Pavilion 15-bc014 or OMEN 15-ax000 NVMe upgrade

[ordinary_user]

Hello,

I am interested to buy one of the following laptops:

HP Pavilion 15-bc014nl
• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ
• Chipset: Intel HM170
• RAM: 16 GB di SDRAM DDR4-2133
• Memory: SATA 1 TB (7200 rpm); SSD M.2 128 GB
• Display: FHD IPS
• GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M (4 GB GDDR5)

or

HP OMEN 15-ax000nl
• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ
• Chipset: Intel HM170
• RAM: 16 GB di SDRAM DDR4-2133
• Memory: SATA 1 TB (7200 rpm); SSD M.2 128 GB
• Display: FHD IPS
• GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 965M (4 GB GDDR5)

I suppose that the two laptops are identical on hardware level (except for the video card).

After the purchase I would like to install a Samsung SSD of type NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 (M-Key 2280) as 960 PRO or 960 EVO.

The two SSDs are FULLY compatible with the listed laptops?

Thanks in advance for the answers.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Pavilion Manual, see p. 2:

Manual

Omen Manual see p. 2:

Omen Manual

Both of these list a PCIe/NVME M.2 mSSD as compatible so the ones you ask about will work. HP uses Samsung SM51 as its OEM PCIe M.2 drives.

If this is "the Answer" please click "Accept as Solution" to help others find it.  

[ordinary_user]

 You mean SM951?

[Huffer]

Yes. Sorry typo. 

I have one in my Zbook 15 G3...listed as Samsung MZVLV512HCJH-000H1

Purchased from HP parts Store as replacement part

[ordinary_user]

So does it run at full speed?

Max Sequential Read: Up to 2150 MB
Max Sequential Write: Up to 1500 MB

[Huffer]

Read is high but not that high, like 1600. Write is like 500. There are a lot of posts out on the internet generally about slower than advertised write speeds on PCIe M.2 mSSDs. That is my Zbook 15 G3. On my Spectre 13 "world's thinnest" I get very close to advertised on read and write. Power on and boot is just about instantaneous. Blink and you are at the desktop. 

[gdg444]

If we have a PCIE 3.0 m.2 NVME slot what is preventing us from getting the read speeds that the drive is capable of?

I have a New HP Omen 17 and just upgraded the SSD that came with it the Samsung PM951 to a SM961, write speeds seem about correct but read speeds are "STUCK" AT 1700mbs

[Huffer]

Don't know but being stuck at 1700 mbps is definitely a first world problem, my friend. Have you tried installing the Samsung NVME driver update? Bumped my read and write speeds by about 10%

[gdg444]

Problem was addressed by HP with a firmware upgrade couple of months ago. Now speeds are where they should be.