HP Z Turbo G2 4TB NVME in Z840 workstation

[HPLapUserDV7]

Firstly I updated my bios to the most recent version it would install. The machine rebooted itself a few times, then it worked.

I bought a cheap HP Z turbo G2 PCI card from ebay. I installed a new P3 Crucial 4TB nvme drive on the card and put it into slot 1 (4x PCIe). 

I cloned my current 4TB hard drive onto the nvme drive using acronis to crucial ssd software on Windows 10 pro. 

When I booted the system with just the HP Z turbo G2 installed it dropped to grub, as I had installed Fedora on the first 1.5tb of the drive. So I booted off my Windows 10 pro install USB. From there I selected boot to windows 10. From that point everything worked. Somehow Windows figured out how to fix the boot.

This is for anyone who wants to know if you can put a 4tb nvme in those turbo drives.

[SDH]

Agree. I have seen DGroves, our ZTD guru here (who is an IT professional at enterprise level with HP engineer contacts) state that even higher TB M.2 sticks are coming and that they will work with these ZTD cards also.

FYI they also can run the newer PCIe4 M.2 sticks at very fast speeds even if used in a PCIe3 x4 slot. And, even faster if that same stick is in the ZTD card inserted in a PCIe4 x4 slot in a Zx G5 HP workstation. I'd only do that with the ZTD G2 card because it has that nice big heatsink.

[DGroves]

HP specifically designed these cards for their "z"x20/"z"x40 workstation series, and unless modded they will not work in non HP approved systems

the HP turbo z and turbo z g2 pci-e cards are electrically identical only the installed ssd is different with the non g2 being a AHCI type ssd installed originally for the "z"x20 line, when the "z"x40 series workstation came out HP switched to a nvme based ssd on the pci-e card and added the "G2" to the card model name and also included a heatsink this heatsink can also be used with the AHCI ssd as the pci-e  card itself did not change

hp did make some small changes to some of the cards such as adding a drive access led header on some cards for use in some systems to detect drive access from the ssd card, the z820/z840 systems by connecting the HD light indicator from the motherboard HD activity header to the turbo z drive activity header (as i recall) this two pin header can be added to the card if missing if you really want the drive access light for the models that require it

last, the g2 heatsink is not absolutely required in the tower z820/z840 systems as they have a larger chassis with better cooling, however on systems like the z620/z640 which have the 2nd cpu riser installed a ssd heatsink is strongly recommended to prevent the ssd from throttling down in speed due to heat

[tcsenter]

I acquired two ZTD G2 for cheap, sans the heatsink. I removed the Q1 transistor as mentioned elsewhere. No desoldering, I just used a smaller pair of wire cutters with nice point to them, carefully snipped or more like scored across the solder pads/joint a couple times, then used a pair of needle nosed pliers to just twist/pull it off. Both are working great in non-HP system, with non-HP NVME SSDs. Bootable too (which is subject to BIOS having NVME support).

[SDH]

Tcsenter, not sure what your workstation or computer is... you did not mention.

FYI, and for others, the Zx20 and Zx40 workstations with later versions of BIOS all know how to function without modification of the installed Z Turbo Drive G1 or G2. I now favor the G2 because it has an integrated excellent large but relatively thin heatsink. The more recent faster PCIe3 and PCIe4 NVMe M.2 drives benefit from better cooling. I've seen indications that a number of other HP workstations and HP business class PCs also got this upgraded BIOS capability so sometimes you just need to check. Someday I'll try with an Elite 8200 SFF and/or an Elite 8300 SFF.

Removing the Q1 transistor is only needed for use of a Z Turbo Drive card on a HP workstation that does not know how to send the "OK-to-function" signal out from BIOS to the card. For example, from my testing that mod is needed in a HP Z400 and Z600 (used as a very fast non-boot NVMe M.2 documents drive) and for use of a HP ZTD card in many modern non-HP computers (as you are doing). Thanks for the input on this.

EDIT: If anyone wonders why you'd want to do the "Q1-out" procedure to get a ZTD G2 card working on a non-HP computer when you could just buy a generic PCIe M.2 interface card instead it has to do with the very excellent large but relatively thin heatsink providing single-slot-width, the quality of HP electrical engineering, and construction quality of these cards. As more of the Zx20 and Zx40 HP workstations get recycled more of these cards come on the market at excellent prices. My method uses a surgical scalpel or an X-Acto knife to score across the single top Q1 thin contact until it is cut through and then fold the Q1 transistor up and down about 10 times on its two bottom thin contacts until they fail by metal fatigue... it is off in total time of under 1 minute for me.

[tcsenter]

Hi I have one each installed with ASRock H97M PRO4 mainboard and another used in HP EliteDesk 705 G3 SFF AMD system. Both ZTD G2 have Q1 removed.