ZBOOK 15 G1 nVME support?

[EugenJ]

Hello!

I'm a proud owner of an HP ZBOOK G1 15 inch mobile workstation.

Storage wise right now i have a samsung Sata 256GB SSD.

The machine has got an mSATA slot and an M.2 slot free and not used right now.

In the G2 ZBOOK the M.2 slot has support for NVME solid state drives and much higher speeds then SATA connection.

So since the G1 also has an M.2 slot and they are physicaly almost identical. I was wondering if the G1 ZBOOK also supports NVME SSD-s or is it just a normal M.2 slot with a limit at around 500MB/S.

Configuration: 4800MQ, Nvidia K2100M, 32GB samsung RAM.

Thanks!

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

You likely have already seen the Manual:

Service Manual

The M.2 slot is for the WWAN module. The mSATA slot can be used for primary storage or as flash acceleration cache and HP offered up to a 128 gig mSATA storage option:

See page 58:

128-GB mSATA-3 SSD 735595-001

This can be used as primary storage but would offer no speed advantage over your existing SATA-3 SSD. 

You might try an M.2 2242 disk in the WWAN slot. Some laptops have a slot that will support either. I have a couple Thinkpad T440 models at my office that have a 2242 M.2 slot that can accept a storage drive or WWAN, but they are SATA not NVME. NVME support did not really come in until 6th gen Intel Core platforms. 

Post back with any other questions and please Accept as Solution fi this is your answer. 

[EugenJ]

So the m.2 slot can possibly support an M.2 drive but it's SATA.

Considering this is a 4th generation machine that's what i would expect but the ZBOOK 15 G2 is also a fourth gen intel machine and it does have support for NVME. That's why i asked. It comes with a HP turbodrive NVME ssd.

[Huffer]

Yesit is also 4th gen but slightly different list of processors and it was cutting edge...probably the first to use NVME and that is why they gave it a different generation number. But both use the same chipset. Again, you might try an M.2 storage disk in the WWAN slot and see what happens and I guess it might support an NVME type but if it would, you would think the Manual would mention it and advertising literature also would and they do not. 

I have actually never seen a PCIe/NVME 2242 M.2 disk:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3524093/2242-nvme-drive.html

I think the G2 uses 2260 format:

https://www.impactcomputers.com/795955-001.html

[EugenJ]

Yeah it seems to me the G2 is really just slightly upgraded with the biggest difference beeing the NVME slot.

I mean this is not very important to me, i just wanted to check. The real life performance difference between SATA and NVME SSD's is quiet minimal.

The laptop is otherwise running amazing. I have a docking station for connecting it to my peripherals and i use it

mostly for multitrack Mixing in Avid protools and some video editing in premiere.

Never had a machine running this smooth for those tasks. Including my old haswell self built custom PC and my old Lenovo T540P with almost the same configuration but no quadro card.

For some reason the Zbook is running much smooter.

The only advice i have for other zbook owners is, replace the stock thermal paste. It's crap and you can get a 15C average temp decrease with good paste.

Also, would my zbook G1 support eGPU's over thunderbolt 2 ?

[Huffer]

Yes it should. Does not have an MXM slot, does it? 

Don't you also have an Expresscard slot? 

[EugenJ]

Yes it does have an MXM slot but it's too hard finding used MXM cards for good money.

It does have both thunderbolt and express card slot so i could pick which one of those to use for eGPU?

[Huffer]

I think essentially both are direct pcie connections so either would work and I know they make both types of eGPUs.