HP Compaq Elite 8200 CMT booting to NVME

[MarcusSmythe]

I would like to install a PCIE NVME card with Samsung 970 pro SSD. I just want to know if the system will boot to it? I have read through lots of posts but nobody has a definitive answer. I know the system is old but I am poor and want to get another year or two out of it!

I know that PCIE is v2.0 so I will not quite get the full speed out of the NVME SSD but hey, it'll still be a lot faster than SATA.

If I can't boot to it can I leave the EFI boot partition on my current SATA SSD and install windows onto the NVME SSD?

Thanks in Advance.

Some further inf:

HP Compaq Elite 8200 CMT

BIOS Date:                                                                      02/14/2018

BIOS Version:                                                                 J01 v02.31

System Management BIOS Version:                        2.7

Motherboard Chipset:                                                 Intel Q67 (Cougar Point) [B3]

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz

[Grzwacz]

Greetings,

Welcome back to the forum.

I am not a HP employee.

Sorry, but HP specs per this site (Link) show only SATA support for bootable storage devices.

You can add a NVME/PCIe adapter to use a NVME device for storage but I don't see any way to get the existing BIOS to see the 970 as a bootable device.

Regards

[MarcusSmythe · Accepted solution]

I thought I'd just let you know that it works.....sort of. I left the EFI partition on the SATA SSD and did a fresh install of windows to the NVME. It is not as fast as it could be but is way faster than it was.

I still think that I could boot to the NVME if the ROM chip on it was recognised because the PC does support booting to PCIE raid controller. 

Anyway theres life in this old girl yet!

Thanks.

[crgrove]

GREETINGS FROM THE FUTURE!
I'm curious, MarcusSmythe, did you take this process any further? I'm really very curious how far one can take upgrading and speeding up the Elite 8200.

I had a SATA SSD in the computer already and then ran out of space. I ended up just getting a larger of the same drive but I was really fascinated by the possibilities.

Cheers!

Christopher

[Grzwacz]

Hi,

Would like to add, I cannot detect much difference in PC responsiveness in real life day to day usage when comparing a SATA SSD to a PCIe NVME SSD.

Benchmarks will show four to five times data throughput improvement when comparing a PCIe SSD to a SATA SSD.

A NVME drive will move more data much quicker when doing disk intensive tasks; video editing or moving large files.

I am fine with SATA SSDs.

Regards

[crgrove]

Interesting. I do appreciate the info! 🙂

Video editing IS one of the things I'm getting into. (from photo editing and graphic design)

Thanks!

Cheers!

[scsi2]

nvme: 3400 MB/sec

SATA: 500 MB/sec.

Nvme is (in theory) 7 times faster than SATA SSD storage.

Intel i5 gen2 CPU is cheaper than Intel i5 gen [3-9]

DDR3 memory is limited to 32GB. DDR4 has highly latency.

If booting is your fastest most intensive process, you may have

MANAGEMENT POTENTIAL!!!

If you don't need RGB lighting, older used computers are good.