilooked into other options but this machine runs excellent for me and runs my CAD and Architect softwarevery well!

PS: This thing is HHHHEeavyy!!)

.

[SDH]

Happy to help... I have some affection for the recycling of good older computers after they have been souped up. I've given a good number away to kids entering high school whose families can't afford newer workstations. Gets them off to a good start.

Regarding China... I'd avoided that for years but have been buying more from there in the last few years. That's where most of the HP parts are built, after all. Have never had an issue. Usually get free shipping if you're willing to wait a couple of weeks. Usually two, rarely 1. I looked today too and noticed that also. The key is look for a seller who has a high number of sales plus high quality feedback. Same for eBay sellers here too. You will surely notice a difference with that W3690 processor assuming that you have no truly weak link in the chain. What is your video card, by the way? Dumpy card = dumpy experience day in and day out especially if everything else is fast. You want the whole chain fast..

I'm trying to remember... I think you can run a common type NVMe M.2 stick in a Z400 as a documents drive (but not to boot from). I know you can for sure in a Zx20. The Lenovo 1TB sticks that are sent out with their laptops are considered too small for many and they are sold on eBay for very attractive prices after the owner puts in a higher capacity stick. I've gotten some of the recent Samsung OEM Lenovo sticks that way that have been almost brand new (probed with Crystal Disk Info). I've mentioned my "Q1-out" ZTD G2 "unlocked" drives here in recent prior posts. That defeats an engineered-in shutdown of the card if it does not see a certain signal from BIOS that allows it to keep running. With the Q1 transistor out those ZTD cards can work in the Zx00 workstations (which don't know how to send out that "unlock" signal).

These cards are excellent, have a quality heatsink built in, are 1 slot width in size, and are now reasonable to buy off eBay used. Many are being recycled as the Zx20/Zx40 workstations they were mainly built for get parted out. I developed an easy method to cut the tiny single upper transistor's contact (it is about 1/32" wide, a copper alloy, tinned by solder). I cut that carefully with a scalpel in one direction, and then fold the transistor up and down on the remaining lower 2 contacts... 10 folds max and it drops right off.

I'll check on use of a normal M.2 NVMe stick as a documents drive today on a spare Zx00 here, and let you know. That would be a sweet very fast documents drive, much faster than any SATA drive. I'd favor using a boot drive Predator in the lower PCIe2 x16 slot if you're short on PCIe2 slots (if you can find a Predator). The performance of that as a boot/apps drive is so worth it.

Re memory.... pull the sticks and take a close look, even take a pic of all 6 for review. If even one is slower it will slow all the rest. Memory does matter a lot especially if you get that faster processor. You may have a bad/wrong stick in there right now given your symptoms.

[SDH]

I thought I remembered that correctly...

Yes, it is a great way to go as a documents drive. A normal current NVMe M.2 stick will work for that (not for easy booting, unlike the Predator). If you go for a NVMe M.2 stick that is higher than 2TB in size I'd make sure to GPT-partition it before you do a long-type NTFS format of it (with default settings otherwise). "Long-type" just means you uncheck the Quick box.

If you can get a Predator M.2 stick of the type I posted about there is a way to use it plus a quality video card, plus a NVMe stick as your docs drive, plus still use your TI-based "2x2" USB3 card in your Z400. See below. I'll just let you read what I've added into each picture.

The NVMe stick works great...

Here is what Device Manager shows for these two drives:

The two drives in place...

I like the Samsung Magician drive utility software shown below. It can do benchmarking of OEM M.2 sticks such as recycled from HP or Lenovo, but it really shines at helping with the consumer version of the Samsung SSDs, both SATA and NVMe. That includes letting you do firmware updates, over provisioning, speed optimization, benchmarking too. Thus, for your M.2 stick you may want to look closely at Samsung Evo or Pro sticks. This one is a HP-source recycled Samsung PM981a. I've been impressed with how fast a Samsung 980 Pro runs in a "Q1-out" ZTD G2 card in this Z600 even with it being mounted in a PCIe2 x4 slot, similar to the PM981a shown.  You don't get to having PCIe3 slots until the Zx20 family and that is where the 980 Pro pulls away from the PM981a in performance significantly. That 980 Pro stick is a PCIe4-controller stick and in a PCIe4 socket it sprints ahead of the PM981a even more... Magic going on inside it if it is in those higher bandwidth sockets.

I hope this info helps...

Nice speeds vs SATA2 for sure!

Regarding the "Q1-out" mod to the ZTD G1 or G2... that takes me about 1 minute total now that I know how to do it. With a scalpel as you draw the tip across that top single contact you clearly feel each click as it drops off that tiny soft metal edge onto the fiberglass PCB. Draw the scalpel towards you fairly vertically, and it is better to do 10 thin cuts than 3 deep ones. A groove forms on the first draw of the tip across the contact... just stay in that for the next 9.

Those "Q1-out" modified ZTD cards still work perfectly on all the workstations they were engineered for but also after the mod they can work on the Zx00 workstations for this unique purpose. Maybe even on an Elite 8200? In a sense the ZTD G1 and G2 cards were a "loss-leader" for HP to sell M.2 sticks, and they certainly did that job very well. This method gives them a new life.

[SDH]

Here's another perspective to help understand the value of higher PCIe bandwidth... PCIe2 vs PCIe3, vs PCIe4:

Your Z400 has max PCIe2 bandwidth. As noted above, the speed of a PCIe4 NVMe M.2 stick is about the same as that of a PCIe3 NVMe M.2 stick if both are run in PCIe2 slots in your Z400. Not pleasing.

If you take the same two sticks and move them to PCIe3 slots in a Zx20 workstation then the PCIe4-controller stick starts to really pull ahead of the PCIe3-controller stick. Pleasing. Below is an example of a WD_Black SN770 PCIe4-controller in a ZTD G2 Z420's PCIe3 slot. Very fast... faster than I expected. If you put that same WD_Black in a PCIe4 slot (in a Z4 G5, for example) it would be even faster. Very pleasing.

EDIT: Key finding: This shows that a HP PCIe3 x4-electrical-lanes slot provides more data bandwidth than most PCIe3-NVMe-controller M.2 drives can saturate, and that by using some PCIe4-NVMe-controller M.2 drives in a PCIe3 slot you can better utilize that untapped available bandwidth.

I'm seeing the same pattern when I experiment with the Samsung 980 Pro which also has a PCIe4 controller. Below is the WD_Black SN770 1TB M.2 SSD as a documents drive, working with the AHCI-controller SM951 as a boot drive in a ZTD G2 in a Z420 v2 above. Not a slouch either:

Big and bad...

You can really feel that major read/write speed benefit vs a SATA3 SSD or especially vs a SATA3 HDD if you use one of those as your documents drive.

Think about this: the upper of the two shown would be your specific boot/apps drive. The lower of the two would be an example of your documents NVMe drive. No HDD in your box. No SATA SSD in your box. This is done using a Zx20 v2 family workstation/v2 processor/matching-speed memory. And, anyone can do this. Personally, I'm using Z440s for my current base recycled workstation builds but I can get close to that performance with this M.2 drive approach in any v2 Zx20.

I think the take-home from all this is that if you're going to upgrade to a better later HP workstation in the future then there are significant upsides to now include a M.2 NVMe stick that is big and bad. That is, include a stick with a PCIe4-controller such as the two noted just above.

[FairwayFatty]

All interesting information and I kick myself for not doing some research before I bought and installed this 2TB SATA as my document drive. I'm not planning on doing any additional upgrades to this old Z400 as I'm often leery of how much life it has left! Just for  kicks, attached is my Magician report and there is no comparison to your results.

Edit: I just ran the the Magician "Performance Optimization" and changed to "Full Performance Mode" and the 2nd photo shows those results.

Actually, the only other "upgrade" I would like to do is to migrate from Win10 to Win11.

I also forgot to mention that I have my Z400 configured to dual boot to Win10 or MX Linux. My Windows "upgrade" would hopefully be to do an update and not a clean install (I know that is not optimal approach). I don't care so much if I lose my Linux install as it is fairly easy to reinstall that in parallel to Windows since I already have my disk allocation configured.

I had read there are some required workarounds as the Z400 is not "compatible"?

Can you point me to a helpful post that would help me upgrade from Win10 to Win11?

Thanks for any and all of your help!

[SDH]

I've added an edit (below) to one of my prior posts here in this thread for your review while you consider upgrading to a newer generation HP workstation:

"EDIT: Key finding: This shows that a HP PCIe3 x4-electrical-lanes slot provides more data bandwidth than most PCIe3-NVMe-controller M.2 drives can saturate, and that by using some PCIe4-NVMe-controller M.2 drives in a PCIe3 slot you can better utilize that untapped available bandwidth." You will not see this benefit on your current Zx00 PCIe2 generation workstation's PCIe slots; you can see it on the Zx20 and the Zx40 PCIe3 generation slots, from my testing.

Regarding your current question: Both DGroves and Paul Tikkanen here have been using the Rufus approach to upgrading to W11 in unsupported workstations/PCs, and I agree it is the best approach I've seen. Also, DGroves specifically recommends setting BIOS to "Factory Defaults" before you proceed. I'd add that you should be on the latest HP BIOS for your workstation.

Rufus keeps getting improved upon, and the video link I'll include below gets you to a straight-shooting guy who is using a quite recent version of Rufus. Some things that I do differently is on the last checkbox page that Rufus presents to you as you trigger the process... I check all those boxes. I also begin the process by disconnecting from the internet so that i can most easily get a local account only. I also don't check for updates at this phase... but that might be a mistake for a clean install. I do updates after the upgrade using Windows Update. Of interest MS updates its W11 .iso intermittently so one from months ago for 23H2 won't be the current "v2" download. Get the latest so time wasted in updating is kept to a minimum.

Upgrade vs clean install: I think you're asking for trouble with a dual boot system and an "upgrade" desire rather than clean install. The upgrade process drags along some old drivers from earlier installs. Not what you want. Clean slate is what you want to start with.  If you're already running W10Pro64 you have a "digital license" locked to your workstation that will also work automatically with W11Pro64.... all W11 now are x64 but not all are Pro.

Watch the video a couple of times. Look up Paul T's and DG's  posts too. IIRC you're booting off a SATA 2.5" SSD... it is OK to have a big documents HDD, just not as fast.

https://youtu.be/7ff8jsOyoIk