M.2 bandwith on HP Spectre X360 13-ae091ms

[guyinmatsci]

After a call with three different departments at HP, I'm still left with no answer. I want to upgrade my 256gb drive to 512gb but I need to know if the m.2 slot uses 2 or 4 PCIe lanes, as I don't want to spend extra money on a faster drive just to find out my laptop can't even reach those speeds anyways. Support told me to "try it out and see if it works" which is zero help because I'd rather not just throw away money to answer a question that should be in a tech sheet. Does anyone have experience switching drives in this laptop and might be able to help me out?

[banhien]

@guyinmatsci 

Its specs says it has 256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD. The best way to find out is to look at Device Manager > Disk drives. You will see existing model and use that model to find a similar one with larger capacity. For example my machine shows

   Samsung MZVLW256HEHP-000H1

From there I can find a larger (capacity) drive.

Regards.

[guyinmatsci]

Thanks, but I'm not asking about the SSD. I'm asking about the M.2 slot the SSD plugs into. Can this slot support the 3500 mbps SSDs out there on the market? Or will it run closer to the speeds of the ssd in the system (~1700 mbps IIRC)

[banhien]

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@guyinmatsci wrote:

Thanks, but I'm not asking about the SSD. I'm asking about the M.2 slot the SSD plugs into.....

@guyinmatsci 

Sorry, did you read my reply ? I clearly said about the M.2 NVMe drive.

Regards.

[guyinmatsci]

I did read your response. The thing is, M.2 NVMe is *not* a standard for speed. M.2 is only the physical connection, and NVMe is a memory controller interface spec that means the storage is connected to the CPU's PCIe lanes. For total accuracy it could be connected to the chipset, but for a laptop it'll be the PCIe lanes from the CPU. NVMe says nothing of how many PCIe lanes it uses. Some NVMe slots are x2, meaning they have the bandwidth of 2 lanes. With PCIe 3.0, which is what NVMe drives normally are, 2 lanes can transfer data at roughly 1,970 MB/s. This is fine for the drive that came with the laptop, which runs at ~1700 MBs. The thing is, there are plenty of drives that run at ~3500 MB/s which means they need 4 PCIe lanes. Let me restate my question: does the M.2 slot have 2 or 4 PCIe lanes?

HP could've cheaped out and put a x2 NVMe SSD in a x4 slot. That is why I do not care what HP put in the laptop.