Oldest refurbished laptop I can buy that will boot from an nVMe M.2 drive?

[Snowleopard3000]

I prefer Dell/ Alienware over HP or Lenovo, but I am looking for a laptop to get me by for a little bit that isn't super expensive that I can drop an NVMe in to boot from. Refurbs are fine since I am replacing the drive.

 

[xgsound]

A dell Latitude e6540 can boot from selected (?) half size M2s, but not real NVMes.

Available on Ebay for from 200 to 400 with from 4GB I-5s to 16GB I-7MQs.

I got several Latitudes (in lots for friends and family) that way from E6500 to e6540 and all work great. The e6540s have effective USB3 and a M2 slot along with the removable DVD that accepts a HDD/ SSD 9mm caddy.
The draw back is they are heavy if you want to carry them around.

 

[Snowleopard3000]

A dell Latitude e6540 can boot from selected (?) half size M2s, but not real NVMes.

Available on Ebay for from 200 to 400 with from 4GB I-5s to 16GB I-7MQs.

I got several Latitudes (in lots for friends and family) that way from E6500 to e6540 and all work great. The e6540s have effective USB3 and a M2 slot along with the removable DVD that accepts a HDD/ SSD 9mm caddy.
The draw back is they are heavy if you want to carry them around.

Thank you, My only requirement is that it uses a real NVMe drive, not a sata one, I have enough laptops with sata ssd's. I am looking for the storage (bus speed) of a 2 or 4 channel NVMe.

 

[mikeford]

It may be a mistake to assume NVME support will mean the overall system performance meets some higher level. Usually you are better off to state your objective rather than look for what you think is an element of that objective.

 

[Snowleopard3000]

It may be a mistake to assume NVME support will mean the overall system performance meets some higher level. Usually you are better off to state your objective rather than look for what you think is an element of that objective.

Hi Mike, I am looking for a stopgap laptop for $600-$1200 (refurbs are fine), that will bridge the gap between the gen 3 I7 laptops I have with sata ssds and laptops coming out in say 2-3 years with PCI e 4.x or 5.x motherboards for capture one, Photoshop, Blender, and Divinci.

When PCIe 4.x or 5.x laptops come out, then I will be investing in something from say Sager, Clevo, Eurcom, etc with an upgradable. CPU, GPU and enough ram to make a rack server cry......... I just want an inbetween; between what I have now, and what I am planning ahead for.

My first PC was a 386sx, My first Mac was a Mac Plus with 2 floppy drives. The first PC build from scratch was a Pentium Pro when they first came out..... I have a good idea what I am looking for.

A current maxed Macbook Pro is around $6000 +/- a maxed EUROCOM Sky X9C is about $23,000 and a maxed 2020 Mac Pro Desktop is about $53,000.

so my thoughts are $800-$1200 for what I am looking for as a 2 year investment is pennies on the dollar for photo and video editing and maybe some 3D graphics design.

I have had the chance to work with through a friend, laptops with quad channel nvme's and there is a night and day difference in running those memory and storage hungry applications. If I was logging into webmail and reading news websites, all I would be using is my tablet.

I just felt I did not need to go into all that detail for the purpose of my post.

 

[mikeford]

Ah, I see you were spoiled by starting with a high end 386sx.

Made me curious so I looked around a little, seems most are like the Dell above, using a short M2 card. This page may be useful. https://www.dell.com/community/Lapt...ions-And-Upgrade-Requirements-For/m-p/5072834

 

[Snowleopard3000]

I did some more digging and I guess I can get a Dell Precision 7730 (gen 8 I7 or i9, or Xeon) for $1499 on fleabay..... but it will accept 3 or 4 nvme drives and up to 128gb of ddr-4 if I ever want to max it out.... A little more than the $1200 I wanted to invest, but it also would have a longer life span also.

 

[mikeford]

Why the nix on short NVME cards?

 

[Snowleopard3000]

Why the nix on short NVME cards?

Because short NVME cards are like msata's.... don't want to get screwed again. Might as well stick with the main stream standard and higher capacities will be easier to get on standard sized NVM'e as technology improves.

 

[mikeford]

The direction of standards is always to physically smaller devices. Mostly always.