Samsung 960 EVO

[ngoodacre]

I recently bought a refurbished HP Z420 desktop, intending to take advantage of its PCIe Version. 3 slots to run my graphics card and a SATA SSD (not yet bought) at higher speeds, and also get some USB.3 ports. I should add that my current system has served me well, but has reached the limit of its upgrade capability.

All would have been well had I not cast an envious eye on the Samsung 960 EVO and NVMe. At first I was happy to learn that, even though the Z420 MOB does not have an M.2 connector for the latest generation of SSDs, I could connect such an SSD - such as the Samsung 960 EVO - through an adapter card straight to a PVIe slot. This would work, I think. The OS I would be using is Windows 8.1 - that supports NVMe. However, to my sorrow I learn that the Z420 will not support booting from a SAMSUNG 960 EVO SSD connected via the PCIe bus unless the C 602 chipset is "Haswell Refresh or later' to quote Samsung. The version of the Intel C602 chipset on my Z420 MOB is 'Patsburg' just one short of what is required.

I have seen a few posts that appear to claim that a BIOS upgrade (or would it be UEFI) could rectify this, but surely, if a MOB chip is not hardwired exactly as it should be, this can't be put right by microcode changes. If I'm right, can someone advise me what is the next MOM up the line - so to speak - that supports booting from a Samsung 960 EVO connected to the PCIe bus via an adapter card, and the NVMe protocol being used between a driver in Windows 8 and a controller somewhere down there in the Samsung H/W. The Z420 has an ATX format MOB.

 

[Barty1884]

Firmware update (official or otherwise) can enable booting from PCIe/NVMe drives -- there has been reports of older (pre-Haswell) systems having their BIOS' modified to enable booting from PCIe SSDs.

Official BIOS updates to enable this functionality are unlikely. In pre-builts (like HP's), the updates are typically limited to supporting hardware that was available from the factory -- As far as I can tell, HP did not offer PCIe based SSDs in any of the Z420 systems, so a 'fix' in a BIOS revision is unlikely.

That being said, unless you have a workload that would truly benefit from the speeds afforded by a 960EVO, I'd suggest you reconsider.
For most people, the difference between a quality SATA based SSD and an NVMe is a second or two shaved off their boot time.... and benchmark bragging rights.

 

[ngoodacre]

Thank-you for this good advice. I will have enough to do getting familiar with Windows 8.1 after years of Windows 7 (on an XPS 400 !) without attempting what is described in the following posts:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/full-nvme-support-possible-for-older-intel-chipsets.2437588/

https://www.win-raid.com/t871f50-Guide-How-to-get-full-NVMe-support-for-all-Systems-with-an-AMI-UEFI-BIOS-7.html#msg17072

Although Fernando did help me get TRIM working on my ancient XPS 400, what he describes here is much more formidable.