The additional PCIe SATA III card is a Syba 2 Port USB 3.0, and 2 Port SATA III PCIe 2.0 x 4, SD-PEX50055 NON-RAID card, which I added since you only get 2 SATA III ports on the Z620 motherboard. I have both the SATA III ports on the card connected to an ICY Dock 2.5/3.5 inch Enclosure as shown below. I mainly use it for creatingbackups, disk cloning and as a project drive for video/3D renders and large Cubase projects. I don't use the USB ports on the card. P.S. My friend who is also a musician and into music production (Cubase) has the same dock so he'll record his album onto an SSD and send it to me to mix for him. (Search YouTube for Stevie Agnew if interested). I can comfortably stream 48 tracks of 96kHz/24bit audio from either 2.5 SSD or 3.5 HDD and still have tons of overhead for plug-ins, etc. No glitches. I use a Tascam US-1641 audio/midi interface.
Did see a slight improvement in numbers regarding the SM951 with the Syba card removed but I consider the 2.5/3.5 dock to be one of my essential workstation components. Extremely handy being able to hot plug 2.5 and 3.5 drives without opening the enclosure or shutting down the PC, (and bypassing the USB ports).
Regarding the 2nd CPU bracket, I am sure I got mine with a brand new 2nd CPU riser card that was purchased. I bought my workstation on ebay which was listed as a dual Xeon E5-2640 system but when it arrived it only had one 2660 CPU and no CPU riser. Eventually the guy bought a brand new CPU riser and shipped it to me. I'm sure there was a slot in the pink foam packaging that contained the instructions and the bracket. Just found this on the HP website; NOTE: If a second CPU module is being installed for the first time, remove the metal slot cover for PCIe slot 1 from the PCI bulkhead. Replace it with the riser guide bracket, which is included with the second CPU module kit.
FYI, my son is studying at Teeside University in the north of England and has just completed his first year. Prior to this he was working for a video production company in Newcastle doing quite a bit of video editing using Edius Pro. Now he's mainly using Adobe AfterEffects and Maya for 3D work and PremierPro and Edius for video editing.
With regards to my PassMark score for the SM951 I think you are right in that it may be down to the ASUS PCIe card. I'm going to look into the post you gave for the UEFI boot to see if this is possible. (I still have a clone of my OS on the SanDisk Ultra II drive to no real panick if I mess up). I might need to consider a different M.2 PCIe card but will let you know how I get on. Hopefully give it a try this weekend coming. Watch this space . . .
Also, did some digging at work today regarding SolidWorks and rendering. It appears only CATIA, (Dasault Systems flag ship software), natively supports CUDA rendering. SolidWorks only natively supports CPU rendering which explains why it says there are only 32 render threads, (2x E5-2670 = 16 CPU cores, 32 threads). To get round this you need to buy SolidWorks Visualize which is a seperate stand alone photo rendering package that fully supports CUDA and second GPU cards. I suppose it's another way for Dasault to make money? Currently looking into a demo/evaluation version to test which I believe is available. The good news is that 2nd GPU cards are natively supported with all the Adobe packages and Maya. Next time my son is home I will get him to try rendering in Maya and PremierPro with the Tesla removed then refitted.
Unfortunately I can't see your SketchUp model (only the yellow triangle)? With regards to SolidWorks training, I was lucky enough to be sent on a 4 day essentials course, which as implied, gives you the very basics to get started. I'm sure there is copy of the course and some tutorial files on the web. The rest I picked up from watching YouTube videos (which there are plenty off). I just watch the YouTube video on one half of the screen and run SolidWorks on the other side and take it step by step. Learning one little trick, (like creating a screw thread), goes a long way. Like yourself, I was brought up using AutoCAD 2D and only started using SolidWorks about 11 months ago so I know where your coming from. Instead of thinking like a draftsman (using AutoCAD) you need to think more like a machinist to create a 3D model (using SolidWorks). If you download some SolidWorks sample files you can actually see how they are made by examining the branched menu on the left. (Tip: If you grab the bar at the bottom of the menu you can slide it up removing each feature. You can actually see the model being created step by step).
Finally, the BIOS;
If you see anything . . .