Random freezes - what's wrong with my NVMe SSD?

[cst1992]

I have the following specs:

Processor: Ryzen 5 5600X
Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming Wifi II
Cooling: Noctua NH-U12S chromax.black
Memory: 32GB: 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance 3600MHz C18
Video Card(s): NVIDIA RTX 3060Ti Founder's Edition
Storage: 500GB 970 Evo Plus NVMe (boot drive), 2TB Crucial MX500
Display(s): AOC C24G1 144Hz 24" 1080p Monitor
Case: Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO White
Power Supply: Seasonic X-650 Gold PSU (SS-650KM3)
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

A couple months after installing the system, I started having random freezing issues. These occurred just after exiting a game, or just in random. The system never recovers from this freeze, only resetting from the motherboard helps.

At first I thought it was RAM (when I ran Memtest64 on it it locked up after some time) but when I moved the pagefile from the C: drive (970 Evo Plus) to E: drive (MX500) the random freezes are gone, but it still sometimes locks up when I am accessing something on C: e.g. the My Documents folder.

I have run chkdsk on it with no issues.

I tried running SSDLife on it but it seems it doesn't detect NVMe drives (do they not use SMART?).

What's wrong with my drive?

 

[Athlonite]

I have the following specs:

Processor: Ryzen 5 5600X
Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming Wifi II
Cooling: Noctua NH-U12S chromax.black
Memory: 32GB: 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance 3600MHz C18
Video Card(s): NVIDIA RTX 3060Ti Founder's Edition
Storage: 500GB 970 Evo Plus NVMe (boot drive), 2TB Crucial MX500
Display(s): AOC C24G1 144Hz 24" 1080p Monitor
Case: Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO White
Power Supply: Seasonic X-650 Gold PSU (SS-650KM3)
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

A couple months after installing the system, I started having random freezing issues. These occurred just after exiting a game, or just in random. The system never recovers from this freeze, only resetting from the motherboard helps.

At first I thought it was RAM (when I ran Memtest64 on it it locked up after some time) but when I moved the pagefile from the C: drive (970 Evo Plus) to E: drive (MX500) the random freezes are gone, but it still sometimes locks up when I am accessing something on C: e.g. the My Documents folder.

I have run chkdsk on it with no issues.

I tried running SSDLife on it but it seems it doesn't detect NVMe drives (do they not use SMART?).

What's wrong with my drive?

Try using the Samsung Magician program and do a scan of your drive with it instead it'll also tell you the health of the drive aswell and you want to look at these reading

you can also use HWinfo to keep an eye on drive temps if it's getting to hot that could be the problem

 

[faye]

Could still be RAM, the Vengeance kits are nothing but trouble with AM4. Try bumping your VDIMM up a little from whatever XMP has it set at - so say 1.4v if it's 1.35v - and see if that helps.

 

[SPDIF]

Did you install the driver? The 970EVO-plus need a Samsung driver to work fast and good! Go to Samsung and download the windows driver version V3.3
Whitout this driver the 970EVO does work very slow and strange behavior.

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Download various software related to your product, including Samsung Magician, designed for use with Samsung's memory products, and find related information.

semiconductor.samsung.com

If that does not help you, i advice to backup everything then Secure Erase the SSD, after this it is back to Factory condition.

 

[P4-630]

Did you install the driver? The 970EVO-plus need a Samsung driver to work fast and good! Go to Samsung and download the windows driver version V3.3
Whitout this driver the 970EVO does work very slow and strange behavior.

I call this B***Sh*t, I only use the standard microsoft drivers, performance is good and my NVMe's work as intended....
Never had any issues.

 

[micropage7]

what about check it with harddisk sentinel?
the symptoms looks like from the drive, but it could be wrong. just check it

 

[A Computer Guy]

I call this B***Sh*t, I only use the standard microsoft drivers, performance is good and my NVMe's work as intended....
Never had any issues.

I'm in agreement with this as well having tried both drivers. Also there is a inconvenient problem where Windows won't boot successfully using the Samsung driver if you upgrade (or attempted to recover your OS from an image) later and transfer the OS image to a new and different model NVMe drive. Using the standard Microsoft driver avoids that issue.

 

[SPDIF]

On some pc it did lead to a solution. Why would Samsung made drivers available if it is sh*t?

Only the 970 series SSD need this driver., even the PRO. All other's do not need it. In my case i have here never seen boot problems AFAIK.
Anyway it it is just something you can try out, if not you just de-install this sh*t again...

I would never mention the word BSHT on a forum, some people apparently have no problem with that. You can also say that in another way without immediately shooting the bullet.
Anyway good to know...

 

[P4-630]

Only the 970 series SSD need this driver.

I have a 970 evo and a 980 Pro, both running with the basic microsoft driver on windows 11, also no issues on previous build with windows 10.

Why would Samsung made drivers available if it is sh*t?

It may be a good driver but the basic microsoft driver is just as good and will auto-install usually, so the samsung nvme driver isn't really needed for windows.

 

[SPDIF]

Yeah, the 980 series does not need it even... As said ONLY the 970 series.

Whether you want to try it or not, that's not my problem. I'm just offering a possible solution. I also have no problems with the standard Windows driver, but on some computers it did have an effect. If it was not needed there would be no drivers made for it...

 

[cst1992]

Okay, no need to fight please.

I'll try both solutions - see if Magician shows anything (as well as Sentinel) and see if there's a driver for my SSD (it's Evo by the way - I've heard there's a 970 non-Evo as well).

 

[QuietBob]

Power Supply: Seasonic X-650 Gold PSU (SS-650KM3)

Your PSU must be around 10 years old at this point. Consider replacing it with a newer model of similar quality.

 

[cst1992]

I installed Magician and installed the NVMe driver (without which SMART tests in Magician wouldn't run). The tests report no issues.

Your PSU must be around 10 years old at this point

7. Should last for some more time - it has been consistently running 50% under max capacity.

 

[A Computer Guy]

I installed Magician and installed the NVMe driver (without which SMART tests in Magician wouldn't run). The tests report no issues.

Just FYI the SMART should work with the newest Magician 8.0 with Microsoft Standard Driver. I had that problem too and fixed it by using a newer Magician > 7.2.

 

[cst1992]

As for HDSentinel, what am I looking for? I looked at the SMART page and the only things of concern I saw were 214 unsafe shutdowns and 362 error information log entries.

Just FYI the SMART should work with the newest Magician 8.0 with Microsoft Standard Driver.

Maybe, but the diagnostics tests themselves specifically required the latest NVMe drivers.

I'm using the latest version 8.0.0 of Magician.

 

[A Computer Guy]

I have 2 970 evo's on my system one using the Samsung driver and the other using the Microsoft driver. With respect to Samsung vs. Microsoft drivers the IOPS do seem a bit better with the Samsung driver however there is some run to run variance so I wouldn't say it makes a big difference. SPDIF has a point however that maybe the Samsung specific driver might work to solve some issue so it's worth a try.

(the image is large, click to zoom)

If you ever decide to swap out your drive for a different model just be sure to change the Samsung driver back to "Standard NVM Express Controller" in the OS before copying your OS image to a new different model NVMe drive.

As for HDSentinel, what am I looking for? I looked at the SMART page and the only things of concern I saw were 214 unsafe shutdowns and 362 error information log entries.


Maybe, but the diagnostics tests themselves specifically required the latest NVMe drivers.

I'm using the latest version 8.0.0 of Magician.

Diagnostics are working fine for me on my Microsoft driver controlled 970 EVO so I'm not sure why it didn't work prior to your install of the Samsung driver.
Anyway it's working for you now so that is good. So what do these error information log entries look like?

And were there any errors in your Windows Event Viewer that looked like they might pertain to your SSD?

 

[P4-630]

Deleted my post, I'm not the OP.

 

[cst1992]

Just quit a game and it happened again.
Weird thing is - whenever it happens, the system just starts acting funky. You can see in Resource Monitor nothing is getting logged (which is legitimately impossible - there is always something happening in the system).
Plus in Task Manager, things have frozen as well. In the initial stages it was at least responding enough for me to open Resource Monitor and take this shot, but now nothing is responding.

It should be noted that before moving the pagefile from C: to E: it would freeze so quickly it'd not even give me time to open Task Manager.

I'm leaning back towards it being a memory issue.

Memory is set to 3600MHz (as it is rated for such) and Infinity Fabric clock is set to 1800 MHz.
This is weird. Why is it running at such loose timings? It is running at 3600 all right, but it's running at 26-25-25-58 instead of 18-22-22-42.
Also, it's running at 3597MHz instead of 3600 (but I doubt that makes a difference).
Model number is as given - CMK16GX4M1Z3600C18
BIOS is old (I don't like messing with it) so it might be a potential cause of the issues, I don't want to touch it if I don't have to.

 

[meatwar]

4 AGESA updates and several "Improve system stability" from last 0309...i would update my system....

 

[Denver]

If you want to rule out possible RAM instability issues, simply set the lowest frequency. It is also worth checking the Windows event log.

 

[cst1992]

I checked Administrative Events and all I found of note was Kernel Power, which is basically telling me I had to reset the system.

 

[P4-630]

7. Should last for some more time - it has been consistently running 50% under max capacity.

But still, it's ageing..

Your PSU must be around 10 years old at this point. Consider replacing it with a newer model of similar quality.

^^ Agree on this one.

 

[cst1992]

4 AGESA updates and several "Improve system stability" from last 0309...i would update my system....

0309 is the first BIOS version.

I downloaded 3 versions of the new BIOS - 4408, 4602 and 4802.

Normally I'd just update to 4802 and be done with it, but I have heard that some versions (4602 or 4802, I'm not sure) have issues. Something about the V2PI version 1.2.0.A not working right or something.

This is my first Ryzen system, so I'm just a bit apprehensive. Plus if I brick the board, I won't get a replacement as the chipset is now going out of stock everywhere.

 

[meatwar]

The board has the Asus BFB feature, so there's a safeguard for the user and you're not violating any Asus Warranty using standard Asus update methods.
It's a user choice only and yes i would still update one of a time till the latest, regardless rumors, that usually don't apply to all users and their set of hardware.
Still i would investigate a bit more of those rumores and in what circumstances those issues have occurred to those users.
Take your conclusions and decide as the legit owner of your system and your actions, simple.

I also agree that the PSU may not be giving her optimal supply, due to aging and being a bit out of margin for your setup.

Good luck.

 

[Mussels]

I have the following specs:

Processor: Ryzen 5 5600X
Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming Wifi II
Cooling: Noctua NH-U12S chromax.black
Memory: 32GB: 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance 3600MHz C18
Video Card(s): NVIDIA RTX 3060Ti Founder's Edition
Storage: 500GB 970 Evo Plus NVMe (boot drive), 2TB Crucial MX500
Display(s): AOC C24G1 144Hz 24" 1080p Monitor
Case: Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO White
Power Supply: Seasonic X-650 Gold PSU (SS-650KM3)
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

A couple months after installing the system, I started having random freezing issues. These occurred just after exiting a game, or just in random. The system never recovers from this freeze, only resetting from the motherboard helps.

At first I thought it was RAM (when I ran Memtest64 on it it locked up after some time) but when I moved the pagefile from the C: drive (970 Evo Plus) to E: drive (MX500) the random freezes are gone, but it still sometimes locks up when I am accessing something on C: e.g. the My Documents folder.

I have run chkdsk on it with no issues.

I tried running SSDLife on it but it seems it doesn't detect NVMe drives (do they not use SMART?).

What's wrong with my drive?

I feel like a broken record, but with your RAM this is going to be SoC voltage - I have the OG version of your board, and the SoC defaults are low
It causes errors at the transition to and from idle states most of the time - set your SoC to 1.15v and it should go away

Definitely run the latest BIOS, the ones with issues were a long time ago and often removed.

BIOS update
load optimised defaults, reboot
XMP on, SoC to 1.15v, reboot

All should be well