WD SN850 Slower than expected performance

[monkeyboy46800]

Didn't I say there was nothing wrong with your drive?
On the plus side, you got another terabyte of storage for free...

So you were right
Happy for the 1TB more though, I did pay 20$ admin fee though for advanced RMA.

If anybody wants the firmware file for to do a bit of reverse engineering here it is (captured with fiddler):

Name: 611110WD.zip
Size: 2897058 bytes (2829 KiB)
SHA256: EF2CFEBBA24579050E9A1D7CF09267BCFA6901F64CAD0E1728E6547C9F3E2F9B

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

Dont they need you to send your drive back for a replacement
otherwise that basically scamming
however i still think there is a bottlenecks elsewhere that is causing the slow speeds

 

[monkeyboy46800]

Dont they need you to send your drive back for a replacement
otherwise that basically scamming
however i still think there is a bottlenecks elsewhere that is causing the slow speeds

No, with WD you can pay for advanced RMA and they put a hold on your credit card, you get 30 days to send the old drive back, the old drive got sent back from this morning.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

No, with WD you can pay for advanced RMA and they put a hold on your credit card, you get 30 days to send the old drive back.

AHHH so its not a free 1tb lol ok that makes more sence
what cpu do you have btw

 

[monkeyboy46800]

Wow, they gave you an extra 1TB for free? That's a pretty sweet deal. Kind of figured it wasn't the drive though. FWIW I'm getting about the same speeds using the 1TB version of the SN850 on an X570 board. Guess I'll fiddle around with the BIOS and see if I can make any difference.

View attachment 188908

I've tried everything possible in my bios.
Either reviewers got cherry picked drives or there is an issue with X570 and ZEN 3 when using these drives or Asrock have screwed something in the bios.

AHHH so its not a free 1tb lol ok that makes more sence
what cpu do you have btw

Check my SIG, 5950x

 

[TheLostSwede]

AHHH so its not a free 1tb lol ok that makes more sence
what cpu do you have btw

He had a 1TB drive and they replaced it with a 2TB drive, so yes, there was a free extra terabyte.

I've tried everything possible in my bios.
Either reviewers got cherry picked drives or there is an issue with X570 and ZEN 3 when using these drives or Asrock have screwed something in the bios.


Check my SIG, 5950x

As I said, I had a similar issue, but I honestly can't remember what I did to fix it.
There is something weird going on sometimes with NVMe drives where you end up like this.
If you search, you'll find other people with the same issue, but I can't find a solution.

 

[Sihastru]

Check that your partitions on the drive have the correct 4k alignment. You can check in the dashboard, Tools - Advanced Information - Device Details - 4k Alignment. Also, check that you've not modified the Write-Cache Settings. Enable Windows write caching should be ON, Disable Windows write-cache buffer flushing should be OFF.

 

[monkeyboy46800]

He had a 1TB drive and they replaced it with a 2TB drive, so yes, there was a free extra terabyte.


As I said, I had a similar issue, but I honestly can't remember what I did to fix it.
There is something weird going on sometimes with NVMe drives where you end up like this.
If you search, you'll find other people with the same issue, but I can't find a solution.

No point posting if your gonna be so vague

Check that your partitions on the drive have the correct 4k alignment. You can check in the dashboard, Tools - Advanced Information - Device Details - 4k Alignment. Also, check that you've not modified the Write-Cache Settings. Enable Windows write caching should be ON, Disable Windows write-cache buffer flushing should be OFF.

Done it all , event changed to 4K in NVME-CLI

 

[TheLostSwede]

It's not about being vague, I can't remember and I can't find the fix. Sorry, but it was a couple of years ago.

 

[Sihastru]

Done it all , event changed to 4K in NVME-CLI

I'm asking you to do it in Windows, Linux can be iffy with NVMe drives.

 

[monkeyboy46800]

I'm asking you to do it in Windows, Linux can be iffy with NVMe drives.

Tested, hitting the wall on writes still........

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

Tested, hitting the wall on writes still........

have you got another system that you could test it in
also i cant check your pofile you specs are not theire

 

[monkeyboy46800]

have you got another system that you could test it in
also i cant check your pofile you specs are not theire

Specs are in my sig.. No othe Pcie Gen4 system to test with I'm afraid at the moment.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

w

Specs are in my sig.. No othe Pcie Gen4 system to test with I'm afraid at the moment.

What is a SIG

 

[Sihastru]

You said you checked, so what is your partition size and offset?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Specs are in my sig.. No othe Pcie Gen4 system to test with I'm afraid at the moment.

You're aware TPU has a specific system spec option that you can fill in your forum profile, right?

 

[DrCR]

w

What is a SIG

Wow, thanks for making some of us feel old, Isaac. (;
sig is short for signature. He's saying his system info is automatically appended to all his posts.

This:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X @ 4448.96 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR (x86.fr)

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

Wow, thanks for making some of us feel old, Isaac. (;
sig is short for signature. He's saying his system info is automatically appended to all his posts.

This:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X @ 4448.96 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR (x86.fr)

I can't see that for some reason lol

 

[lolokaa]

I have a WD SN850 1TB on its way, pairing it with X570 Unify/5900X. This post got me a little worried.
Initially I wanted to ask if you think the included motherboard M.2 heatsink does a sufficient job compared to the SN850 heatsink?

Now I'm curious to see if you manage to discover where the issue lies - and hopefully reach the expected performance - so I can rest assured awaiting my copy.

 

[monkeyboy46800]

I have a WD SN850 1TB on its way, pairing it with X570 Unify/5900X. This post got me a little worried.
Initially I wanted to ask if you think the included motherboard M.2 heatsink does a sufficient job compared to the SN850 heatsink?

Now I'm curious to see if you manage to discover where the issue lies - and hopefully reach the expected performance - so I can rest assured awaiting my copy.

Never got to the bottom of the slow read and writes. Mine came without heatsink, but purchased a cheap one of Amazon which keeps temps in check.

 

[Sihastru]

The SN850 is on the recommended list by AMD for X570, along side many other SSDs, at https://www.amd.com/en/chipsets/x570. I believe that the problem the OP has in this thread is either a motherboard hardware/firmware issue or more likely accidental or intentional misconfiguration of the available settings within the BIOS or the Windows OS. If there was an actual incompatibility then the internet would be foaming at the mouth with displeasure.

 

[monkeyboy46800]

I believe that the problem the OP has in this thread is either a motherboard hardware/firmware issue or more likely accidental or intentional misconfiguration of the available settings within the BIOS or the Windows OS. If there was an actual incompatibility then the internet would be foaming at the mouth with displeasure.

If Bios was misconfigured why would I be getting above 6 GB/s on reads ?
I have done reset CMOS on this bios (via button on the motherboard) but still low writes.
Windows is fresh install, so definately nothing changed.
M.2 Slot speed is x4 Gen 4.

I guess it must be some firmware issue on Asrock side that can only be fixed with a bios update.

Still waiting to here back from Asrock.

 

[Sihastru]

Good reads and low writes are a symptom of a misaligned partition. You've posted info from Linux and Windows; while transitioning between the different flavors of operating systems the drive could've been improperly or never cleaned by the partition managers in use. You keep trying to shift the blame on WD or AsRock, you even provided firmware files and hundreds of lines of mostly irrelevant Linux commands dumps. And when you're asked about relevant settings you answer with dismissive one-liners.

As for the "intentional" part, it is widely known that in case of RMA, there is a very small chance WD will replace the "defective" drive with a refurbished one, a small chance WD will replace the defective drive with the same model and a very high chance WD will replace the drive with an upgraded one. It's a bit of a crapshoot, but, hey, you just got a 2TB drive for the cost of a 1TB, which keeps on skewing the probability in a certain direction. I don't like to believe this is what happened, I don't want to believe that this is what happened, but it wouldn't be the first time something like this happened.

There is a very small chance AsRock has a bug in their firmware, but it's really small, since the AGESA code comes from AMD and, apart from hiding or exposing certain settings and reskinning, it's mostly left untouched by the motherboard manufacturers. As for a bug in the hardware design, sure, this can also happen, but, again unlikely, since there's a lot of copy/paste here as well.

So, it's either a widespread problem with the AMD firmware/chipsets or a case of PEBCAK.

 

[monkeyboy46800]

Here is a reply from Asrock technical department which came in last night, seems like the one and only M.2 slot is actually running over the chipset, I do have a Sata3 SSD and Thunderbolt 3 10GB/s network card which I guess could be limiting the x4 lanes on the chipset.

 

[jesdals]

Well at least WD didnt send your SSD back with a fee and ill gues its a testimony to there cusomer service.