M.2 Sata or NVMe supported?

[Rusty201]

Hi,

I want to put a ssd in my hp notebook and wants to know if my laptop supports M.2 or NVMe. I looked through the laptop docs and found following information as you can see in the pictures below. First picture is about the primary storage and the second picture is about internal card expansion. Internal card expansion says one M.2 slot for SSD. So it means i can exand with a M.2 and not NVMe?

HP Laptop 15-da1001 nx

Core i7-8565u

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

M.2 is the slot form factor.

The slot may be able to support NVMe SSD's only, SATA SSD's only or both.

That is why it is important to read the service manual to see what your options are.

Since your notebook has an Intel core processor, the M.2 slot supports both NVMe and SATA SSD's.

NVMe SSD's have faster read/write speeds than SATA SSD's have.

[Rusty201]

Thankyou for taking the time to reply. It's good news to hear that NVMe is supported since NVMe ssd are faster than SATA ssd as you said. Can you kindly recommend me any good NVMe SSD 256 GB storage?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

I recommend either the Samsung 980 PCIe Gen 3.0 SSD or the Western Digital Blue SN570 NVMe SSD.

They both come in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB storage capacities.

There is some bad news regarding the performance of your notebook's M.2 slot, based on feedback from many forum members that own the 15-daxxxx model series and that is the NVMe slot is only PCIe 3.0 x2 and not x4.

That means a NVMe SSD will only run at about half of its maximum read/write speed.

For example, both of the drives I recommended to you have max read speeds of 3,500 MBPS, so in your notebook that will amount to about a max of 1,750 MBPS read speed.

The good news is that is still about 3 x faster than a SATA M.2 SSD can provide.

That is why you want to get the fastest speed PCIe Gen 3.0 NVMe SSD you can for the money.

[Rusty201]

Well it's a little sad I won't be able to leverage the full capability of the NVMe SSD but at least it's better than M2 SATA. By the way, I found following info about M,2 PCIe SSD in my hp official docs,

[Rusty201]

Hello, I found this NVMe SSD of Western Digital from a local store which was pulled from a new device. I cannot tell if it is gen3.0 x2 or x4. Can you kindly inform me? And can you tell me if my hp laptop 15 da 1001nx supports form factor M.2 2280

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

That might be a good drive to get if the price is right.

I have attached the data sheet below and since the PCIe version is 3.0 x 2 it should run at its maximum advertised read speed of 1,700 MBPS, since it can only two PCIe lanes anyway.

Make sure it is the more common M.2 2280 size, and not M.2 2242.

You would not want to transfer that drive to a newer model notebook though.

[Rusty201]

Thankyou for your reply. Firstly, yes it is M.2 2280 size.  You said I should not put it in a new model though. I am putting it in my HP 15 da1001nx which I bought in 2019. And another question is that if If my laptop supports only PCIe gen3.0 x2 and not x4 and i put a nvme gen 3.0 x4 in it having read speed of 2400 MB/s. My laptop specs (picture i posted above) says M.2 NVMe will have capacity of reading 2100 MB/s in my laptop. So the nvme gen3.0 x4 will run at half its speed of 1200 or will it be limited to 2100 MB/s?

1. I installed a software called HWiNFO64 and it says PCI Express Gen3 x4 not x2 in Motherboard -> SMBIOS DMI -> System Slots -> M.2 SSD. (Second IMAGE) .Why does it says Inuse when I have not installed an ssd yet.

2. In Bus -> PCI Bus #0 -> Intel Cannon Lake-LP - PCI Express Root Port #5, it says maximum link width x4 but it also says slot implemented: No  (First IMAGE)

3. I installed CPU-Z and in Mainboard section->Graphic Interface it says PCI Express 3.0 x4 (Third Image)

4. Although you said other threads of people with 15 series said their notebook were x2 not x4. But if it says max support is x4 and if nvme is running at x2 for other people, should not there be a way to make it use max width which is x4. These software tells that max support is x4. The name of MainBoard is HP 8533. Maybe that will give you better idea of which nvme will it run?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Unfortunately, there is no way to get a PCIe 3.0 x 4 NVMe SSD to run at more than half speed.

What I had written yesterday is that you shouldn't put the PCIe 3.0 x2 drive in a newer model notebook, not the one you want to install it in.

Those older model 15-daXXXX notebooks and the HP 250 G7 all run the x4 drives at half speed.

Newer notebooks run the drives at their full speed.

[Rusty201]

Hi. I hope you are doing well. Just wanted to let you know that I installed SAMSUNG MZVLB256HAHQ-000H1 in my notebook and it is running on x4 and not on x2. I do not know why other series or other laptop with same motherboard as mine were not running on x4 but mine apparently does so it's a win for me I guess. I wanted to reply to let other users know too. If there is test that I can perform to check full speed or how many lanes NVMe is using, I will gladly share the screenshot to show other members if in the future anyone faces the same problem as me.