Z840 PCiE Bifurcation for M.2 NVMe

[Fiendish]

Many thanks, I have now purchased the Hp Z Quad Pro so the PM9A3 will be a good choice then.

I hadn't thought about an adapter tray - that's a very good idea. So one of those would fit out of the box into one of the z840 top bays? The bottom bay currently has a the cage I bougth it with which just has 2 x 2.5" SSDs in it

[SDH]

Those two 5.25" form factor Icy Dock options DGroves linked to are industry standard size and side-hole positioning so they slide right into the HP workstations just like a full-size optical drive would. You'll be needing to think ahead about heat and cables. I'd go for the 4-drive version personally, but I don't need anywhere near as much storage as you.

I've used the Icy Dock products for years now and HP has also offered them as official optional items, and they are very well built and have held up without any issues. I do build testing for myself and our IT guys and use a single-SSD version in a 5.25" front bay adapter so I can easily switch around boot drives (2.5" form factor SATA III SSDs in Icy Dock "carriers" that slip into their "receiver" which is cabled to SATA III port 0). Zero problems.

[Fiendish]

Ah great, that looks like a good option then, thank you.

And looks like there a couple of card options on the U.2 front as well

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SONNET-TECHNOLOGIES-Fusion-Dual-PCIe/dp/B08J8H56X1/ref=sr_1_5?crid=16HFGLS5...

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusion-dual-u2-ssd/techspecs.html#techspecs

[Fiendish]

So I guess the question is - have enterprise level m.2 drives in an enterprise level card, the Z Turbo Drive Quad, or have an enterprise U.2 drive in an non enterprise card, like this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-U-2-PCIe-Adapter-SFF-8639/dp/B072JK2XLC/ref=sr_1_2?crid=4P1TRF...

That Sonnet card I mentioned before seems to have compatibility issues, though looks great in theory

[Blademan777]

I would agree with the recommendation to use the HP Turbo drives. I was using a random 4 x NVME x16 card with 1 drive and a streaming video application. I had a problem where every minute, I ran into a stutter losing video and transfers for 1-2 sec. I bought and installed the HP Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro direct from HP on eBay, and it works great with no issues or stuttering.

Potential discussion hijack: I'm trying to use an Intel Optane drive in the remaining open slot in the HP Turbo Drive Dual, but when installed, the Z840 won't boot. Do I need to enable x4x4 bifurcation in BIOS for the Optane to boot with another NVME drive in the same card?

[SDH]

If you want to run two NVMe-controller or two AHCI-controller M.2 drives in a Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro in a ZX40 from a x8 or x16 electrical lane slot you stand no chance of success without enabling bifurcation in BIOS, specifically x4x4 for the HP-recommended slot 4 (x8 lanes type of slot) in a Z440. A ZTD Quad Pro wants x4x4x4x4 as its BIOS setting for a x16 electrical lanes longer slot. The default setting in BIOS is Auto, but that does not result in the BIOS/OS perceiving presence of two or more M.2 drives.

The Intel Optane is a different beast than a conventional M.2 drive... take a look at this HP document HERE.

[DGroves]

again, a high-end raid card (with the proper cables) can drive 2/4/8/16  2.5/3.5  U.2 or SAS/SATA SSD's or even mech drives

this configuration only requires one PCI-E 8x slot for the card

the drives can be internal or external,.... again depending on the cabling used

i personally use  asr 71605 or 8405 cards in my z820/z840 systems connected directly to the internal 4 hot swap bays and a 4 or 6 bay icy dock in a 5.25 bay (the icy dock has active cooling via a small fan) and a hot swap 3.5/2.5 dual bay 5.25  tray

all of the drives (SSD/Mech) are connected to the internal  adaptec raid/Jbod card in raid 0 raid one and five and JBOD (non raid)

the HP quad turbo pro card has proper cooling as it is a workstation/server class product and it supports M.2 drives up to 110mm in length which is the most common size for enterprise/datacenter ssd's

Recommended Slot Order
For all HP Workstation platforms the tested and approved slots for the HP Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro are as follows (in order of preference):

Z840: Slot #6, #4 (requires 2nd CPU), and #2*

https://www.dectrader.com/pdf/quickspecs/15373_na/15373_na.html

[Fiendish]

Hi SDH,

I just received my new Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro. It seems to have some sticky blue thermal pads included and fitted, one on the back of the heatsink and one below where the sticks are fitted. These aren't mentioned in any manual I can find however. Presumably it must be a new addition. I only have one stick to test to start with, if I remove the pads' protective layers so it's sticky will it make it tricky to fit further sticks later or is it designed to able to cope with this?

I've included some pics below, many thanks

[SDH]

EDIT: Take another look at that YouTube video I linked on page 1 of this thread, Over 10,000MB/S with Quad SSD on a single PCI-E card?! The HP Z Turbo Drive Quad Review - YouTube    You'll see at the beginning that the ZTD Quad Pro came from his friend new with upper and lower separate thermal pads included but not in place. He tests the 4 Samsung M.2 PM981a SSDs without the thermal pads but with the top cover on (so active fan cooling would have been preserved). His speed testing would have really pushed the M.2 sticks to their limits by using Intel VROC RAID on a motherboard that supports that (the ZX G4 HP workstations also do now). He does not report any thermal throttling of performance, but I'm not sure if he watched for that. I'd guess your ZTD QP came after someone had already applied the thermal pads having taken off one of the two protective clear films for each, leaving the other exposed films in place. I would advise to take off the remaining protective film and to use the thermal pads with the top cover on for when you move to full production work. The idea of cutting off the protective film sequentially as you add more drives may not be needed... there usually is a thin gap between the upper and lower pads if no M.2 drive is in place. Your choice.

The thermal pads used are indeed sticky but usually with caution you can slowly release a M.2 stick from the pads and reuse them in place with another M.2 stick. A good trick if you're going to just use one or two sticks initially is to carefully lift up the portion of the protective film where the stick(s) will go and cut that part off. There should be a little air gap where no sticks are.

The thermal pad material itself is relatively easy to tear if you are not careful in releasing a stick... that protective film is easy to deal with, however. You probably could get away with running 1 or 2 sticks with the small cover off and the protective film left in place beneath the stick(s) for partitioning/formatting and probing because your sticks will almost certainly be single sided. I would not push them with normal work that way, however. I used that approach when dinking with my ZTD Dual Pro, and my testbed ZTD G1 cards use no pads/heatsinks unless I add one.

New and many used M.2 sticks come "RAW" so as with SSDs and HDDs I partition and format them before use (such as if I'm going to do a clean install on one). I have a Z440 that boots off a SSD and it has all of my standard BIOS settings so I just plug a ZTD G1 with the RAW stick in place into my intended socket (socket 4 currently) and use that to convert the stick from RAW to MBR partitioning first and finally do a NTFS long-type format using the W10/W11 built in Disk Management utility. That is the workstation that I'm also using slot 4 for testing the ZTD Dual Pro, and the BIOS setting for that slot has been changed from default "Auto" to x4x4. I don't have to change that to remove the Dual Pro card and plug in a ZTD G1 or G2 card.

I use the latest Samsung Magician and also Crystal Disk Info 64 to probe the sticks. Depending on the stick Magician may have a firmware update available, and there also is the big unified Lenovo multi-stick firmware updater available if the stick is a Lenovo one... that won't work on a stick that has another brand's firmware already on it.

[Fiendish]

Many thanks for that SDH, I'm still thinking on how to test my first stick but It sounds like I could do it without pads and the heatksink off to start with.  But for any actual work I shall get everything in place.