Sawtaytoes

Both drive temps are pretty different. I'm not at my PC, so this is all from memory. One was 37C and the other was ~50C+ (sitting above the GPU). Both drives have the same issue though. I even had to delete a game (Valve's The Lab) and reinstall it (on the cooler drive) to fix never-loading load times. I couldn't see the transfer speed, but I assume it was the same. Also, Windows Task Manager shows the latency shoot up and 100% load (the drive) when reading these files even at ~20MB/s.

No firmware updates, and still no response from Corsair. I recently emailed about some products on their website and got a response, so I dunno what's going on.

I did contact them. No response 4 days later.

Some of the files were large videos like YouTube videos I was doing which I'd downloaded from my editor and forgotten to move to my NAS. Last year, I was experimenting with emulating Wii U games I'd ripped. I was working on my NAS at the time, so they were still in my Downloads folder waiting to go. It was like 400GB of stuff on my C: drive that had to be moved at a ridiculously slow 20MB/s. This is not what I expected from an NVMe SSD. I have a bunch of Crucial MX500 SATA SSDs and never had this happen before. On my D: drive (same SSD), where I store my games, one of them was The Lab (VR) by Valve. It was taking FOREVER to load a level. I ended up deleting the game and re-downloading it. After doing that, it was able to load into a level. All the time it took to delete, download, and load up the game was much faster than before. There are more files, but these are some I can remember off the top of my head. I wonder if many of my games are suffering longer load times because of this issue. These transfers should occur at 3-7GB/s, but they were 20MB/s. It's not because the files were small. Some were 13GB. But this slow speed makes it impossible to move them off the drive.

Mine is the 4TB Corsair MP600 XT Pro. I have two of them that I bought in 2021, and both are having this issue. The files were written a year ago. I'm assuming `chkdsk` also leaves files alone? Because I've run that multiple times since last year on at least my C: drive. I have a bunch of Crucial MX500 drives I used before this including a 512GB Samsung 980. I don't remember seeing this issue before, and I had those parts for a lot longer.

I saw this posted as a response to a post about degraded SSD performance: https://forum.corsair.com/forums/topic/181999-mp600-pro-xt-2tb-extremely-slow-reads-on-old-files/. I was experiencing slow speeds on these drives myself and am trying to figure out a way to fix it. If I write those files to the drive right now, it writes and reads really fast. It's only the ones that were written in the past when the drive was nearly full that have this slow read speed issue. The Corsair SSD Toolbox doesn't seem to have a way to fix it either; although, I would expect this to be a feature. Either tell me which files are written as QLC or give me a button I can click to fix it.

Can someone explain why Corsair recommends disabling Fast Boot to make your SSDs run faster? This sounds insane, and they give absolutely no reason: https://help.corsair.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052822291-Ensuring-peak-performance-for-your-MP600-M-2-SSD Corsair is the same company that wrote a whitepaper 15 years ago about some DDR2 or DDR3 RAM speeds being 40,000% faster (when it was only calculated as 400%). So I don't have much trust in what they're advocating.

I ended up buying 8 of these Corsair +5V Load Balancers: https://www.corsair.com/us/en/p/accessories/cp-8920275/corsair5v-load-balancer-aca-a-100w-capacity-cp-8920275 I just need to do some wire splicing because of the Storinator's proprietary large 4-pin Molex connector, and that will solve my issues.

I'm not understanding what you're doing. Steam "just works" for me. Are you on the latest version?

If you know of any reputable places to buy them, I don't mind paying a bit extra to get a decent buck converter.

I found this item, but it's obviously from some no-name Chinese manufacturer, and I have no clue how to use it: https://www.amazon.com/Regulator-Converter-12V-Waterproof-Transformer/dp/B089M5R3NJ/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=12v%2Bto%2B5v%2Bstep%2Bdown%2Bconverter&qid=1700392261&sr=8-7&th=1 This one looks a lot better for my needs (plastic, not metal), but still a bit sketch with those screw-in connectors: https://www.amazon.com/EPBOWPT-Converter-Regulator-Voltage-Transformer/dp/B07V7YY5X6/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=12v%2Bdc%2Bstep-down%2Bto%2B5v%2B50a&qid=1700393501&sr=8-7&x=0&y=0&th=1 I try to avoid buying from Chinese manufacturers because their products are super jank 99% of the time. I'm sure there's a better solution out there with Molex plugs already on it.

tl;dr I need help finding a way to take the 12V power from a 4-pin Molex plug and convert it to 5V or 12V and 5V. I know Molex plugs have both 5V and 12V, but I don't wanna use the PSU's 5V rail. --- I have a Storinator XL60 chassis which has this pair of redundant PSUs: https://www.zippy.com/pwproductshowdetail.aspx?pp_rfnbr=1867&pp_code=MTW2-5AD0B2V Each PSU has 50A available on the +5V rail (250W) and 100A on the +12V rail (1200W). The PSUs share the load when both are plugged in, but their redundant nature means I'm supposed to be able to take one out and be fine. Still, I'm theoretically able to get up to 500W of 5V power. Right now, I have 100 SSDs in there, and I'm missing two adapters to make it 132 SSDs. My 4TB Crucial MX500 SSDs say 5V 1.7A (8.5W) on the sticker. But they only seem to be using between 2.2W (440mA) and 4W (800mA) based on some rough calculations after plugging in 32 more drives. I'm not sure how much power they use under load, but with 132 drives, at 4W each, I'll be using over 100A of +5V which is more than the max these PSUs allow. But... The PSUs have plenty of power available on the +12V rail. And I figure, if I could step down the +12V rail using molex plugs to +5V, I could safely use my existing case and PSUs with all 132 drives. Is there a solution that lets me bypass the PSU's +5V rail, so I can use the +12V rail to step-down with high amperage? Another option is buying the PSUs for this case by Supermicro: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/chassis/4U/417/SC417BE1C-R1K23JBOD I think the PSUs are only 12V, and the power distributor is 100A on the +5V rail.

I appreciate the link. I have the correct LG drivers for my monitor already `38GN950-B`: There's a newer driver on the website for March 2023. Looks promising: Clicking "Reference" does nothing. But the download reveals this is an old driver. The download shows the same date as what I have installed:

I came here looking for the difference between DTS:X Ultra and DTS:X for Home Theater. To be clear, stereo isn't the same as binaural. Windows has Spatial Audio built-in, but it's only supported in certain apps and games. When playing a compatible game, it will sound vastly different; more 3D. Sounds will actually sound like they're coming from in front and behind you, not just to the sides. This isn't magic. It happens because they play the left-channel sound in the right ear, but at a different phase. GUESSWORK PAST THIS POINT: Your ears interpret this as coming from a different direct because the phasing is slightly off from the left ear. This is how you hear things in 3D. --- From the research I've done, DTS:X Ultra is an analog version of DTS:X. Typically, you'd have this on your home theater receiver where they already paid DTS a license to use it; therefore, it's free to use in the App. DTS:X for Headphones competes with Dolby Atmos for headphones and Windows Sonic Audio. Those are designed for headphone listening. They don't sound good when played over speakers because they're trying to take advantage of how only one ear can hear each channel with headphones. DTS:X Ultra is designed for speakers, but not home theater speakers. If your soundcard has 8 analog audio inputs, this is how you can use DTS:X without a $1K+ receiver. It's pretty awesome from that point of view! But I'm pretty sure you don't get the benefit of height speakers, so I'm not sure what you're getting over regular 7-channel + LFE surround sound that Windows comes with built-in. From what I understand, DTS:X Ultra allows you to play native DTS content. So if you have movies or Blu-rays with DTS on them, you can now decode those natively in Windows whereas it's impossible otherwise. --- I think the usage for DTS:X Ultra is pretty niche. It either came with my ASUS motherboard or USB soundcard, but it definitely doesn't sound as good as stereo for stereo content. It's really something you wanna enable when playing spatial audio games. On the other hand, I leave DTS:X for Home Theater on all the time on my home theater. You don't lose anything, and when you do play a Spatial Audio game, then it'll be setup already for you. DTS Headphone:X DTS:X Ultra (not named that in the app anymore) DTS:X for Home Theater

I'm still using Aster. Works really well! Steam now runs in separate user accounts, not as the system account! Problem solved :). That means no Sandboxie.