Does the M.2 Expansion Slot in the HP 17 Laptop PC 17-c2000 IDS Base Model Support PCIe 4.0?

[phatalerror]

I have upgraded the stock PCIe 3.0 SSD on my HP 17 Laptop PC 17-c2000 IDS Base Model to a Western Digital WD_Black SN770. It didn't perform as expected, and the Western Digital Dashboard app confirmed that the laptop has negotiated only a PCIe 3.0 connection with the SSD.

I had imagined that the 1235U processor would have supported the new SSD at PCIe 4.0. The BIOS offered no relevant options for troubleshooting the PCIe connection speed.

Laptop Details

1235U 12th-Generation Intel Processor

899B Mainboard

Crucial 32GB Kit DDR4 RAM (also a post-purchase upgrade) 

FHD IPS Display option

How do I get the aftermarket SSD to run at PCIe 4.0? Thank you for your attention to this request!

[TzortzisG · Accepted solution]

Hello phatalerror.

 This is a difficult question to tackle, so bear with me. Let me first say that here on the HP community forum, most of the answers you'll get are from users like yourself, and not HP employees. For this particular question I would advise you to contact HP support in your area, and also seek an explanation from them. But I'll come to that in the end.

 HP's site provides neither manual nor datasheets for this (current) model, so we'll just go with the spec sheet you linked to. As you can see in the Storage Options part, SSD drives are of the Gen3.0 flavour. From my experience, HP as a rule installs parts that utilize the max speed of the motherboard. This is true for RAM and SSDs for example. So, if your laptop could run a gen4.0 SSD with its AlderLake motherboard, HP would have installed a Gen4.0 disk and "advertised" this aspect... Of course, every rule has an exception. Could this be it? Judging by the fact that your WD SN770 is limited to Gen3.0 speeds, probably NOT.

 Let's take a look at your CPU. Your laptop's CPU has the following specs according to Intel:

Intel® Core™ i5-1235U Processor 

12M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz 

Memory Specifications
Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 64 GB
Memory Types

Up to DDR5 4800 MT/s
Up to DDR4 3200 MT/s
Max # of Memory Channels 2
ECC Memory Supported ‡  No

Expansion Options
Intel® Thunderbolt™ 4 Yes
Microprocessor PCIe Revision Gen 4
Chipset / PCH PCIe Revision Gen 3
Max # of PCI Express Lanes 20

As you can see, your CPU does support Gen4.0 BUT the chipset is limited to Gen3.0. Let's take a look at your CPUs schematic to understand this better.....

So your CPU has 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes on the CPU and another 12 PCIe 3.0 lanes for connecting through the chipset. Therefore, for Gen4.0x4 storage, you can have up to two CPU connected SSD devices. And of course you can have up to 3 Gen3.0 SSDs that are connected to the PCH. Unfortunately the 8 CPU Gen4.0 lanes can also be used to connect a discrete GPU, if your model has one, thus taking them away from a potential ultrafast Gen4.0 drive. Time for the big question: How did HP wire your SSD slot in your laptop? From what you've posted, I'd say that your SSD slot goes through the PCH (chipset) and you therefore have yourself a 12th gen Intel laptop that has Ø Gen4.0 m.2 slots. I have to say that this is not very common.... This was the norm with 11th gen Intel laptops (also Gen4.0 capable) but definitely not for today's systems with Alder Lake mobile CPUs.

 So, to make sure what kind of SSD generation slot you have, you should download and run portable utility Hwinfo7.20 from Paul_Tikkanen's link here: Link to hwi_720x86.zip or from the HWiNFO site and see for yourself. Below are two Hwinfo screenshots from my TIgerLake Probook, where you can see that HP has wired the m.2 as a gen3.0 device and that the PCIexpress Root Port is also Gen3.0. I'm guessing that this is what you'll see on your HP 17 Laptop PC 17-c2000 as well.

Now time for the second big question: "How do I get the aftermarket SSD to run at PCIe 4.0?" To better answer this question, I'll ask you a question in return. How can you switch from DDR4 Ram to the better newer DDR5. As you can see in your CPU's specs that I posted above, Alder Lakes support both DDR4 and DDR5..... The answer to both these questions is: you can't. These are both matters of hardware design, and not of software or even firmware. There are no options in BIOS to turn on/off Gen4.0, because the problem is that to have Gen4.0 your motherboard has to be designed differently.

 As I already mentioned in the beginning, imho you should contact official HP support and get some answers. I think that it's unacceptable that we're now on 12th gen Intel CPUs, and there are still laptops designed to have Ø support for the more futureproof Gen4.0 revision. It's more than likely that the upcoming 13th generation of Intels (Raptor Lake) will keep this CPUgen4/PCHgen3 design, and complaints have to be made to the laptop manufacturers so that we see no more of these cases HP Workstation TigerLake Zbook Gen3.0 SSD.......  

[phatalerror]

That was an awesome reply, TzortzisG. Thank you for taking the time for it. It taught me that Intel's processor schematics may flag potential ceilings that won't necessarily be detailed on Intel's product specifications documentation. In this case then, I can blame neither Intel nor HP for my inferences; I could have known better. I hope many users besides myself will find this information in the future and be able to apply it in their unique circumstances.

When it comes to options, motor vehicle manufacturers are notorious for offering affordable base models that quickly inflate in cost as desirable options are bundled into exceedingly costly trims. In many cases, a lower trim will adequately support many aftermarket options, and the right components coupled with appropriate underlying engineering can yield some high-value performance upgrades. I was attempting something similar with this budget-friendly laptop. When published documentation lacks technical information in some places, and is incorrect in other places, it makes modification a hit-and-miss endeavor.

It can be noted that in other documents, it is stated that the maximum DDR4 RAM supported by my laptop's motherboard was 16 GB over two slots, which seemed unthinkable given that the 12th-generation Intel processors required an entirely new motherboard architecture. That figure may have been published because that was HP's maximum-capacity configure-to-order option. I am, in fact, running 2x16 GB SO-DIMMs, and the entirety is recognized by the operating system. Win!

Without ever having seen the engineering documents, I anticipated two potential outcomes based on HP's likely motherboard engineering approach for the market segment to which this particular laptop was directed:

1) There were two different motherboard designs, with one or the other selected for the configure-to-order laptop based on whether the NVIDIA GeForce MX550 option was selected

2) There was one motherboard shared between all configurations, with the NVIDIA GeForce MX550 and any complementary components soldered onto some of those motherboards

In the case of the former, it was possible that four of the CPU's PCIe 4.0 lanes were traced out to m.2 slot on the non-GPU motherboard. In the case of the latter, all of the CPU's PCIe 4.0 lanes would have been traced through the location on the motherboard where the GPU would be attached; therefore, in cases where the GPU is not utilized, the CPU's PCIe 4.0 lanes are sacrificed during the component assembly process.

While I don't have conclusive evidence concerning this question, the evidence strongly points to the latter approach being the case. Loss!

As for the result thus far achieved, the aftermarket SSD significantly outperforms the small-capacity stock version. I was just hoping for a little more of a ceiling than I will ultimately get. On the other hand, the memory upgrade was a full success. I also gained a great deal of experience in my first foray into non-user-level laptop upgrades.

The i5-1235U laptop, as upgraded, outperformed an 11th-gen i7 laptop on Cinebench's R23 ten-minute single-core test

Thanks again! I wish there were better rewards for answers of this sort than just a thumbs-up or "Correct". You provided a 'teach a man to fish' sort of answer.

[TzortzisG]

Thanks phatalerror! 👍  Wasn't really expecting a reply to my answer, and certainly not a (awesome as well) reply like this.

 Your second  post actually raised more and very interesting questions, and I'd love to just write chapter upon chapter of info here..... But as interesting as this discussion is, I'll just say a couple of things, to avoid spamming all over this thread (and the forum).

 I'll start at the end. The 11th gen i7 Intel was a huge disappointment. It was throttled so bad by the TDP limit, that even the 11th gen i5s had better performance. You can see a discussion I had about this here: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-Notebooks/HP-EliteBook-840-G9-i5-1235u-vs-i7-1255u/m-p/845188.... Generally speaking, nowadays you have to know what kind of power limits are being forced on the systems, and not just read the CPU specs and go with that. Personally, I don't buy anything I haven't read a review for, even if that means waiting a year to see the relevant tests on hardware sites.

 About the motherboard design. Although your analysis makes complete sense, I'm pretty sure that the Gen4.0 lanes weren't used for the m.2 slot because they were reserved for connecting to......thin air! I seriously doubt that the models with a discrete GPU have it connected to the Gen4.0 CPU lanes. Eight lanes of Gen3.0 have the same performance as four lanes of Gen4.0, and I'd be really surprised if HP didn't keep the previous models' design (to cut costs obiviously).

 The RAM. I don't know where you got the 16GB max ram figure. HP started having support for 64GB Ram on many of the TigerLake laptops. I'm pretty sure that most (if not all) of the AlderLake laptops can run with 64GB. On a CPU level, the support for 64GB is 100%. To see what the rest of your system allows, you can run the command: wmic memphysical get maxcapacity or wmic memphysical get maxcapacityEx or both (they should show the same thing -64GB) after opening command prompt as administrator. But -and this is a huge but- on many systems that could actually be upgraded to 2x32GB RAM modules, there have been bugs, and smaller or bigger issues. At least one system booted fine and ran the 64GB for a while, but then crashed completely. So I think that 32GB is a good compromise if you're not willing to deal with a small system instability. That system by the way had Crucial's site limiting its MAX RAM to 32GB, while yours is reported as having max 64GB by Crucial Crucial 17-c2000 RAM Upgrades. 

 Finally, about not being able to blame anybody but yourself, I completely disagree wth you on this. Obiously HP is under the impression that the usual buyer of HP products looks like this and works for the MIT Lab. Having no manual, and no documentation of any kind, and buying a NEW laptop with an Alder Lake CPU, only the guy in the picture could have figured out that this laptop doesn't support Gen4.0....

[phatalerror]

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 The RAM. I don't know where you got the 16GB max ram figure.

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If you scroll down to "Memory, standard" under the Features column on the HP 17 Laptop PC 17-c2000 product details page, it says "Maximum memory supported: 16 GB". I had at least one rep on the phone tell me that that was the maximum as well (I can't remember whether that was a call to sales or to technical support).

In any case, thanks for the i5-vs-i7 discussion link. I've long understood that if you want the performance of a desktop, you should buy a desktop, and laptops should be reserved for situations where you need portability (or live in extremely small quarters). If anyone really must run a laptop with a high-clock, high-core processor at full throttle, they should consider using a Bluetooth keyboard. and replacing the laptop keyboard with a precision-crafted metal plate anchored to the processor's integrated heat spreader. They could thereby maximize their productivity by preparing their pancakes and eggs while doing their creative work.

[TzortzisG]

 Phatalerror, this is just HP doublespeak for "we only install up to 16GB Ram on this budget series, so that's the MAX RAM spec for yous....". This is common knowledge here on the HP forum. Wouldn't make sense in any other kind of context, since 6th and 7th Gen Intel HPs supported 32GB RAM. So, how could 2x6th=12th Gen support 16GB? 😃 Another sensational pet phrase they have here (used primarily in the manuals) is: "RAM: Two non-customer-accessible/upgradable memory module slots" which is actually HP doublespeak for "RAM totally upgradeable, but bring it to us boyyyyyyy."

 About the pancakes, I do love pancakes, and I agree that a ""little"" modding can actually go a long way performance-wise.