[SOLVED] Why my Samsung 980 Pro doesn't run at its advertised speed?

[RiversH]

Hi,

I'm new to the hardware world and search around but didn't find a clear answer.
So here I'm asking for your help.

Recently I bought a Samsung 980 pro 1tb SSD
and install it on my Gigabyte Laptop (specs are listed below)
https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Laptop/G5--RTX-30-Series/sp#sp

Though Samsung 980 pro said it can have a reading speed up to 7g/s.
I tested with CrystalDiskMark that only show 3500mb/s/

1. I did some research online,
seems like this is related to whether the motherboard support PCIe 4.0 port. (Not sure)
But I cannot find any info about this laptop's motherboard, neither could I find whether it has PCIe 4.0 port.
What should I do in this case?

2. Below is the motherboard info I get from a software called Speccy.
Does Slot Type PCI-E x4 mean it support PCIe 4.0?

 

[COLGeek]

Samsung Magician will tell you about your NVME spec. Look at Drive Details.

 

[Maxxify]

The HM470 chipset only supports PCIe 3.0.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Drive is running at pcie 3.0.

 

[sonofjesse]

The achieve the 7000mb read you would need a GEN 4 PCIE motherboard.

So for INTEL that means a 11th gen CPU and MB. Then you will get that PCIE 4 lane opened up.

If you have a PCIE 3.0 MB, you could get a much cheaper drive since you can't use the speed.

The 980 PRO is a good drive and very solid.

Enjoy your new drive.

Always feel free to ask for advice before buying a hardware upgrade and many people here can assist.

 

[RiversH]

The HM470 chipset only supports PCIe 3.0.

Oh wait,
So instead of checking for motherboard compatibility I need to check chipset instead? What is chipset BTW?

 

[RiversH]

The achieve the 7000mb read you would need a GEN 4 PCIE motherboard.

So for INTEL that means a 11th gen CPU and MB. Then you will get that PCIE 4 lane opened up.

If you have a PCIE 3.0 MB, you could get a much cheaper drive since you can't use the speed.

The 980 PRO is a good drive and very solid.

Enjoy your new drive.

Always feel free to ask for advice before buying a hardware upgrade and many people here can assist.

Yeah, at least I learned a lesson from this .
I compare the 1TB PCIE 3 with the PCIE4 options, the price is like $150 vs $200 so not a big difference to me.
I guess I'll stick with 980 that hopefully I can switch it to some other PC later on.

 

[Maxxify]

Oh wait,
So instead of checking for motherboard compatibility I need to check chipset instead? What is chipset BTW?

Motherboards have a chipset that relates to their general support, for example CPU support. You need both motherboard and CPU support for PCIe. So you can look up the HM470 and see it never supports PCIe 4.0, but even a chipset/motherboard with PCIe 4.0 support would need a CPU that also supported 4.0. There are some differences between Intel and AMD architectures here, but in any case you only have Gen3 support possible on that laptop.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Oh wait,
So instead of checking for motherboard compatibility I need to check chipset instead? What is chipset BTW?

For Intel systems, yes. The M.2 slots that you'd connect an NVMe drive to are hooked up to the chipset.