ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer & NVMe SSD

[lootbag253222]

Hi Everyone,

Having a little trouble with a newly purchased Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD plugged into my ASRock X99m Fatal1ty motherboard.

Specs:
i7 5820K
ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer Motherboard (latest bios 3.30)
16GBx4 AData DDR4-2400 RAM
Gigabyte GTX970
Generic 500w PSU
Intel 180GB SSD (windows 7 & boot)
WD 1TB Black (storage)
WD 4TB Purple (storage)

The NVMe SSD is not being used as a boot drive and has about 20GB of files on there, that I have been using for testing.
Samsung NVMe driver 2.3 is installed.

The read speeds seem fine, but the write speeds are way off.

I am just wondering if there are some BIOS settings I am missing or have set incorrectly or... is my SSD faulty?

 

[mdd1963]

Make sure you are not sharing bandwidth with a particular SATA port or two....

From the manual:

" Please be noted that the Ultra M.2 Socket (M2_1)
is shared with the S_SATA3_2 connector; "

Make sure that SATA port is empty...

Make sure BIOS options do not allow sharing bandwidth with that port....(granted, your read speeds are fantastic, and do indicate full bandwidth...)

 

[mdd1963]

Maybe since the OS drive is a slower SSD, the testing software , if run from a slower drive, shows limitations on write performance to the faster NVME SSD, creating some sort of testing bottleneck?

 

[lootbag253222]

Make sure you are not sharing bandwidth with a particular SATA port or two....

From the manual:

" Please be noted that the Ultra M.2 Socket (M2_1)
is shared with the S_SATA3_2 connector; "

Make sure that SATA port is empty...

Make sure BIOS options do not allow sharing bandwidth with that port....(granted, your read speeds are fantastic, and do indicate full bandwidth...)

Nice find, double checked the SATA connectors and this should not be the problem.
Yes, it is weird how the read speeds are perfect but write speed is way off.

Maybe since the OS drive is a slower SSD, the testing software , if run from a slower drive, shows limitations on write performance to the faster NVME SSD, creating some sort of testing bottleneck?

This I am not too sure about, I don't think it would be the case, I hope.
I have not figured out how to do a fresh install of Windows on the nvme ssd.
Maybe I can clone my boot drive onto it and unplug all other drives to test again?

 

[lootbag253222]

I may have fixed the problem.
It was as simple as Enabling Write Caching on the NVMe drive.

 

[mdd1963]

where was that option located, just out of curiosity?

(Love the EVO, have one myself...)

 

[lootbag253222]

Device Manager > Disk Drives > 960 EVO > Policies > "Enable write caching on the device"