Where is the mainboard manual / overview and what kind is it for my HP Omen?

[Lightningsoul]

Hi there,

thanks for letting me in here, I am brand-new so bare with me. 

I got an HP Omen GT14-2178ng in December and I was (am) very happy with it. I recently ran out of disk space though (I only got the lower 1 TB m.2 that came with it). And then I opened it up and all kinds of question marks came up in my head.

First of all: There is only a SINGLE SATA connection? Then the page of the seller told me there were 3 m.2 sockets but I can only see 2 and I am uncertain if the 2nd one even is for a drive or just a wifi connecter and it's directly beneath the super hot graphics card that is also pretty big (not sure if an m.2 with a cooler could even fit under it).

Then I was looking for the type of the mainboard (ali express seems to sell some of them) only to not find any clues and never my specific one. I went through the entire manual of the HP Omen (https://kaas.hpcloud.hp.com/pdf-public/pdf_3941897_de-DE-1.pdf in case you're looking for it, too - in German) without any answers, too. A single image or manual of the mainboard on the web describing what I see would be great!

Thank you guys and have a blessed weekend. 😃✌️

[Lightningsoul]

Btw. your product selector is buggy. I could not refresh the list even though I added the product to my profile in a new tab so I instead added a "product I do not own" even though I own it.  ^^

[Valsimot]

A service guide might be helpful for you

https://kaas.hpcloud.hp.com/pdf-public/pdf_7911389_en-US-1.pdf 

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Lightningsoul 

The product specs for your PC indicate that there is support for two M.2 NVMe SSD's and one M.2 Wi-Fi adapter.

OMEN by HP 25L Gaming Desktop GT14-2178ng | HP® South Africa

If you can't find the second SSD slot, most likely it is hidden underneath the NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER graphics card.

This is the service teardown video for the original GT14-0000 model series:

Removing & replacing parts for OMEN by HP 25L 14GT | HP Computer Service

The procedure to remove and replace the secondary M.2 SSD calls for removing the graphics card bracket and graphics card (starts at minute 15:10 into the video).

Here's the parts list for your PC:

HP PartSurfer

If you click on the camera icon to the left of the motherboard part number, you will see the two NVMe SSD slot locations and the Wi-Fi card slot location.

The empty SSD slot is definitely concealed under the graphics card.

[Lightningsoul]

Hey, THANK YOU. That's what I was looking for. Seems to be my exact board. Great!

I only accepted the other reply as solution as it went into more detail. Cheers! ❤️

[Lightningsoul]

Thanks a lot. That's been VERY informative. 👍

[Lightningsoul]

Oh, I misread your answer. So you're saying it should have 3 M.2 adapters on the board? Two for SSDs and one for Wi-Fi? If I look at the image I see two M.2 adapters, one next to the graphics card or above it (if you look at the board like it's built in the tower) and one under it (below the RAM).

Where is the third one and is the one under the graphics card for an SSD or Wi-Fi? Thanks again!

In the manual it says 2 is Hard Disk (the one under the graphics card) and 6 is SSD (the one above it between GPU and CPU). Same difference I suppose? No mention of a Wi-Fi adapter either in the manual.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Yes, the PC has support for 2 M.2 NVMe SSDs.

The main slot already has a SSD installed so there is only the secondary slot under the graphics card available.

The remaining M.2 slot is for a M.2 2230 Wi-Fi adapter which is already occupied.

If you look at the motherboard illustration on the parts list link, the primary SSD slot is to the right of the 4 memory slots.

The secondary M.2 NVMe slot is to the left of the graphics card slot.

The M.2 Wi-Fi adapter slot is located near the primary NVMe slot on the upper right side.

Just near the right corner of the motherboard picture.

The specs indicate it comes with a:

1 TB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD

Realtek RTL8852BE Wi-Fi 6 (2x2) and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless card 

That would be in the M.2 2230 slot.

It doesn't indicate that it comes with any SATA drives but there looks to be what appears to be one black SATA port to the right of the primary SSD slot.

[Lightningsoul]

Perfect. A friend of mine also used the image you provided to mark these for me (in case anyone else stumbles upon this thread).

Red is for M.2 disks and blue is the occupied Wi-Fi adapter. Then it's all clear now. I must have missed the blue one as it didn't look quite like the ones for the disks (I was never dealing with plugging in anything M.2 - stopped building my own PCs around 10 years ago).

Thank you again and have a great day! ❤️

P.S.: Thanks to the cables already attached the installation of one SATA SSD wasn't any issue btw. Yes it has one black SATA slot on the bottom of the board. 👍

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

You have a great day too!