1TB Sabrent Rocket 4.0 Not Hitting Advertised Speeds?

Dominic-Toretto · 31 May 2021 at 14:34

Hi,

I recently installed a 1TB Sabrent Rocket PCIE 4.0 in to my system.
The drive is in PCIE 4.0 mode, and the drive is advertised with the following specs:
5000 MB/s (read) and 4400 MB/s (write)

My drive is only achieving 912MB/s write. Any ideas?
Install of windows is fresh, rest of system is a 3900x / 16GB Corsair / RTX3090

The speeds I am achieving below:

Dominic-Toretto · 31 May 2021 at 19:15

Murphy said:
Temperatures OK?
Had you been hitting it with benchmarks/data writes shortly before running the benchmark? (not allowing it to flush the SLC cache). Could try issuing a TRIM command, wait a few min, then redo the benchmark.
What Storage controller driver are you using?

I have not checked temperatures, I have mounted it on it's own, and not used the motherboard M2 heatsink as it introduces a good amount of bend to the SSD due to the pad thickness.
I ran the benchmark straight after a fresh windows installation.
I do not know what storage controller driver I am using, how can I check? I simply downloaded the latest chipset drivers from asus website.

Thanks

Dominic-Toretto · 1 Jun 2021 at 08:59

Murphy said:
Download HWiNFO (portable) to check the temperature when running the benchmark, it's unlikely to be hitting 90-100c and be throttling but best to rule that out.

Try issuing the TRIM command using Defragment and Optimise Drives, search for defrag, the C: drive should already be selected, click on Optimise, wait a few min, try running the benchmark again.

If you're still getting bad write speeds after that open device manager (search for 'device manager'), click on the arrow next to storage controller (should be near the bottom), and post what's listed under that (you can ignore the Microsoft storage spaces controller).

Drive is peaking at 51c under load peak.
I have issued the trim command, and see no increase in write performance. Read performance has actually decreased.

Device Manager shows: "Standard NVM Express Storage Controller"

Dominic-Toretto · 1 Jun 2021 at 09:28

Murphy said:
You could try installing a newer chipset driver, the ones on manufactures sites tend to be rather dated.

If that doesn't help I'm not sure what else to try.

Thanks for all the help. Still seeing the same issues unfortunately.

Dominic-Toretto · 1 Jun 2021 at 10:11

Kautya said:
What motherboard are you using ? Does it have latest updated bios and chipset drivers etc. Have you setup the nvme in the appropriate mode in bios ?

Motherboard is a ROG B450i running an older bios (before they disabled PCIE 4.0). GPU is running at PCIE 4.0, as is the NVME.
Interestingly if I set the NVME slot to 3.0 manually I get the below: 4.0 seems very inconsistent in the performance it is reporting.

Murphy said:
Something that just occurred, do you get the same slow write speed reported from other benchmark programs? Give AS SSD and/or ATTO a try just to confirm it's not an issue with CrystalDiskMark.

See above, the drive is getting faster write speeds in PCIE 3.0 Mode. PCIE 4.0 mode performance seems very inconsistent.

Dominic-Toretto · 1 Jun 2021 at 10:37

mickyflinn said:
Check if theres a firmware update for your sabrent.
https://www.sabrent.com/firmware-update/

None available for my SSD.

Dominic-Toretto · 1 Jun 2021 at 12:17

I am going to update my bios to the latest version, I will lose PCIE 4.0 support, but my system is not running right at the moment. Decreased bandwidth in 4.0 mode, random glitches. Maybe this is why they removed it from the bios lol.....

Dominic-Toretto · 1 Jun 2021 at 13:14

mickyflinn said:
How does a b450 motherboard support pcie4 Thought pcie4 was 500 chipsets ?
Ignore didnt read properly.
Didnt know pcie4 was supported on b450 before being disabled

It utilises the PCIE 4.0 lanes directly off the CPU. It was disabled at request of AMD as the motherboard traces allegedly didn't meet the specs required for "PCIE 4.0" and could cause issues. Some speculated that this was just a move to sell more 500 chipset boards.
I will flash mine up to the latest bios and see how it performs.

Dominic-Toretto · 15 Jun 2021 at 17:59

adasc2 said:
My first guess would be replace the chipset driver or perhaps review the mobo bios settings to make the most of the pice lanes

I updated the bios and it is now running at PCIE 3.0 speeds consistently. I can only assume that the PCIE4.0 implementation that was available in the older bios is not up to spec / stable.