Not impressive with my new storage.... solutions?

[iameatingjam]

As some of you may know, I recently purchased 2 4TB mx500s and I have been quite disappointed with their performance. I bought them because my 1TB mx500s were great and I was out m.2 slots. But these suck once the burst speed is used up, sustained write can get very very slow, even when working in tandem.

I do have primocache, but not really enough free ram to make meaningful difference. Could I dedicate part of one of one my faster m.2s to speed up the mx500s in the same way I would with ram? I guess I could just buy more ram but that seems a little overkill. Plus I'm waiting for those single rank 64gb kits if they ever come to be before ddr6.

The other option I was thinking was just to remove one of my 2tb m.2s and replace it with a 4TB and then just sell the mx500s, or at least one of them... and then so it doesn't go to waste, take that old m.2 and put it through a m.2>sata adapter. Sure the max speed will take quite a hit but max speed was never really the problem it was the sustained speed that drives me up the wall.

Or do I have room for another m.2? So I already have 3, 2tb each.. I have 14700k with 24 lanes. 4 lanes to the chipset, 4 lanes to the primary m.2 and 16 to the gpu. But on the chipset side of things I have the b760 so that should give me 10 pcie4 lanes ( 8 lanes used up by the second and third m.2... btw... what are those remaining 2 lanes doing?). I would happily use a half speed gen 4 ssd but is that what would happen? Or would it take lanes away from something else like the gpu?

The last thing I noticed is that the b760 chipset contains 4 pcie3 lanes. If I bought an adapter card and plugged it into a pcie slot... Would that work without taking away from any other devices? Looking at my board, I believe I only have 3x1 and 3x2. But hell even 3x2 is a lot faster than what these damn mx500s are giving me.

The last possibility is just connecting something through USB 3 but man I hate doing stuff like that. Its always so dangly and finicky.

Thank you.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Get a NAS and quit fooling around.

 

[iameatingjam]

.... but I'm serious about my fooling around.

 

[R0H1T]

If you have primocache with that much storage just get to 64GB ram.

 

[iameatingjam]

Get a NAS and quit fooling around.

Well just for research purposes of course.... What would you suggest? I'm not exactly made of money, unfortunately.

If you have primocache with that much storage just get to 64GB ram.

Yeah I was thinking about that. Have you done it with good results?

 

[R0H1T]

What do you mean research purpose? Is it for actual research or just curiosity's sake?

Yeah I was thinking about that. Have you done it with good results?

Yes although I haven't used it with SATA ssd's I prefer turning off the pagefile & just go full "primocache"

 

[Ferrum Master]

.... but I'm serious about my fooling around.

You mean, serious about loosing data?

Not sure what are you trying even to do but it looks outrageously weird.

 

[R0H1T]

Unless you have regular power cuts &/or you have deferred writes enabled you won't get data loss with this. I’m assuming there's nothing wrong with the drives or system stability etc. It's perfectly safe.

 

[iameatingjam]

What do you mean research purpose? Is it for actual research or just curiosity's sake?

I'm sorry that wasnt meant for you. I've noticed techpowerup merges your posts together if you make more than one in a row.

Not sure what are you trying even to do but it looks outrageously weird.

Just trying to get some decent storage with some decent speed. Is that so weird? I thought the 2*mx500 4tb would do the job, based on how the 1tb performed. I suspected the newer model might be slower but not this much slower. While in raid 0 we're talking sometimes <200MB/s ( and no its not data I can't afford to lose). Anyway, on a good day its predecessor would do 5x that. It certainly wouldn't go any lower than double that. So now I'm just trying to figure out the best way forward. I mean I already threw you a bone. You think I should get a NAS. Okay, what nas should I get? I don't exactly have a lot of money to burn here.

Do you know if it would work if I got an adapter to use those pcie 3 lanes. Thinking of getting a new m.2 and putting an old one in there. It'd still be faster than these things they call the mx500.

You mean, serious about loosing data?

Awwe man loose data, that sounds like the worst! What is the procedure for getting it tight again? Kegels?

 

[Ferrum Master]

Just trying to get some decent storage with some decent speed. Is that so weird?

Just quit the idea about doing RAID0, basically you are killing any benefits of having a flash based storage for active I/O. It is weird for sure.

The only use case for raid is for redundancy not speed.

 

[chrcoluk]

How slow do they get when cache is exhausted? I am curious if its QLC level of performance. Also which vendor sold you the 4TB drives, I mean actual seller, so if its amazon, the seller name.

If its TLC, even with no SLC the performance should still be 80-90% of SATA limit. So 870 EVO's or WD blue's might be a better bet if the MX500's have QLC in them.

Also curious of what you doing that cache exhausted performance is affecting you so much.

Did find this which claims its still TLC, but no explanation for the QLC level of endurance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/16r40ix

 

[iameatingjam]

Just quit the idea about doing RAID0, basically you are killing any benefits of having a flash based storage for active I/O. It is weird for sure.

The only use case for raid is for redundancy not speed.

Yeah yeah, I tested these drives before and they were about half as fast as they are now. And there wasn't even a significant hit to random r/w. Like I said, this is my download/temp storage/network drive. Nothing that can't easily be replaced. All I really want from it is consistent file transfer speed, like I got with the same setup with the 1tb mx500s*2. Anyway, you mentioned nas, could you elaborate for me? Is there a path of decent prices to get to where I want to be? What if I buy a new 4tb m.2... will I be able to use an adapter and my chipsets pcie 3 lanes to get some use out of the old drive or would something else use up those lanes. Are you able to answer any of the questions I asked, or provide an alternative solution, or are you just here to give me a rough time?

How slow do they get when cache is exhausted? I am curious if its QLC level of performance. Also which vendor sold you the 4TB drives, I mean actual seller, so if its amazon, the seller name.

Also curious of what you doing that cache exhausted performance is affecting you so much.

Yes, it was amazon, the store was 'The Crucial Store' I've also gone to their website to make sure the serial numbers are legit, and they are. Once the burst speed is over, the speed stays below 200MB/s, and thats them working in raid 0, so... actually ~100MB/s if we were to measure on individual drive level speed.

 

[chrcoluk]

See my reply, I just edited it with a reddit link.

If its under 100MB/sec I have a hard time believing thats TLC. I would return under Amazon's very generous return policy and get a 870 EVO instead. I am assuming we talking sequential writes.

 

[R0H1T]

Well if you're going to return them just get an NVMe drive instead, SATA is inherently slow for a reason ~

 

[iameatingjam]

See my reply, I just edited it with a reddit link.

If its under 100MB/sec I have a hard time believing thats TLC. I would return under Amazon's very generous return policy and get a 870 EVO instead. I am assuming we talking sequential writes.

Erm yeah I dunno if thats a good idea. The thing is, I ordered two. One of them didn't work, so I returned it and ordered again. As soon as I got the new one, the price dropped by $100 and they gave me no choice but to return it and order again, wouldn't even give me a credit, . So now my amazon account has two very high value returns in my recent purchase history. I'm hesitant to push my luck lest I get flagged as a scammer or something. But I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that don't care nearly as much as me about file transfer speed, maybe I'll just sell them on facebook marketplace. Or does that make me a horrible person?

Btw, do you know the answer to the question of if a 4th m.2 will run through a pcie adapter at 3x2? That way I could just buy a new m.2, still use my old one albeit at reduced speed and just forget about sata altogether. Clearly they are nothing but junk for 10 year laptops at this point. If there are any decent satas left out there, it can't be more than one or two models.

 

[chrcoluk]

Erm yeah I dunno if thats a good idea. The thing is, I ordered two. One of them didn't work, so I returned it and ordered again. As soon as I got the new one, the price dropped by $100 and they gave me no choice but to return it and order again, wouldn't even give me a credit, . So now my amazon account has two very high value returns in my recent purchase history. I'm hesitant to push my luck lest I get flagged as a scammer or something. But I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that don't care nearly as much as me about file transfer speed, maybe I'll just sell them on facebook marketplace. Or does that make me a horrible person?

Btw, do you know the answer to the question of if a 4th m.2 will run through a pcie adapter at 3x2? That way I could just buy a new m.2, still use my old one albeit at reduced speed and just forget about sata altogether. Clearly they are nothing but junk for 10 year laptops at this point. If there are any decent satas left out there, it can't be more than one or two models.

Up to you, but discount or not I wouldnt be happy with those drives, and in truth I was not happy with my 2x MX500 either, sadly too much shenanigans have gone on with the MX500 line in my view, it was my prime reason I started only buying drives from vendors who have a rep for keeping consistency.

I see no reason why you wouldnt be able to run a gen4 NVME drive at gen3, they also can run with 2 lanes. But be aware QLC exists on NVME as well with equally trash performance.

Amazon's returns if done quick enough, are unconditional, they would only reject if they damaged, incomplete or whatever. As I said there is the WD and Samsung SATAs out there that still are TLC and their original performance levels.

Selling on facebook would be fine, they not broken and it isnt your fault Crucial have done shenanigans. Also the majority of use cases would just be using the SLC cache as well, so the person buying it will likely only see the pSLC performance.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Erm yeah I dunno if thats a good idea. The thing is, I ordered two. One of them didn't work, so I returned it and ordered again. As soon as I got the new one, the price dropped by $100 and they gave me no choice but to return it and order again, wouldn't even give me a credit, . So now my amazon account has two very high value returns in my recent purchase history. I'm hesitant to push my luck lest I get flagged as a scammer or something. But I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that don't care nearly as much as me about file transfer speed, maybe I'll just sell them on facebook marketplace. Or does that make me a horrible person?

Btw, do you know the answer to the question of if a 4th m.2 will run through a pcie adapter at 3x2? That way I could just buy a new m.2, still use my old one albeit at reduced speed and just forget about sata altogether. Clearly they are nothing but junk for 10 year laptops at this point. If there are any decent satas left out there, it can't be more than one or two models.

Yes, SATA has no place in modern computers, let alone if you have a minimal expectation of high storage performance. It's an obsolete bus, with low bandwidth and an outdated command queueing system.

What are your expectations here? What are your goals?

 

[iameatingjam]

Well if you're going to return them just get an NVMe drive instead, SATA is inherently slow for a reason ~View attachment 350954

Yes I absolutely will be, if I can, which is why I keep asking if I have enough lanes to pull it off. According to my math I have 2 pcie4 lanes and 4 pcie 3 lanes. But the only slots I have are 3x1 and 3x2. And honestly 3x2 is still a lot faster than sata, and its better than throwing the drive out. I think I'd probably put either my p5 plus netac nv7000 in there, and buy a new shiny 4tb nvme.

 

[bug]

As some of you may know, I recently purchased 2 4TB mx500s and I have been quite disappointed with their performance. I bought them because my 1TB mx500s were great and I was out m.2 slots. But these suck once the burst speed is used up, sustained write can get very very slow, even when working in tandem.

Yeah yeah, I tested these drives before and they were about half as fast as they are now. And there wasn't even a significant hit to random r/w. Like I said, this is my download/temp storage/network drive.

Wth are you downloading?
Also RAID0 on SATA SSDs... just don't. A single SATA drive alone is enough to saturate the interface, there's no need for the RAID overhead.

 

[Ferrum Master]

here to give me a rough time?

Yes exactly that. RAID0 is a bad idea, it is not even a debate.

Doing NAS, you go to NAS reviews, here or elsewhere. You can max out any ethernet infrastructure allows you to easily these days. Do RAID5/6 or with HYBRID. It will not be cheap by any means. I am good with two spinners on RAID1 with two layered snapshot system from nvme drives in my NAS.

What are your expectations here? What are your goals?

Most probably torrents.

 

[iameatingjam]

Yes, SATA has no place in modern computers, let alone if you have a minimal expectation of high storage performance. It's an obsolete bus, with low bandwidth and an outdated command queueing system.

What are your expectations here? What are your goals?

Yeah, well you see I was out of m.2 slots and since my old mx500s were working so well I didn't even think about getting an adapter. Anyway for this drive in particular. I just want something that write files consistently at 1GB/s or more and is suitable as a download drive, and as a network drive to stream video files around the house. I don't think I ask a lot. But there's nothing I hate more than drives that start out super fast then fall off a cliff after a minute or two. Grrrr. so many drives like that.

 

[dgianstefani]

SATA drives, no thanks.

There's a reason they are cheap.

https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/crucial-mx500-4-tb.d951 Apparently TLC, but seeing as you're getting 100 MB sustained that sucks.

Yeah, well you see I was out of m.2 slots and since my old mx500s were working so well I didn't even think about getting an adapter. Anyway for this drive in particular. I just want something that write files consistently at 1GB/s or more and is suitable as a download drive, and as a network drive to stream video files around the house. I don't think I ask a lot. But there's nothing I hate more than drives that start out super fast then fall off a cliff after a minute or two. Grrrr. so many drives like that.

It's an inherent problem with NAND flash. There is no getting around it. Every NAND flash drive will hit this cliff after x amount of seconds depending on SLC cache size, lanes/chips on the drive and if you have enough free space.

Optane was the only consistent high performer.

 

[chrcoluk]

TLC SATA will be close to maxing SATA on one drive even with pSLC exhausted. Those drives you got have to be QLC, the performance level matches it (and it seems they also have low rated endurance as well).

Personally I think SATA still has usefulness, mostly down to how power inefficient and how hot NVME drives get but also how much more readily SATA ports are available.

You havent said much about your workload so cant say a TLC SATA would be enough to satisfy you, but I assume it would as you said you was happy with the older smaller MX500s.

Samsung 870 EVO 4 TB Review

The Samsung 870 EVO SSD has been on the market for a while and is still the fastest SATA solid-state-drive offered by Samsung. Right now it is available used for $150 for the reviewed 4 TB model, which makes this an interesting way to upgrade your storage, especially if you're out of M.2 slots.

www.techpowerup.com

Also found this, it talks about all the different variants of the MX500 out in the wild, for the 4TB it seems 33% of them are QLC, and 66% are TLC. All 6 have the shortage of the DRAM.

Crucial MX500 4TB Benchmark and Bait and Switch Drama Controversy

www.ozbargain.com.au

 

[iameatingjam]

Wth are you downloading?
Also RAID0 on SATA SSDs... just don't. A single SATA drive alone is enough to saturate the interface, there's no need for the RAID overhead.

Uh, what? A single sata drive saturates the interface...? What interface? Are you saying sata operates like IDE or something and can only handle one connection? With my mx500x2, I was usually getting over a GB/s of transfer so I am completely confused by this statement.

Anyway, my #1 concern with this drive is that it transfers files reasonable fast, and consistently. Because I transfer a lot of files to and fro. Sure, maybe there's some downsides to a different type of use case, but when it comes to file transfers, thats where raid really helps out.

Besides, its moot point already because if you've been following the conversation, I've pretty much decided to sell the mx500s, buy a new m.2 and try to get one of those adapters so that the old m.2 doesn't go to waste. Can you go harass somebody else please. I'm willing to listen to suggestions but you're just being a jerk. Have offered no help whatsoever, and when you almost did, and I inquired further, to try and get you in a productive mode of conversation, you basically told me to f off. Well thanks chief. I was under the mistaken impression this was some sort of forum for exchanging ideas.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Yeah, well you see I was out of m.2 slots and since my old mx500s were working so well I didn't even think about getting an adapter. Anyway for this drive in particular. I just want something that write files consistently at 1GB/s or more and is suitable as a download drive, and as a network drive to stream video files around the house. I don't think I ask a lot. But there's nothing I hate more than drives that start out super fast then fall off a cliff after a minute or two. Grrrr. so many drives like that.

This is a mass-market model that's been around for almost 10 years now. It's no wonder they've gone through several revisions and those tend to be for the worse. But anyway, SATA is just not going to sustain an expected performance level for modern storage. It's only good for mechanical mass storage drives, that's where it stops. It's beyond obsolete, the only reason it hasn't gone the way of the dodo entirely is because it's compatible, affordable and "good enough" for the majority of people, same reason why we still use USB-A 2.0 or the mp3 codec all these years later.

The supported NVMe layout for your motherboard will be documented on its manual. Your question about x2 lanes or resource sharing will be answered there. One of the slots should be CPU-attached and thus the fastest and lowest-latency slot available, and the others will use chipset resources - your specs say you're on B760, the B-series tend to have a reduced amount of lanes. Read that before making an informed purchase.

My recommendation is generally to look for older, high-end Gen 3 drives that have good NAND and a physical DRAM cache, you may be able to get a nice drive on the cheap, but if you're after raw performance, it's looking like you should invest on a high-performance Gen 4 drive, or even a Gen 5 model if your storage demands are that strict.

TLC SATA will be close to maxing SATA on one drive even with pSLC exhausted. Those drives you got have to be QLC, the performance level matches it (and it seems they also have low rated endurance as well).

Personally I think SATA still has usefulness, mostly down to how power inefficient and how hot NVME drives get but also how much more readily SATA ports are available.

You havent said much about your workload so cant say a TLC SATA would be enough to satisfy you, but I assume it would as you said you was happy with the older smaller MX500s.

Samsung 870 EVO 4 TB Review

The Samsung 870 EVO SSD has been on the market for a while and is still the fastest SATA solid-state-drive offered by Samsung. Right now it is available used for $150 for the reviewed 4 TB model, which makes this an interesting way to upgrade your storage, especially if you're out of M.2 slots.

www.techpowerup.com

Considered that current generation SSDs can exceed the SATA bus's entire raw bandwidth tenfold and then some, before even accounting for the NVMe improvements over AHCI, I don't think this should even be a concern, basically, SATA's not suitable for a heavy storage workload anymore. SATA drives all tend to use slow NAND, and have no access to HMB to make up for their insufficient or complete lack of a DRAM cache. Controllers are almost universally out of date because the bus is so old, anything that performs like a 14 year old controller like the SF-2281 is more than capable enough for a SATA 6Gbps bus.

Uh, what? A single sata drive saturates the interface...? What interface? Are you saying sata operates like IDE or something and can only handle one connection? With my mx500x2, I was usually getting over a GB/s of transfer so I am completely confused by this statement.

You're likely running into a bottleneck with the command queue interface before the (super low) bandwidth of SATA even becomes a problem. You see, the cheapest 128 GB dogshit-tier NVMes with no DRAM and a single QLC die in them are gonna do 1800 MB/s+ and they rarely suffer from speed issues due to HMB and an efficient queuing system.