Graphics card (upgrade) and HDD performance

[Hornblower_LT]

I have two things I'd like to ask. One relates to Graphics Card upgrade and the other is HDD related.
I bought my Z820 "used/refurbished" and although I'm very happy with it, it's time for a graphics card upgrade. I'm planning on just removing the current one and putting the new one in the same slot. Is this always the right approach?

Current card is a Quadro K2000 and the new card will be a PNY Quadro RTX 4000 VCQRTX4000-PB 8GB GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 x16

The HDD question is maybe more complex. Right after I got the PC I ran some performance tests and it was reported that my HDD was not on the fastest connector. I will update the post with the exact model info on the SSD. I have a 1GB "regular" HDD in the PC as well, but the "warning" I received was related to the boot drive.
The PC also has a DVD-RW drive and, although I hardly use it, it would be good to confirm that this is also connected to the appropriate connector.

Lars T

HP Z820 Workstation, 2x Xeon E5-2690 2.9GHz Eight Core Processors, 64GB DDR3 Memory, 1x 256GB SSD, NVIDIA Quadro K2000, DVD-RW, Windows 10 Professional 64-bit Installed - OEM

[Brian1965]

Welcome to the forum.

I would recommend you download the following;

HP Z820 Quickspecs

HP Z820 Maintenance and Service Guide

You will need a 6-pin to 8-pin auxilliary PCI power adapter as shown below to power the RTX 4000 card;

Make sure you get a good quality cable.

Regarding your HDD/SSD, use the service guide to identify the SATA3 ports on the Z820 motherboard.

[Hornblower_LT]

Thank you so much for your response!

I was not aware of the power cable for the graphics card. After looking inside the Z820 it wasn't immediately clear where to connect the 6-pin connector. There are 4-pin cable connectors in the front-drive bays but I couldn't see any 6-pin. What am I missing? The card is 125W rated by PNY and I read somewhere else "peak 160W". 

My Quadro K2000 is placed in connector "17 - PCIe x16 - CPU0". From what I can figure from page 90 in the "Component replacement and information guidelines"  this is the correct slot. 

The HDD issue

--

As listed in Device Manager
(This is the Boot HDD)
ATA Samsung SSD PM83 SCSI Disk Device (It is a SATA6.0Gbps drive)

(Backup HDD)
ATA ST20000DM001-1ER1 SCSI Disk Device (2TB Seagate 7200RPM)

(DVD-Writer)
HP Model SH-216 (from looking at the physical drive)

---

Here's what I found inside my Z820
Page 33 and 34 in "Maintenance and Service Guide" has the System Board Components drawing that I've been referring to.

There is nothing connected to "11 - AHCI 6Gb/s"
There is nothing connected to "13 - SAS/SATA 6Gb/s"
All four connectors of "15 - SCU 3Gb/s" are occupied. Pretty sure this is why the drives show up as SCSI.

As I was looking through things in Device Manager, I realized that I don't think the DVD-Writer has ever worked. It's obviously not a big problem since I don't even have any disks to use for it, but it should be hooked up correctly IMO. It has power, as it will open and close, but that's it.

I don't know why the hard drives are connected to the number 15 connectors. I can't see any reason why a SATA drive wouldn't be on a SATA connector. (Can I use the same cables?)

(A) Is it recommended to change this? (IMO the Boot SSD should be on SAS0, BU drive 2TB on SAS1 (Labeled "13 - SAS/SATA 6Gb/s"), and optical drive on SATA0 (Labeled "11 - AHCI 6Gb/s". I got this from "Drive Configuration Scenarios" on page 97 of the "Component replacement guidelines".

(B) What happens in the BIOS when I make these changes? Any hints on what I need to do on starting up the PC the first time after making these changes?

(C) Are there any good reasons why my PC is connected the way it is?

Regards,

Lars T

[Brian1965 · Accepted solution]

Since your current Quadro K2000 card is only a 51W GPU card, all its power is supplied from the PCIe slot (75W max.), i.e. your auxiliary PCIe  power connectors are not being used. You should find 2off, 6-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors plugged into the  card guide located just behind the the front fans. [EDIT - Actually, I believe the Z820 has 3off, auxiliary PCIe power connectors.] I don't have a Z820 but if you look at my Z620 internal view below, this is the plastic housing on the bottom right of the image below.

With regards to your drives, I would re-cable the drives as per your post comments. Once you've changed the cabling, go into the BIOS and confirm all the drives are recognized and present then simply select/set the SSD as the first boot device and reboot - that should be it. You should also search for and install the HP Performance Advisor and the HP Support Assistant programs.   

Any issues then check device security settings in the BIOS, e.g.

[Hornblower_LT]

Excellent!

I took pictures inside my PC when I had it open and I see the cables you mention. I thought they were cables for the HDD bay.

You can also see the HDD cables here.

I'll change the hard drives tomorrow (Saturday) and hopefully, it'll all go well 😄

"You should also search for and install the HP Performance Advisor and the HP Support Assistant programs.   "

I'll do that.

Speaking of software: my PC didn't come with any of the software that it probably had when new. Did it come with any software for the CD/DVD drive? Is this something that is still available to me or does it belong to the first owner?

Thanks again, Brian 1965. You've been very helpful and you responded very quickly. If I had known that this forum has such great users on here, I would have signed up a while ago 😄

[Brian1965]

Generally, you do not need any drivers for CD/DVD drives as these are natively supported by the Windows OS. I would confirm that you have 2 cables plugged into the rear of the DVD drive, e.g. power and data cables. Hopefully, moving the DVD drive over to one of your SATA ports should bring the DVD drive to life.

Can you see the DVD drive present in the BIOS?

[Hornblower_LT]

I wasn't thinking about drivers as much as DVD playback software (typically found on "consumer" PC's). I'm guessing workstations doesn't often come with "bloatware" like this.

[Hornblower_LT]

UPDATE:

I moved my hard drives to the correct connectors. I had no issues during startup. I really can't tell if there is a speed difference in the stuff I'm working on.

Interesting that the DVD drive is visible in the BIOS (as HP CDDVDW SH-216BB), but not visible in the HP Performance Advisor Block Diagram.

The same goes for the two hard drives BTW. They show up in the Mini OROM Display but nothing in the Block Diagram in the HP Perf Adv.

(and yes I do have a "missing" RAM chip... I have tried to take it out and re-seat it, but it doesn't take long (a couple of days) before it disappears again - is it a connection issue or a chip issue?)

1ER1 is the 2GB rotary HDD, The PM83 is the C: drive SSD, and the USB device is the 😮 USB drive.

No DVD drive. How come these drives do not show up in the Block Diagram?

The H: drive is an external USB drive

This doesn't list my C: drive. Only the USB drive (as disk1!) and the rotary Backup HDD.

The Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 is installed. It was very easy. It would not have been fun without the adapter cable. It really should be included with the graphics card, I think. Since the install, I haven't used Autocad as much as Fusion 360, and fusion does not utilize the graphics card as much as Autocad. I'm very happy with the card though.

All in all, I feel better about the drive connections now, and the RTX4000 is a nice upgrade.

Not sure if the memory issue means all new RAM or a can of contact spray...

Regards,

Lars T

[Brian1965]

Glad to hear you installed the new GPU without any issues.

Your issue with Performance Advisor is a bit strange. I took a screen shot of my block diagram and it appears to show all my drives except for a 1TB drive plugged into one of the SCU ports (indicated as SATA 2.0 in the block diagram).

  

I have a 480GB SSD and 2TB HDD drives plugged into the SATA 3.0 ports, the DVD drive and a 4TB HDD drive (in 3 partitions) in the adjacent SATA 2.0 ports, a 2TB HDD and 1TB HDD (not shown in the diagram?) in the SCU ports, and finally a 256GB SM951 M.2 card on one of the PCIe slots (shown as a Z Turbo drive).  I don't have any issues with any of the drives, all are visible in Windows Explorer. If you do wish to compare disk performance then I would suggest you try CrystalDIskMark (free) to measure the read/write speeds of your drives.

Have you checked all the Security settings in your BIOS to make sure the DVD  drive access is not restricted? There are numerous settings in the HP BIOS to enable or disable various components on the HP motherboard, such as USB ports, SATA ports, PCIe slots, etc. 

If you're still at a loss regarding the DVD drive then I would recommend you start a new thread on the forum since this thread is now flagged as being solved.

P.S. Try clicking on the SATA 2.0 and SATA 3.0 icons on your block diagram to see if it detects and lists your physical drives? Mine does but doesn't show all the drives in the block diagram?, i.e. there's one missing.