[SOLVED] All PCIe slots running in Gen 1 instead of Gen 4 on X570 board

[Intelo]

Hi,

I'm using a Corsair Force MP600 as my boot drive on a Crosshair VIII Hero non-WiFi (X570 board) with a Ryzen 3900X, but I can't get the sequential read and write speeds even close to their advertised limit. Upon looking at Samsung Magician I found that the drive is running at PCIe Gen 1 rather than Gen 4 as it should. CrystalDiskMark readings

This was the initial problem I've been trying to solve, but later I checked HWiNFO and discovered that it wasn't just my SSD running at Gen 1, but also my graphics card, and even the PCIe slots that have nothing attached.

Things I have attempted in order to fix this include:

• in BIOS, setting Gen 4 as the link speed of the M.2 port that my drive is connected to;
• in BIOS, disabling my overclock;
• in BIOS, restoring all defaults;
• updating the firmware of the MP600;
• physically moving the MP600 from M.2 slot 2 to slot 1;
• reinstalling Windows

Unfortunately, none of these solutions have worked, and now I'm at a loss for what to try. One other thing I tried was setting the link speed of the SSD's M.2 port to Gen 3 instead of Gen 4, and interestingly Samsung Magician reported it as operating at PCIe Gen 3 x 4 but when I benchmarked the drive I still only achieved max sequential read/write speeds around 800MB/s.

My BIOS is at the latest version available on the support forums (version 0803) and I have updated to the latest chipset drivers. I'm wondering if perhaps this is an issue that must be resolved in a future update to one of those, if there's some option I'm forgetting to enable somewhere, or if I just need to issue an RMA. What should I do? I'd greatly appreciate any help or advice anyone could give me.

 

[WaltzWorker]

Hello,
Are you overclocking the system? Best to get baseline first. All Auto should be okay.
Manual 1-11 = Slow mode?!? Not sure if this would effect them - but possible
Any of the MB LED's on? Page 1-13.
Any Q-Codes on the display? Page 1-15
SSD Should be in M.2_1 slot
Re-seat the M.2?
Set PCIEX16 modes to Gen4... M.2 modes to Gen4 SB Link Mode = Auto?
Then all the above to AUTO?
You ahve a VM setup?
Not running a raid are you?
What's the GPU?
Maybe change the LN2_MODE jumper?

System should be at PCIE 3.0 at least... GPU maybe holding everyone back... Try all the PCIEX16, M.2 and SB Link modes...
Hmm! That SB Link mode maybe helpful especially when OC'ing in combination with the "Retry_Button"... Retry tries to retrain the systems settings during boot for overclocking.

Other than those guesses I can't see why your system is... "Laggin" or in slow motion... Again - the GPU maybe a factor.

 

[Intelo]

Maybe change the LN2_MODE jumper?

As it turns out, this was the issue. The jumper was in the "on" position. I guess I inadvertently set it that way when I first examined the board, for some reason, and I forgot to set it back. However, I almost have no idea why this caused the problem in the first place. I know what the purpose of the jumper is, but I theorize that enabling it disables some higher level functions (such as high PCIe speeds, in my case) of the motherboard to ensure that it boots. I'll have to learn more about it.

You also helped me identify another problem that I didn't even realize I was having: one of my Q LEDs was stuck on, the motherboard's white Q LED which indicates that there's a VGA problem. This whole time I thought it was normal as I was not experiencing any other abnormalities that indicated there was a VGA problem, but again, disabling the jumper fixed this issue as well.

If anyone comes across this issue in the future, I hope this should help them. Thank you, you're my (Crosshair VIII) Hero!