Is your M.2 NVMe port slower than you realise? Not all M.2 ports give equal speeds

2021/03/10 に公開
視聴回数 46,380
0
0
This video shows that every day is a school day and you're never too old to learn. I have a motherboard where you can install as many as 5 NVMe SSDs but the catch is they don't all get the speed they should.

I discovered while installing the Samsung 980 SSD in my third M.2 port that it was getting HALF the speed it should be. That means it was running at 1,700Mbs instead of the 3,500MBs it was meant to be! If you're doing the same, without benchmarking, then your drives might be slow too. Which means you paid all that money for nothing...

See the 980 installation video here - https://youtu.be/HflYwGQ_C6U
Samsung 980 SSD NVME unboxing and benchmarks https://youtu.be/JHKqWLfYdRI

I installed the drive in the third port on my MSI MEG Z490 Godlike (https://youtu.be/DNLTOWEYToc) and it ran as PCIe Gen 3 x 2. Worse, the NVMe expander was in the bottom PCIe X16 slot on the mobo - meaning the cards in that got just PCIe Gen 3 x 1 - which means they were running at just a fourth of the usual speed.

This is all to do with how the lanes are assigned in the BIOS. If you have just a single GPU then you can assign 16 lanes to your first slot, but if you're SLI'ing or using the bottom PCIe slot as I, then that negates speed of some of the M.2 slots. So both top M.2 ports are running at X 4 speeds but the bottom wasn't. You can see this detail in the motherboard manual https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/MEG-Z490-GODLIKE#down-bios which explains the logic of how this works. You can also change how the lanes are distributed in the BIOS but it depends what you've got plugged in!

You might well have this problem on your motherboard too, so it's worth knowing. Be sure to test your M.2 NVMe by benchmarking.

Big thanks to my super awesome YouTube members:
Meatykeyboard, Rawrr483, SirSpawnsALot and Kraken Tortoise

Come check me out on Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/provokedprawn
Join my Discord to keep up to date or ask questions https://discord.gg/TCWQqb4


Support the channel:
See the benefits of being a member here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQGDPYRgV5egNGUy9wE1Tyw/join
Streamlabs - https://streamlabs.com/theprovokedprawn/tip
Get some merch - https://teespring.com/stores/the-provoked-prawn
Check out my dedicated Amazon Storefront to see my current fave gear - https://www.amazon.com/shop/theprovokedprawn

0:00 Hellooo
1:48 Samsung magician benchmark testing
2:40 Setup can effect the speed
3:30 PCIe speed slots
6:20 Some checks you should make
6:45 Running the benchmark again

PLEASE NOTE

Affiliate links:

Disclosure: Shopping links within the description of this video generate a commission at no extra cost to you. These are added for your convenience but other retailers are available. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Products:
Products featured may also have been sent for free for review/testing purposes. Often these have to be returned by me, but not always. I endeavour to avoid bias in my videos wherever possible and try to give honest, subjective opinions.