Question problem with NVMe SSD hard disk adapter that only uses 1 PCIe lane instead of 4

[andrea_petrucci_1975]

I bought this adapter: glotrends M.2 PCIe NVMe X4, PCIE 4.0/3.0 X 4 https://www.amazon.it/dp/B07FN3YZ8P?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
and this SSD NVMe: Crucial P3 Plus 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe CT2000P3PSSD8 https://www.amazon.it/Crucial-Plus-PCIe-5000MB-CT2000P3PSSD8/dp/B0B25ML2FH/
mounted on a Gigabyte H170-D3HP-CF (U3E1) with a Intel Core i5-6600 CPU @ 3.30GHz Skylake
i connected to a PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
I would expect results like 3500 Mb/s and instead I get it 873 Mb/s
looking at the images of the card tests carried out with CrystalDiskInfo on Amazon I see that under transfer mode it says PCIe 3.0 x4 | PCIe 4.0 x4, while the test carried out on my PC reports PCIe 3.0 x1 | PCIe 4.0 x4

why does my PCIe 3.0 go to x1 instead of x4? I no longer have free PCIe lines?
Is there software to check how many PCIe lines are present on my PC (partly thanks to the motherboard chipset and partly thanks to the CPU) and how many of these are used by the various components (video card, etc...)?

 

[andrea_petrucci_1975]

maybe this is the problem?

3 PCI-E line used by other device

I don't use PCI peripherals so I could probably disable the first one and get a line back? (but I don't know where to disable it)

I don't even use Thunderbolt peripherals so maybe I could disable the third one too and recover 2 more lines?

could it be useful?

 

[thestryker]

The chipset should have plenty of lanes available so that shouldn't be the problem. Is the M.2 slot on the board being used?

I'm just trying to think of what would be using the lanes because it should have a total of 16 available which means there's no technical reason why it should be showing x1 unless you have other things connected to PCIe.

You can certainly disable the things you aren't using, but since it should already be working I'm not sure that will help.

 

[andrea_petrucci_1975]

the M.2 slot is used by a SSD SATA drive Crucial CT500MX200SSD6

How many PCI express lines do I have in my PC?

16 lines (those used by the microprocessor) should all be used by the video card

My South Bridge Intel H170 should support 16 lines PCI express (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/90595/intel-h170-chipset/specifications.html)

so there shouldn't be a problem with busy lines. what else could it be?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Connect Crucial P3 NVME drive to onboard M.2 slot.
Connect Crucial MX200 drive with M2 sata adapter.

 

[andrea_petrucci_1975]

ok, but I need the boot disk to be the Crucial MX200 and not the new Crucial

I also understand that I should return my PCIe to NVMe SSD adapter and buy a new SATA to SATA SSD adapter like the one in the photo

it's correct?

 

[SkyNetRising]

I also understand that I should return my PCIe to NVMe SSD adapter

You can keep it and use for some other drive, where you don't need full PCIE 3.0 x4 bandwidth.

and buy a new SATA to SATA SSD adapter like the one in the photo
it's correct?

Yes.

 

[thestryker]

so there shouldn't be a problem with busy lines. what else could it be?

You could remove the video card and try the adapter in that slot to see if there's any difference. It could be a bad adapter card or the slot itself is faulty and that would help you to identify where the problem might be. I wish the motherboard documentation actually gave a PCIe breakdown because there could be some other issue depending on design. Seems like all of the Gigabyte motherboards from that era have awful PCIe documentation though.

ok, but I need the boot disk to be the Crucial MX200 and not the new Crucial

I also understand that I should return my PCIe to NVMe SSD adapter and buy a new SATA to SATA SSD adapter like the one in the photo

it's correct?

If you go this route you may need to switch boot drive as many motherboards of that era won't detect PCIe devices correctly as boot devices. It shouldn't be too hard to image your existing over to the new one if you do.

 

[andrea_petrucci_1975]

You could remove the video card and try the adapter in that slot to see if there's any difference. It could be a bad adapter card or the slot itself is faulty and that would help you to identify where the problem might be. I wish the motherboard documentation actually gave a PCIe breakdown because there could be some other issue depending on design. Seems like all of the Gigabyte motherboards from that era have awful PCIe documentation though.

This evening I finally made up my mind and tried to do this test:
- removed the video card (I will use the one integrated into the CPU) and put the adapter in the video card slot (which is a PCIe 3.0 x16 while the one I used was a PCIe 3.0x4)

result? finally the adapter starts working as it should (3.0 x4) and I reach speeds of around 3000Mb/s versus the previous 800Mb/s

at this point, very disconsolate, I put the video card back in its place and put the adapter back in the PICe 3.0 x4 slot and... surprise... now everything works as it should

Absurd

someone will tell me: before you didn't insert the card properly into the slot, but I can assure you that I tried putting it in and taking it out at least 5 times

that it was good for him to take a look at the video card slot to understand what real speed is? I don't know
anyway problem solved but I didn't understand how

 

[thestryker]

at this point, very disconsolate, I put the video card back in its place and put the adapter back in the PICe 3.0 x4 slot and... surprise... now everything works as it should

Absurd

someone will tell me: before you didn't insert the card properly into the slot, but I can assure you that I tried putting it in and taking it out at least 5 times

that it was good for him to take a look at the video card slot to understand what real speed is? I don't know
anyway problem solved but I didn't understand how

I cannot really think of any reason why switching cards around would have worked any different than what you'd been doing. It should not really make any difference, but maybe something was stuck in the configuration on the BIOS side that shook loose when you connected a different lane count card in that primary.

Good that everything is working as it should have now, but unfortunate that the resolution was nothing that was logical.

 

[andrea_petrucci_1975]

someone pointed out to me that now the SSD works as it should but my video card runs at 2.5 GT/s instead of 8 GT/s

How is it possible?

 

[thestryker]

someone pointed out to me that now the SSD works as it should but my video card runs at 2.5 GT/s instead of 8 GT/s

Use GPU-Z and see if that stays the case when you hit the question mark next to PCIe in GPU-Z. If it does then based on what you were having before I'd say your motherboard is entirely to blame. It would mean the two slots are linked in some fashion and both cannot run PCIe 3.0 at the same time.

All that being said I doubt there would be much, if any, performance loss for a card that slow since it still has 16 lanes showing (this is equivalent to PCIe 3.0 x4).

 

[andrea_petrucci_1975]

Use GPU-Z and see if that stays the case when you hit the question mark next to PCIe in GPU-Z.

you got us!
thank you so much for the support!