Hello,
M.2 drives have greatly advanced in cost / performance and the recent release of the Samsung NVme 960 Evo is particularly interesting:
- SEQUENTIAL READ
Up to 3,200 MB/sec
- SEQUENTIAL WRITE
250 GB: Up to 1,500 MB/sec
500 GB: Up to 1,800 MB/sec
1000 GB: Up to 1,900 MB/sec - RANDOM READ (4KB, QD32)
250 GB: Up to 330,000 IOPS (Thread 4)
500 GB: Up to 330,000 IOPS (Thread 4)
1000 GB: Up to 380,000 IOPS (Thread 4) - RANDOM WRITE (4KB, QD32)
250 GB: Up to 300,000 IOPS (Thread 4)
500 GB: Up to 330,000 IOPS (Thread 4)
1000 GB: Up to 360,000 IOPS (Thread 4) - RANDOM READ (4KB, QD1)
Up to 14,000 IOPS (Thread 1)
- RANDOM WRITE (4KB, QD1)
Up to 50,000 IOPS (Thread 1)
As these results approach those of the Samsung 960 Pro, the fastest drives available- but quite expensive, the 960 Evo 250GB costs $130, 500GB: $250 (960 Pro 512GB= $330), and 1TB: $480 (960Pro 1TB=$630), the 96- Evo is very attractive to comtemplate using.
The performance of NVMe drives is very good in zX20 workstations. On Passmark baseiines, a z420 / 950 Pro 256GB NVME has a Disk Mark of 15187. For comparison, my z420 /Samsung SM951 256GB AHCI has a mark of 11559. In the z620 the AHCI mysteriously rates higher than the 950 Pro NVme, with a top mark of 13928 for the SM951 AHCI ( <Forum friend Brian1965). The HP Z-Turbo Drive 256GB AHCI I use in a z620 is second at 13426 and the top mark for the 950 Pro 256GB NVMe is 12690. In the world of z820's, a dual E5-2687w v2 / Intel 750 1.2TB NVMe system produces 12261 and a Samsung SM951 NVMe = 12141.
However, in the HP z-X20 series systems, the only boot-capable NVMe drive out of the box appears to be the quite expensive Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe (256Gb = $300, 512GB=$480) which has an internal BIOS that allows the system to recognize it as a boot device.
The sequence of modifying a system for NVMe support is complex. See:
"Guide about how to get full NVME support"
Which in effect decribes techniques by which is, "probably valid for all Intel 6,7,8,,and 9-series chipset systems", using UEFI BIOS, by adding a mainboard EFI module to BIOS. But, that is an expert procedure and like modiying the registery, a risky one.
With more affordable, high performance NVMe drives, that probably many users that would like to install on zX20 systems, without complex modifications to the system BIOS, I am curious to know if HP would consider releasing BIOS for zX20 systems with NVMe support?
BambiBoomZ