Samsung 950 Pro M.2 slow read/write speeds

[modernwar99]

Mobo: ASRock Z97 Killer latest BIOS

Just got a new Samsung 950 Pro SSD and I just finished cloning my old SSD to it. I noticed how long it took to boot the first time, figured it was normal for a first boot on a new drive or something. After booting, I ran a crystal disk benchmark on it to see if the advertised 2GB/s read and 1GB/s write speeds were true. However, the speeds after 3 runs were roughly 600MB/s seq read and 200MB/s seq write. Tried samsung's official benchmarking tool and it got around the same results. I knew this wasn't right so I checked the M.2 slot and then the BIOS to make sure the correct settings were enabled. Still ran slow. Updated the BIOS and tried again, still slow.

Not sure really what to try at this point, is my mobo not good enough or something? I only have one GPU so PCIe lanes shouldn't be a problem. Am I missing something else related to the software? Or did I receive a faulty drive? I know it's christmas so anyone sparing their own time today to help would be much appreciated.

 

[rgd1101]

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty%20Z97%20Killer/?cat=Specifications
1 x M.2_SSD (NGFF) Socket 3, supports M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen2 x2 (10 Gb/s)
you are stuck at x2 speed. which is about half of what 950 pro use.

 

[modernwar99]

Shouldn't it still be faster? My old 850 EVO had 500 read and 300 write and that used SATA 3. While my M.2 PCIe x2 port is still 8gbps (which is still a nice 1GB/s).

Oh well... not like buying a new Z170 board and i5 6600k is expensive or anything...

 

[The Original Ralph]

I had the same issue with my z97 mobo - the m.2 slot is PCIe 2.0 x2 - the 950 needs gen 3 and x4 (or 4 lanes). My xp941, rated at 1180 MB/s read & 900 MB/s write was only showing 770 read & 580 write - i moved it to an expansion card and installed it in a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot and it jumped to full rated speed

get an M.2 > PCIe expansion card adapter, and install it in a PCIe 3.0 x4 expansion slot, and all should be fine

below is my 950 in a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot and it's running at full rated speeds

 

[Armadillo2001]

Is it possible that your motherboard is using SATA3 over m.2 for some reason? I don't think this is the case but ~600MB/s looks like SATA3 to me. Perhaps your motherboard only supports SATA over M.2 or your 950 Pro is not registering properly?

 

[The_Tester]

Which size did you get? If 256GB you should see maximum write but only hit around 1.25GB/s on read. Won't see full potential on either if the 512GB using that particular motherboards M.2 that is. Just to make sure you don't have a bum SSD, cross reference what catalyst control center/GPU-Z or similar is telling you about PICe bus interface while checking the speeds. That sort of thing should only affect Gen3 M.2, but worth a quick check anyway. It's possible that's it's thermally throttling down, but I would not think it would back down that low. See if you can check the surface temps while under load while monitoring a regular large file transfer via taskmanager. You may need to try reinstalling it after very carefully and thoroughly cleaning the slot with a small fine brush (will problably not help anything but worth a shot).

950 Pro 256/512 specs

Also i'm assuming that have installed the NVMe driver right?
Samsung SSD software

 

[Toontje]

I had the same issue with my z97 mobo - the m.2 slot is PCIe 2.0 x2 - the 950 needs gen 3 and x4 (or 4 lanes). My xp941, rated at 1180 MB/s read & 900 MB/s write was only showing 770 read & 580 write - i moved it to an expansion card and installed it in a PCIe 2.0 x4 slot and it jumped to full rated speed

get an M.2 > PCIe expansion card adapter, and install it in a PCIe 3.0 x4 expansion slot, and all should be fine

below is my 950 in a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot and it's running at full rated speeds

 

[Toontje]

Original Ralph, i have this Hyper M.2 x 4 combination installed on my Asus X99 De Luxe/USB3.1. (With 950 Pro 256 GB) Still read speeds are lacking, 750MB/s, one third of what's promised. Checked all the settings in BIOS. Even the NVME part but this one is greyed out.

 

[The Original Ralph]

Original Ralph, i have this Hyper M.2 x 4 combination installed on my Asus X99 De Luxe/USB3.1. (With 950 Pro 256 GB) Still read speeds are lacking, 750MB/s, one third of what's promised. Checked all the settings in BIOS. Even the NVME part but this one is greyed out.

For whatever reason, the NVMe setting in my BIOS is greyed out as well, but i'm getting full speeds with my 512GB 950

for the heck of it, download the free version of Hard Disk Sentinel http://www.hdsentinel.com/download.php and check your 950's temps