FUJITSU Esprimo P756 ; MoBo D3401-A NVMe-BOOT ; is it luck, or a feature?

Hey all,

i am using a FUJITSU Desktop ESPRIMO P756 (I5 6500) WIN10 Pro (GPT).
The Motherboard is a D3401-A, and comes with a M.2-Port, which can fit a M.2-SATA III or a M.2-NVMe PCIe 3.0x2 .
(when i bought the PC, it came with its Factory-installed M.2-SATA-SSD)
Allthough the PC works very well for me, i allways thougt, that an upgrade to an NVMe would be nice.
Even though the M.2-Port is only PCIe 3.0x2, it would offer around double the actual SATA-Speed (maybe more).
Further, for even more Speed, there would be the possibility to use a PCIe-to-NVMe-Adaptor, in an additional existing PCIe 3.0x4-Socket.
I allways was hesitant, because i thought, that NVMe-Boot was not supported for this platform.

Finaly yesterday i gave it a shot, and tried this:
Because i didn’t want to reinstall all System and Software from scratch, i cloned my SATA-SSD to a brand-new NVMe (1TB Samsung 980), using Acronis.
(i know, mostly recommended is a clean-install, but that would really be a “pain in the A$$” for me…)
After a little bit of back and forth, i finally got it to boot from the NVMe (BIOS-Setting: UEFI; CSM off; TPM on)
BIOS-Boot-Menue shows as first entry: “Windows Boot Manager (P1: Samsung SSD 980 1TB”
Regarding to several Benchmark-Programs, the maximum read-/write-speed of about 1600 MB/s is achieved, not bad.
So, at first glance, it seems to work fine, but i’m not sure, how stable it might be, and if i can trust it…
On one side i’m happy, that it seems to work (knock on wood…), on the other side i’m not sure, if i only was lucky.

So far, nowhere in the documentation from Fujitsu i could find the explicit info, that NVMe-Boot is supported at all.
(unlike for newer Motherboards, where this feature is explicit mentioned)

I’ve been reading a while in this Forum (though not all the Pages…), but there are still doubts…

Regarding the Datasheets, the BIOS is an AMI Aptio V
Is it so, that this BIOS does offer full NVMe-Support (incl. BOOT), even if not oficially stated ?
At the moment i don’t have a dump (.rom-File) from my very own BIOS, but in one BIOS-File (for this 3401-A MoBo), which i found in www, i couldn’t
find the Module “NvmExpressDxe_5.ffs” (or is it only for AMI Aptio IV) ?
An other thougt: maybe the Samsung 980 NVMe “does the trick” with some kind of option-ROM (similar to the Samsung 950) ?

So my questions are:
Was i only lucky so far, or is my System on the brink of an fatal data-loss ?
(btw.: since i had to learn some lessons the hard way, i run frequent backups …)
Or would it be strongly recommended to do any kind of BIOS-Mod to get full-NVMe-Support ?

Any thougts /comments / ideas ?

FUJITSU Desktop ESPRIMO P756 (I5 6500) WIN10 Pro (GPT)
Motherboard D3401-A
BIOS AMI Aptio V (Customized by Fujitsu)
M.2-Port: can fit a M.2-SATA III or a M.2-NVME PCIe 3.0x2 (here: 1TB Samsung 980 NVME)
DOCs.zip (4.7 MB)

Latest bios for P756 V5.0.0.11 - R1.33.0 (22/02/2023) has already the AMI NVMe module on it, so thats why you succeed, no mods or additional NVMe DXE.

The datasheet (02-2017) of the D3401-B already specifies SATA/NVMe

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Hello MeatWar,

wow, thank you for your answer and explanation.
Now suddenly it all totally makes sense…
I already updatetd my MB with the latest BIOS R1.33.0 (22/02/2023), so it should be fine.
So far as i can see, Fujitsu doesn’t mention anything at all in the Release-Notes, regarding changes / improvements to NVMe-Support, otherwise it would have been clear right away.

As for the (newer) D3401-B, i thought it would be a (too) different MB, so i didn’t pay much attention to that Specs.

Now i’m testing/observing how it goes for a few days, before i’ll try to step up to a PCIe-to-NVMe-Adaptor in the existing PCIe 3.0x4-Socket.

Maybe i’m able to squeeze out 3500 MB/s out of this oldtimer, i will repot back.

many thanks

Hi,

couldn’t wait any longer and tried out the PCIe-to-NVMe-Adaptor.
No issues, worked from start.
Max. Speed isn’t quite 3500 MB/s, but i’m happy with 3300 too.
Given, that even Samsung states 3500 as max., and the price for the adaptor (9 EUR) it should be fine.
(only the speeds for 4K-Random arn’t that pretty…have to look, what that can be…)

greetings

CrystalDiskMark_2023-07-16.zip (35.1 KB)

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