Samsung 950 PRO M.2 and HP Z620 workstation Intel C602 / X79

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#1 | Samsung 950 PRO M.2 and HP Z620 workstation Intel C602 / X79 datum

Tue Jun 07, 2016 10:47 am

I have HP Z620 (C602/X79) workstation and I would like to upgrade it with Samsung 950 pro m.2 and use it as boot drive.
Is it safe to say that I won't have compatibility issues if I order PCI-e DeLOCK 89370 adapter with 950 pro m.2 and fit this combo to 2nd PCI-e x16 Gen3 slot? Will it support NVMe or do I have to modify Bios in order to boot from m.2 NVMe drive?
So far I have seen that officially HP recommends HP Z Turbo Drive G2 with NVMe only to ZX40 (C612/X99) series workstation: Z440, Z640 and Z840 and HP Z Turbo Drive G1 without NVMe to ZX20 seriers: Z420, Z620 and Z820.

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#2 | RE: Samsung 950 PRO M.2 and HP Z620 workstation Intel C602 / X79 datum

Tue Jun 07, 2016 10:13 pm

@godol:
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!
There is no guarantee, but I am pretty sure, that you will be able to get the Samsung 950 Pro SSD working as bootable system drive with your X79 chipset system. You probably need to insert the required NVMe BIOS module into your mainboard BIOS according >this< guide.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

My current System:
MB: ASRock X570 Pro4, CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600, System Drive: 500 GB Samsung 980 Pro, Graphics: Sapphire Radeon RX570, OS: Win10 x64 Pro
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#3 | RE: Samsung 950 PRO M.2 and HP Z620 workstation Intel C602 / X79 datum

Tue Jun 07, 2016 11:54 pm (Last edited: Tue Jun 07, 2016 11:56 pm)

Thanks for your answer. I have downloaded latest bios to my motherboard. Its extension was BIN instead of ROM but as far as I can see they both contain the same goodies.
I have already manually added NVMe module to my bios and saved it on pendrive so it's ready for bios update but I'm actually hesitating to go ahead. It's not typical customer motherboard, I mean it's not MSI, ASUS or ASROCK but custom made HP motherboard for workstations so I'm not sure if it's safe to upload this modded bios. Do you know anyone who has successfully flashed his HP workstation motherboard with inserted NVMe module? I simply don't won't to brick my PC :)

Thanks for your work and suport!

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#4 | RE: Samsung 950 PRO M.2 and HP Z620 workstation Intel C602 / X79 datum

Wed Jun 08, 2016 12:16 am

Zitat von godol im Beitrag #3
Do you know anyone who has successfully flashed his HP workstation motherboard with inserted NVMe module?

No.
Although I cannot give you any guarantee, I estimate the risk of a bricked mainboard as low, because you do not touch any natively present BIOS modules. What may happen is, that HP has blocked the flashing of any modded BIOS, but in this case you will get an error message, before the flashing procedure starts.

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#5 | RE: Samsung 950 PRO M.2 and HP Z620 workstation Intel C602 / X79 datum

Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:52 am

I have tried to upload modified bios but it didn't work. I was rejected both in DOS and within bios when trying to load modified bios. Nevertheless i have installed 950 Pro m.2 NVMe and it works without tweaking the bios.
I think 950 Pro is bundled with NVMe module that possibly loads during boot when booting in UEFI mode? It works fine and speed is I think close to declared by Samsung.
i have only one issue that I'm not able to solve. To be able to boot successfully I have to disconnect DVD drive. Once the DVD drive is connected to motherboard booting takes several minutes and computer is unresponsive during boot.
This I think has something to do with UEFI and legacy bios compatibility mode that I can't figure out how to disable for good.

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#6 | RE: Samsung 950 PRO M.2 and HP Z620 workstation Intel C602 / X79 datum

Mon Jun 20, 2016 8:42 am (Last edited: Mon Jun 20, 2016 3:55 pm)

Zitat von godol im Beitrag #5
I have tried to upload modified bios but it didn't work. I was rejected both in DOS and within bios when trying to load modified bios.

That is a pity. Maybe one of our BIOS Gurus know how to to get a modded BIOS properly flashed onto a HP workstation.

Zitat
I think 950 Pro is bundled with NVMe module that possibly loads during boot when booting in UEFI mode?

Yes, the Samsung 950 Pro has an NVMe Option ROM on-board, which will be loaded as long as the BIOS settings allow, that LEGACY Option ROMs are loaded while booting. That means, that you will not be able to boot the Samsung 950 Pro after having set the "Compatibility Support Module" (CSM) to "Disabled" within the BIOS.

Zitat
Once the DVD drive is connected to motherboard booting takes several minutes and computer is unresponsive during boot.

To which SATA port of your mainboard is the Optical Drive connected and with which SATA mode (IDE/AHCI/RAID) is the related SATA Controller running?

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#7 | RE: Samsung 950 PRO M.2 and HP Z620 workstation Intel C602 / X79 datum

Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:11 pm (Last edited: Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:14 pm)

DVD drive is connected to one of the SCU ports. I will try today to connect it to one of the AHCI ports and see if it helps. Regarding the BIOS it's quite annoying that I'm not able to load modified bios with NVMa module :( It's also impossible to find older bios for this motherboard. Latest version of the bios for this mobo is 3.88 and HP has locked down all previous releases of the bios. I also red that bios 3.5 was the milestone version meaning that from 3.5 it's impossible to downgrade to previous releases.
It would be very nice If I could get help from one of the bios guru guys and load modified bios. In the same time I could perhaps change bios boot block date to latest one. Apparently HP was so griddy that they have blocked possibility to load boot block date to Bios.
For the entire X20 workstation family (420, 620 and 820) HP released two versions of motherboards. First version with boot lock date 12/28/2011 doesn't support Ivy Bridge CPUs but second version with boot lock date 3/6/2013 does support these CPUs. The funny thing is that there is no hardware change but only boot lock date is different. There were some brave guys who re-soldered their flash chips and reprogrammed version 01 of the motherboard to latest boot lock date: 3/6/2013 and successfully upreared their systems with Ivy Bridge Xeons.
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PC.../5086052/page/6

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