Question Samsung 980 M.2 running at half speeds on the MSI B45 Tomahawk Max

jason3871

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Jul 10, 2015
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My main system components:
Ryzen 1600
MSI B450 Tomahawk Max
Rx 550
Western Digital 1TB HDD
Samsung 980 1TB M.2

I just bought the Samsung 980 M.2 to speed things up and was shocked to see the read and write speeds at 1700 MB/s, instead of its rated 3500 MB/s. I checked Samsung Magician and saw that it is running at PCIe Gen 3x2 instead of PCIe Gen 3x4. I'm guessing that is the reason for the low speeds.

I have tried everything from looking for drivers for the M.2 but no drivers are available. I am running the latest bios available for the motherboard and there are no settings in the motherboard relating to M.2 so there's no way I can manually change it.

Any help relating to this is appreciated as I don't want to run something which I paid full price for at half its rated speed.

Please help
 
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My main system components:
Ryzen 1600
MSI B450 Tomahawk Max
Rx 550
Western Digital 1TB HDD
Samsung 980 1TB M.2

I just bought the Samsung 980 M.2 to speed things up and was shocked to see the read and write speeds at 1700 MB/s, instead of its rated 3500 MB/s. I checked Samsung Magician and saw that it is running at PCIe Gen 3x2 instead of PCIe Gen 3x4. I'm guessing that is the reason for the low speeds.

I have tried everything from looking for drivers for the M.2 but no drivers are available. I am running the latest bios available for the motherboard and there are no settings in the motherboard relating to M.2 so there's no way I can manually change it.

Any help relating to this is appreciated as I don't want to run something which I paid full price for at half its rated speed.

Please help
That CPU has only 16 PCIe lines likely taken by GPU so M.2 defaults to x2 instead of x4 (NVMe).
 
The funny thing is that I'm using an RX 550 2GB that runs PCIe x8 and not 16. It is recognised at x8 and runs at x8 in Windows as well. Also, doesn't the Ryzen 1600 have 20 lanes?
it has 24 lanes

contact msi, x4 lanes should be available
 
Ryzen 1600
it is running at PCIe Gen 3x2 instead of PCIe Gen 3x4.
The funny thing is that I'm using an RX 550 2GB that runs PCIe x8 and not 16. It is recognised at x8 and runs at x8 in Windows as well. Also, doesn't the Ryzen 1600 have 20 lanes?
Are you sure about your cpu model name?
Can you show screenshot from CPU-Z ?

Symptoms you describe would be possible, if you had Ryzen with Vega graphics ( like Ryzen 5 2400G ).
 

jason3871

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Are you sure about your cpu model name?
Can you show screenshot from CPU-Z ?

Symptoms you describe would be possible, if you had Ryzen with Vega graphics ( like Ryzen 5 2400G ).
Yes, I'm absolutely sure about it. I'm not the best but I'm quite sound when it comes to computer hardware which is why I'm so confused in this matter. I have the Ryzen 1600.
 
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jason3871

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it has 24 lanes

contact msi, x4 lanes should be available
I live in India and from what I've gathered MSI India isn't the most co-operative. I will have to see how to contact them.
 

jason3871

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Jul 10, 2015
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Update: I tried out the M.2 drive in in a friend's system and it recognises as PCIe 3.0 x 4 and works as it's rated speeds. So now I'm convinced that it has something to do with my Mobo or CPU.

Any ideas or possible theories as to why the drive is only working at PCIe 3.0x2 ony setup?

Any help will be appreciated.
 

jason3871

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Jul 10, 2015
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10,860