I was thinking that perhaps you have it running in PCI-E 3.0 but you're not.
Though, how old is the 980 Pro in your system?
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From CrystalDiskInfo, i see that your drive has had a lot of Host Writes. Even more than Host Reads.
Also, compared to the Power On Hours, you also have a lot of Power On Counts. Essentially meaning, that on average, your PC is running ~2h at once.
This indicates heavy usage of Sleep/Hibernate. Putting PC to sleep, will put a lot of writes on the SSD, by the OS.
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Host Writes will wear down the SSD. The more writes per day there are - the faster the drive wears out. Same goes to the constant power on/power off cycle.
IMO, sleep/hibernate are unnecessary, especially due to the unnecessary writes it puts on the drive. Shutting PC completely down and turning it back on (cold boot), takes only few seconds more, than waking PC up from sleep/hibernation.
For example, here are my PC (Skylake, full specs with pics in my sig), CrystalDiskInfo screens;
Current OS drive: 970 Evo Plus 2TB, in service since April 2022 (6 months).
Prior OS drive: 960 Evo 500GB, in service from March 2018 to April 2022 (4 years, 1 month).
See any difference between Host Writes and Power On counts between my PC and yours?
On average, i have my PC running for ~10 hours and i never use sleep/hibernate. This also won't do any unnecessary writes on my drives, whereby i have only half of Host Writes, compared to Host Reads, thus keeping the drive far healthier.
Now, it is possible that the high Host Writes and loads of Power On Counts is the reason why your 980 Pro is underperforming, since you've used it heavily (i'd even like to say abused it).
As of fixing it, and if given there is no software issue, you can't fix the heavy usage damage.
if i understand correctly, the 980 pro is rated for 1200tb writes. I've done 20tb so far (1.6%). should that have damaged the ssd? (both magician and CrystalDiskInfo say the condition of the drive is good)
i do use sleep, but no hibernate and no hybrid sleep. so as far as i understand it shouldn't use the disk at all. am i mistaken?
i use the pc typically all day long and only put it to sleep at night or when i leave it for more than an hour
in magician i get pretty good results (6.8 gb/s read, 5.2 gb/s write). thats why i thought it weird that i got poor results on those other benchmarks (3dmark and Userbenchmark)
Yes, 980 Pro 2TB is rated for 1200 TBW over 5 years. But it is also rated 0.3 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day).
Review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16087/the-samsung-980-pro-pcie-4-ssd-review
Which for 2TB 980 Pro, with 5 year warranty, the 0.3 DWPD (it's actually 0.329 DWPD) = 657.5 GB written per day.
Write more than 657.5 GB per day on a drive and you'll wear the drive out faster. And if you do RMA claim (because your drive died within the 5 year warranty period) and if Samsung happens to check DWPD, by seeing it being more than drive was rated for, they can deny the RMA for you.
Here's a neat calculator to calculate DWPD, based on the drive size, TBW and warranty period,
link: https://wintelguy.com/dwpd-tbw-gbday-calc.pl
Sleep, yes, keeps the data in RAM, while Hibernate writes all RAM contents to OS drive (SSD) and then powers off the system.
Though, based on CrystalDiskInfo and the Total Host Writes you have, it's one of the two:
And SSDs have limited amount of write cycles, the NAND flash can endure, before it's toast.
- You think you're using Sleep, but PC actually uses Hibernate.
- You download and write a ton of data on your SSD on daily basis, which skyrockets the GB written.
Based on the Power On Count and Power On Hours, the average is still ~2h per one power on.
Small calculation:
2991 work hours divided by 1472 power on instances = 2.03 work hours per 1 power on. (Numbers don't lie.)
Now, the average can go up if you keep your PC working for longer periods of time. But if you often reboot and/or put your PC to sleep, the average goes down.
CrystalDiskMark results are good, similar to Samsung Magician.
I don't use 3DMark myself and can't tell, by which metric, they use to rate the storage benchmark.
As far as UserBenchmark goes, it seems to factor in the used drive space and in a negative way.
For example, here's my PC run, that i did ~5 months ago,
link: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/51274696
And all 4 of my drives, despite being good ones, are underperforming according to UserBenchmark. I don't see/feel any of them underperforming and my Samsung drives have benchmarked according to their specs, in Samsung Magician.
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All-in-all, if you don't notice drive read/write slow downs, don't let 3DMark and UserBenchmark to rattle you.
however my ssd's are set to turn off in the power plan if not used for 20 minutes. could that be the cause?
all that i can think of is that i installed windows a few times
Yes. That will skyrocket the Power On Count.
SSDs use very little power and the Win feature of "power down disk drives" is from the old days of HDD. HDDs use considerably more power and back then, it had some merits as of why to power them down, to save on electricity costs and also expanding their life (since HDD is mechanical drive with moving parts). But with SSDs, that feature is obsolete. Especially since you can put your PC to Sleep on command.
Based on CrystalDiskInfo, i can calculate that on average, you've written ~7 GB of stuff on your SSD, per hour.
Calculation:
21135 GB (20.6 TB) written divided by 2991 work hours = 7.06 GB written per hour (169.58 GB per day).
As of what increases Write Counts:
Here, i suggest to download disk monitoring tool, to check what is constantly writing on your SSD.
- Hibernation
- Malware
- Faulty driver/software/app
Personally, i'm using Process Explorer. Since among many, it is also a great tool to see which programs hog your system resources,
link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer
Guide on how to understand it,
link: https://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/lesson2/
E.g screen of it:
Main window is on the right side. At the top of the window, there are several graph boxes. If you click on any of them, another window opens (left side), that you can click on different tabs for more in-depth info. I've selected the I/O tab. And if you hover over the graph, e.g Disk, it will tell you what is currently going on. On my screen, MBAMService.exe (MalwareBytes Premium) had a small, 8.2 MB Disk Read, with 0 MB Disk Write. (My mouse cursor wasn't captured on screen, but it is there, next to small pop-up.)
Process Explorer is essentially Task Manager, but 10 times better.
Oh, you can also add sys tray icons (bottom right of your taskbar), to monitor your system behavior. I've put CPU usage monitor there (just right of Steam icon), so that when my CPU usage goes up, i can notice it, open up Process Explorer (by clicking on the small taskbar icon) and look what is going on. But you can add other telemetry icons as well, e.g Disk usage.
how can i understand the source of the huge write count? could it be linked to the swap file?
how can we explain the weird result on power on hours?
~6 hours a day - i know for sure that it has been on for much more every day