Question Sabrent 500g NVMe slow write speed

[BrianH2017]

hello everyone. i just bought a Sabrent 500g NVMe with ratings of 3400mb read and 3000 write, havent even had it in the computer for a day and these are the scores i got... idk why there all over the place and im just asking why their like that... and why im not getting the 3k write.
https://ibb.co/hW0HfjD

 

[Darkbreeze]

What Windows version are you running and what are the rest of your system specifications?

Does your motherboard have the MOST recent BIOS version installed?

Do you have the MOST recent motherboard chipset drivers installed?

Plus, it IS Sabrent, and they are not a top tier manufacturer, of anything. All their products are primarily budget type hardware so I guess you probably need to at least somewhat take their paper specs with a grain of salt, but still maybe better than what you are seeing.

It probably is also a major factor what you are writing FROM, or if writing from memory to the drive, how fast the memory is and how much of it you have. CPU and memory speed might definitely play a role there. I'd update everything listed above as well as any other drivers on your motherboard product page and then see what shakes out.

 

[BrianH2017]

lets see here i have

Case: Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 Case.
PSU: Corsair TX 850
Motherboard: Asus Strix Z270E gaming motherboard.
CPU: I7 6700k 4.0ghz, OC to 4.5ghz.
GPU: Asus Strix 1070 8Gig OC to 1867mhz gpu boost clock and 8606mhz memory clock.
RAM: G_Skill Trident Z 3000mhz RGB 32gigs 4X8gig ram.

i just updated my Mobo to recent drivers.

do i need my Intel® Graphics - Windows® 10 DCH Drivers?

Also both my M.2 drive slots on the Mobo say pci-x4, but is the top one faster then the bottom slot? or do they even matter? i have the Sabrent in the bottom slot to avoid my GPU and Elgato HD60 Pro's heat.

Also updating my Mobo my Writes are still low. if i do 5 tests at 2gigs it drops to the 500mbs, but if i do 1 test at 500mbs i does get over 1gig write. so im assuming even though they advertise this m.2 can get up to 3000mbs writes. im just gonna have to assume my pc cant reach that? even though its reading almost faster then its advertised?

 

[Darkbreeze]

do i need my Intel® Graphics - Windows® 10 DCH Drivers?

No, not unless you plan to use the integrated graphics.

Heat from your graphics card won't affect your M.2 drive, HOWEVER, being closer to the fans on your graphics card WILL help to keep your M.2 drive cooler and they ALL suffer from heat derived throttling, which is what I suspect might be going on with yours.

I would download HWinfo (NO others, just HWinfo. Not HWmonitor. Not Speccy. Not openhardware monitor), install it and choose the "sensors only" option when you open. De-select the "summary" option. Scroll down to your NVME drive and look at the thermal sensor readings while running a performance test that normally gets a low result. Post the thermal results.

I think it's also possible one of those M.2 slots only supports x2 speeds while the other supports x4 speeds. It might be worth moving to the other slot and re-testing.

 

[BrianH2017]

ok, i dont know how to post pics to this site cause its only giving me post imaging through links so

https://ibb.co/n8yGCQm this is when i had my NVMe in the bottom PCI.

https://ibb.co/r27m43b this is when i had it in the top PCI

I could tell the Top most be PCI-X2 with those really slow read's, and my read's are almost no different.

Plus when i first did my tests in my first post, i didnt have my new heat sink of it yet. when i bought the drive i did some reading up on them that they get super hot, and i know its mainly the port that gets hot but i got a heatsink anyways. i got the XPG Storm RGB LED Cooling Heatsink for M.2 2280 SSD 16500 RPM Fan Black . so i dont know what the temps were on the drive in my first post. but i feel 68c with it reading at 3400mb+ isnt that bad with the heatsink on.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Those numbers look normal to me. ONLY the sequential speeds are going to be fast, and yours are. The others, which are either high queue depth or random access speeds, are always slow for NVME drives which is why other options like Optane are gaining popularity (At least for the type of hardware, not necessarily for the Optane brand or form factor) because they have much higher speeds when it comes to random operations.

I don't know where you got the idea that temps are ok at 68 degrees either, but most NVME PCI drives start throttling at about 60°C. 70°C max, on some models. The NAND operates best at 40°C while the controller usually is too hot above 60. Heatsinks that do not include a fan, have been typically proven to not only not be helpful because they sit on the NAND which you WANT to be warm, and not on the controller which is what you want to cool, but to actually make the problem WORSE. A home brewed fan might be a lot more helpful. Even my 970 EVO which has greatly improved performance and has fixed a lot of the heat issues that plagued previous M.2 NVME drives, still has issues with throttling and I have had to home brew a cooling solution for it. It's not pretty, but it's temporary, and I'm planning to build a more more aesthetically appealing mounting solution in the near future.

You will probably need to custom tailor the fan profile if possible so that the NAND stays as close to 40°C as possible (Usually temp 1 on most NVME drive sensors) and below 60°C (Could be different for your drive. Need to find the exact specifications of your throttle temp).

 

[mdd1963]

within device mngr/disk drive (policies), is write caching for the drive in question enabled?

~1000 MB/sec does seem a bit low....

 

[Darkbreeze]

The picture in the first post shows write caching is enabled.

 

[BrianH2017]

ya its on, idk. i ran into a snag this weekend while swapping the drive from slot to slot, one of my Dimm slots quit working and was preventing me from booting my pc. ended up someone suggesting clearing it and it works again. was weird. but ya, there is a setting in my bios to turn both m.2 slots to 4x (top slot was 2x). i put it back in the bottom slot cause it was getting hotter in the top one, and ya that heatsink i bought was making it hotter 🙁. but im still only getting 1K writes.

 

[Darkbreeze]

And that is exactly why buying from a company like Samsung is worth the slightly higher premium you pay. Generally speaking, you actually get the speeds you payed for. With bargain barrel companies like Sabrent, lower end Kingston, Team and some others, you might, you might not. The quality is definitely not going to be the same and the performance might directly reflect the quality of the controller used on the device.