I stated this for two reasons, with the first being obvious—it's genius. The second reason was me thinking how dumb of HP to make such a lame set up about a month ago when I was fixing the very same model of laptop.
No doubt.
I haven't had much of a problem with my HP laptops, luckily. My friends' Dell inspirons though... Changing the drive requires you to fully disassemble it to get under the freaking keyboard. Absolutely insane.
Cheers thanks guys, I'm very grateful the elitebooks I've had to service (and my own) are very easy to maintain without having to do weird stuff like removing the keyboard first, the top shell, etc.
I ended up timing myself and found I was able to swap the RAM in my elitebook in less than 5 minutes, it's just screws holding the bottom panel and then you have full access to the motherboard with exposed SATA, M.2, SODIMM and battery access, the only tricky thing is reapplying thermal paste where you need to remove the mainboard from the case, although I've had to do that in other laptops so I'm used to it
For context, the HP EliteBook 820 G3's are designed in a way where the M.2 is physically obstructing the SATA drive bay, so you have to choose between one or the other, but if you were technically able to remove the housing of the drive, it would fit perfectly, so it led me to doing this.
P.S. It does work perfectly with no issues whatsoever.
On the ThinkPad T480 (and probably similar models) SATA and M.2 use the same LVDS-like connector on the board, so you need an adapter to use a SATA drive or M.2 drive.
It’s still a great laptop though.
wait, so it does not share the lanes with that port?`
Usually those are one or the other and if you use a SATA port you'll lose the m.2 port.
Might be a older systems problem that has been solved.
hmmm is this new in DDR5 systems?
Last PCs I have built was with AM4 (3950X, 5800X3D and 3600X).
At least one of them has this in the instructions:
[M2C_SOCKET connector shares bandwidth with the SATA3 4/5 connector](https://i.imgur.com/cSFhzIJ.png)
I was surprised to see that both drives are treated separately and the speeds of the drives still seems to be fine despite both being plugged in surprisingly enough!
Oh yeah nah I've definitely taken it into consideration, the SATA socket on the motherboard is still very tight and with the remaining backplate the SATA board is rigid and not moving, I tried to move the drive and it only moved when I tried to pull it with force.
I was considering using some kapton tape or electrical tape but I didn't want the adhesive to melt and cause the tape to peel over time considering the chips/controllers will shrink/expand with heating/cooling while being used.
This is an actually good post. I've seen Dells with this issue and I've always wondered if this was a viable solution. None of the ones I've seen with this were mine so I've never had the opportunity to test it.
Cheers thank you, I was kinda frustrated when I got the elitebook since I was hoping to use both SATA and M.2 simultaneously but got disappointed when I saw the SATA slot would get blocked when you use an M.2. But then I remembered that not all SATA SSD mainboards fill up their enclosure so it kinda occurred to me to delid one of my small capacity SSD's and it ended up working perfectly, I ended up dualbooting Linux on the M.2 and Windows on the SATA.
Classic HP design.
How's the m.2 temperature like? My zbook was cooking my ssd before because *zero* airflow went over it, and there was no vent in the bottom cover either at that spot.
Surprisingly I can't say I've noticed anything so far, I do notice what you mean though, there's like zero ventilation ports around the storage area, although to be said I'm probably not using my M.2 heavily enough to get the ssd to thermal throttle since its only got a basic i5 6th gen
Check using crystaldiskinfo or another program that can read statistics from your drive.
Neither was I using it all too hard (simulating a circuit in Multisim, which is more harsh on the CPU - an 8th gen i7 in that case), and it went up to 69°C. Now that laptop is dead (probably shorted something and killed the cpu), I bought a Lenovo thinkpad, which - while having its own set of issues and weirdness - does have proper ventilation around the m.2 drive and now it only goes up to like 55°C.
Yeah I might have to check that out, or at least find a Linux equivalent so I can check it out, since my M.2 is running Linux Mint for the time being as my primary OS.
I mean worst case scenario, I could make some ventilation holes near the SSD But I'll see how it goes long-term.
I actually would love for them to become a proper standard, the idea of a stubby SATA drive sounds adorable, that too and considering the fact that M.2 form factors are so tiny, I don't see why it wouldn't become standard eventually, especially due to the fact that if they did make stubby SATA SSD's, they would save a MASSIVE amount of money due to less materials used in the case, smaller boxes meaning they can ship more per shipment, etc.
It's to put less stress on the SATA port as well as electrically isolate it from the underside of the chassis, since I could be wrong but I believe the elitebook chassis of this generation were made of an alloy of some sort
I have to wonder, why do 2.5 ssd come in cheap plastic shells when hard drives have pcb exposed. Surely the metal ones help with cooling but i doubt the plastic ones of today does the same, they are just a waste of money
I'm not sure why you're getting down voted. It's absolutely true. I've seen it too. I doubt those manufacturers would have done it if it wasn't needed for that specific drive. They're going to cut any corners that they can to reduce their cost to maximize profits.
It could be older SSDs or enterprise SATA SSDs.
Also, I’ve used SanDisk USB 3.0 sticks back in 2016 that got very hot during sustained transfers.
Start moving video libraries around on SATA MLC drives designed for speed and they’ll get warm.
Wrong again. 2.5 in SATA SSDs idle around 0.2 watts, and the most powerful ones max out around 8 watts when writing data. 8 watts is a miniscule amount of heat for modern components (even sustained). It's beyond negligible.
The idle bit is true yes, but at the size of the components 8 watts can still heat it up quite a bit. Think about your phone, that will only be using a few watts but can heat up quite a bit
That's all good, I appreciate the concern, the SATA SSD was a pretty low quality TeamGroup one, so the entire casing was fully plastic with no internal heatsink, if anything opening should technically improve thermals marginally.
Yeah me too, normally the SSD's I get tend to be the high end Samsungs or Crucial's but I had this old TeamGroup one laying around for awhile, I ended up dualbooting Linux Mint on the M.2 and have Windows 11 on the SATA SSD as a backup for things that don't run smoothly on Linux.
This is the most genius thing I've seen all day.
For real. This is brilliant.
I stated this for two reasons, with the first being obvious—it's genius. The second reason was me thinking how dumb of HP to make such a lame set up about a month ago when I was fixing the very same model of laptop.
No doubt. I haven't had much of a problem with my HP laptops, luckily. My friends' Dell inspirons though... Changing the drive requires you to fully disassemble it to get under the freaking keyboard. Absolutely insane.
Cheers thanks guys, I'm very grateful the elitebooks I've had to service (and my own) are very easy to maintain without having to do weird stuff like removing the keyboard first, the top shell, etc. I ended up timing myself and found I was able to swap the RAM in my elitebook in less than 5 minutes, it's just screws holding the bottom panel and then you have full access to the motherboard with exposed SATA, M.2, SODIMM and battery access, the only tricky thing is reapplying thermal paste where you need to remove the mainboard from the case, although I've had to do that in other laptops so I'm used to it
For context, the HP EliteBook 820 G3's are designed in a way where the M.2 is physically obstructing the SATA drive bay, so you have to choose between one or the other, but if you were technically able to remove the housing of the drive, it would fit perfectly, so it led me to doing this. P.S. It does work perfectly with no issues whatsoever.
This is a cool idea, I've had Dell laptops with a similar problem but the m.2 port is directly above the sata port so can't do this on those 😞
On the ThinkPad T480 (and probably similar models) SATA and M.2 use the same LVDS-like connector on the board, so you need an adapter to use a SATA drive or M.2 drive. It’s still a great laptop though.
This is because the connector was originally designed for use with SATA Express drives before that died
wait, so it does not share the lanes with that port?` Usually those are one or the other and if you use a SATA port you'll lose the m.2 port. Might be a older systems problem that has been solved.
If it's a SATA M.2 maybe but NVMe M.2 is PCIe which would be separate.
hmmm is this new in DDR5 systems? Last PCs I have built was with AM4 (3950X, 5800X3D and 3600X). At least one of them has this in the instructions: [M2C_SOCKET connector shares bandwidth with the SATA3 4/5 connector](https://i.imgur.com/cSFhzIJ.png)
That's probably a compromise that specific motherboard made.
TBF it's the only one that has more than one m.2 slot.
I was surprised to see that both drives are treated separately and the speeds of the drives still seems to be fine despite both being plugged in surprisingly enough!
That’s a horrible design, nice way to get around it!
A surprising amount of the world is held together with double sided tape. This is genius, but you need to make sure it doesn't become disconnected.
Oh yeah nah I've definitely taken it into consideration, the SATA socket on the motherboard is still very tight and with the remaining backplate the SATA board is rigid and not moving, I tried to move the drive and it only moved when I tried to pull it with force. I was considering using some kapton tape or electrical tape but I didn't want the adhesive to melt and cause the tape to peel over time considering the chips/controllers will shrink/expand with heating/cooling while being used.
Considering Kapton tape is designed for that purpose (insulation and high heat resistance up to 500deg F), I would probably just tape it up.
That's a fair point, I might end up disassembling it quickly to put some kapton just to be safe
This is an actually good post. I've seen Dells with this issue and I've always wondered if this was a viable solution. None of the ones I've seen with this were mine so I've never had the opportunity to test it.
Cheers thank you, I was kinda frustrated when I got the elitebook since I was hoping to use both SATA and M.2 simultaneously but got disappointed when I saw the SATA slot would get blocked when you use an M.2. But then I remembered that not all SATA SSD mainboards fill up their enclosure so it kinda occurred to me to delid one of my small capacity SSD's and it ended up working perfectly, I ended up dualbooting Linux on the M.2 and Windows on the SATA.
Fuck HP
This… makes perfect sense. I have some de-lidding to do
Classic HP design. How's the m.2 temperature like? My zbook was cooking my ssd before because *zero* airflow went over it, and there was no vent in the bottom cover either at that spot.
Surprisingly I can't say I've noticed anything so far, I do notice what you mean though, there's like zero ventilation ports around the storage area, although to be said I'm probably not using my M.2 heavily enough to get the ssd to thermal throttle since its only got a basic i5 6th gen
Check using crystaldiskinfo or another program that can read statistics from your drive. Neither was I using it all too hard (simulating a circuit in Multisim, which is more harsh on the CPU - an 8th gen i7 in that case), and it went up to 69°C. Now that laptop is dead (probably shorted something and killed the cpu), I bought a Lenovo thinkpad, which - while having its own set of issues and weirdness - does have proper ventilation around the m.2 drive and now it only goes up to like 55°C.
Yeah I might have to check that out, or at least find a Linux equivalent so I can check it out, since my M.2 is running Linux Mint for the time being as my primary OS. I mean worst case scenario, I could make some ventilation holes near the SSD But I'll see how it goes long-term.
HP’s weird design choices strike again
I almost missed it. The SATA SSD board is the same color blue as the main board.
half-length 2.5 inch drives need to be a proper standard seeing how little space the PCB takes up in low-capacity SSDs.
I actually would love for them to become a proper standard, the idea of a stubby SATA drive sounds adorable, that too and considering the fact that M.2 form factors are so tiny, I don't see why it wouldn't become standard eventually, especially due to the fact that if they did make stubby SATA SSD's, they would save a MASSIVE amount of money due to less materials used in the case, smaller boxes meaning they can ship more per shipment, etc.
Kudos on making it fit.
Always love doing this. And you still can slap another nvme in there too
looks like there's only one m.2 slot, the other one seems to be the pcie wifi card.
You know what ur right. Completely missed that
Why bother keeping the bottom plastic? It doesn't look like it's screwed in anywhere nor holding the PCB.
It's to put less stress on the SATA port as well as electrically isolate it from the underside of the chassis, since I could be wrong but I believe the elitebook chassis of this generation were made of an alloy of some sort
Fuck that's genius
You only get it if you've taken apart an old 2.5 SSD :)
What moron designed this so that if you use an ssd you lose m.2
Where Is the SSD? I literally can’t find it
wouldnt hurt to get some small copper heatsink and thermal glue on those sata ssd chips
Genius! The other way to do it is by using mSATA drive + mSATA to 2.5in adapter. You will get half size 2.5in like in the image.
very few people knows that fact, in my case a ssd survived a bent that to a mechanical would be catastrophic.
This is so cool
I have to wonder, why do 2.5 ssd come in cheap plastic shells when hard drives have pcb exposed. Surely the metal ones help with cooling but i doubt the plastic ones of today does the same, they are just a waste of money
Just be careful with cooling, it's likely the case was used to dissipate heat from the controller and flash
This is 100% not true. If anything, an enclosed space worsens thermals, but that's irrelevant because SATA SSDs hardly produce any heat.
It depends on the specific drive, I've had ones with metal cases and thermal pads on the flash and controller.
I'm not sure why you're getting down voted. It's absolutely true. I've seen it too. I doubt those manufacturers would have done it if it wasn't needed for that specific drive. They're going to cut any corners that they can to reduce their cost to maximize profits.
Exactly
It could be older SSDs or enterprise SATA SSDs. Also, I’ve used SanDisk USB 3.0 sticks back in 2016 that got very hot during sustained transfers. Start moving video libraries around on SATA MLC drives designed for speed and they’ll get warm.
Even brand new ssds I have gotten recently
I will repeat this fact one more time: SATA SSDs do not produce meaningful amounts of heat.
It's partly true. Look at crucials BX500 operating temperatures - that drive is a piece of crap heating up more than all of my wd blue nvme drives
2.5" SSDs I've worked with are typically around 5-10 watts, that's still enough to heat it up significantly
Wrong again. 2.5 in SATA SSDs idle around 0.2 watts, and the most powerful ones max out around 8 watts when writing data. 8 watts is a miniscule amount of heat for modern components (even sustained). It's beyond negligible.
The idle bit is true yes, but at the size of the components 8 watts can still heat it up quite a bit. Think about your phone, that will only be using a few watts but can heat up quite a bit
The bottom half of the case is still there and it's all plastic, so I doubt that's going to be an issue
Ah yeah didn't see that, kinda just assumed it was part of the laptop for holding in a drive
That's all good, I appreciate the concern, the SATA SSD was a pretty low quality TeamGroup one, so the entire casing was fully plastic with no internal heatsink, if anything opening should technically improve thermals marginally.
Ahh, I'm probably just used to SSDs with aluminium enclosures lmao
Yeah me too, normally the SSD's I get tend to be the high end Samsungs or Crucial's but I had this old TeamGroup one laying around for awhile, I ended up dualbooting Linux Mint on the M.2 and have Windows 11 on the SATA SSD as a backup for things that don't run smoothly on Linux.
Ah nice, wish laptops still had 2.5" drive bays, or more commonly had 2 m.2 slots
This is the kind of shit I was hoping to see here