Would a PCIe Card Bring My SSD Up to Speed? (And Some M.2 Questions)

[bmichaels556]

So I'm running a dual X5675 rig. My SSD is an OCZ Arc 100 I believe. I got it for cheap, though I'm pretty sure it's a super basic SSD and not going to get any huge performance numbers. But performance on this thing seems excessively bad. I would like to note that it's connected to SATA2, but I believe this thing still doesn't reach top SATA2 speeds and so it's probably the drive that's the speed limit, right?

 

So I was thinking... I installed a USB 3.0 PCIe card and it works great! My external HDD is getting some nice speeds through that card, exactly like you'd expect. I'm wondering... Should I maybe go for a PCIe M.2 / SATA3 card? I've seen a couple of them around, and if my success with the USB 3.0 card is any indicator, It'd sure be cool to have access to a crazy fast "modern" SSD.

 

For the Arc 100, doesn't this seem stupid low? Is it really due to it being a crappy SSD, being connected via SATA2, or maybe there's just something wrong with it? With these older CPU's, would it be worth getting an NVMe SSD for the M.2 slot, provided the card supports it? Because a non-NVMe would just be SATA(3) and be limited to those speeds, rather than crazy fast NVMe speeds, right? But then if I'm going to go for a whole expansion card just for that, I'd basically be spending money for the sole purpose of a SATA3 port more or less... What do you guys think?

 

 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Not all motherboards have NVMe boot support.  I highly doubt that yours does.  You may have to resort to some other form of PCIe storage (an OCZ Revodrive x2 for example, if they still make those)

 

That being said, if you can get it to work on your motherboard using an NVMe -> PCIe adapter, you can get the full speed of the drive.

 

 

As for the numbers you are getting, SATA2 maxes out at 3Gb/s which translates to 375MB/s.  You're nowhere near half of that.  Even SATA1 speeds are around 187.5MB/s, still way more than you're getting.

According to the official specs, your Arc 100 should be able to do 475 read and 395 write.  So there's definitely something wrong there.

[SSD Sean]

yeah, that looks like SATA 1. SATA 2 maxes out at ~275-285MB/s real world. Have you tried running Windows Optimize on it lately? It should help improve performance. So could changing the SATA cable/port. What does crystal disk info say about it? 

 

A good SATA SSD isn't much slower than the fastest NVMe SSD. While you could get something like a MX500 or 860 EVO, your daily performance difference won't be much....unless we can't fix your current performance issue lol. 

[bmichaels556]

9 hours ago, SSD Sean said:

yeah, that looks like SATA 1. SATA 2 maxes out at ~275-285MB/s real world. Have you tried running Windows Optimize on it lately? It should help improve performance. So could changing the SATA cable/port. What does crystal disk info say about it? 

 

A good SATA SSD isn't much slower than the fastest NVMe SSD. While you could get something like a MX500 or 860 EVO, your daily performance difference won't be much....unless we can't fix your current performance issue lol. 

That did cross my mind, but I would just wonder why a motherboard from... What, 2011ish, would even have a SATA 1 port. But that could 100% be the problem, I'll mess with it in a bit. Maybe I just so happen to stick it in one of them somehow. Maybe just there for cost, or backwards compatibility, or maybe just being able to put extra ports on since many devices probably don't even take full advantage of SATA 1...

[bmichaels556]

23 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

Not all motherboards have NVMe boot support.  I highly doubt that yours does.  You may have to resort to some other form of PCIe storage (an OCZ Revodrive x2 for example, if they still make those)

 

That being said, if you can get it to work on your motherboard using an NVMe -> PCIe adapter, you can get the full speed of the drive.

 

 

As for the numbers you are getting, SATA2 maxes out at 3Gb/s which translates to 375MB/s.  You're nowhere near half of that.  Even SATA1 speeds are around 187.5MB/s, still way more than you're getting.

According to the official specs, your Arc 100 should be able to do 475 read and 395 write.  So there's definitely something wrong there.

Thanks for that info, both of you. 

 

So Cap, if it's an NVMe adapter and my board doesn't support it, would it automatically fall back to using SATA? Or would I just be better off going with a SATA-based M.2 adapter and avoid any potential issues?

 

Yeah, I was thinking maybe it was only up to the adapter, but you're saying the board itself has to support NVMe, and merely plugging into PCIe with an adapter isn't the whole story then?

 

I'm going to try another cable and do a bit of testing, because this is just plain weird.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

10 hours ago, bmichaels556 said:

you're saying the board itself has to support NVMe, and merely plugging into PCIe with an adapter isn't the whole story then? 

If the motherboard's BIOS doesn't know how to handle NVMe, it won't be able to read the data on it and hence won't see the drive as a bootable device.

 

10 hours ago, bmichaels556 said:

if it's an NVMe adapter and my board doesn't support it, would it automatically fall back to using SATA?

No, it will still be NVMe.

 

You should be able to put the drive in your PC and use it as a secondary disk, but you won't be able to boot from it. 

[bmichaels556]

On 6/10/2019 at 10:11 AM, Captain Chaos said:

If the motherboard's BIOS doesn't know how to handle NVMe, it won't be able to read the data on it and hence won't see the drive as a bootable device.

 

No, it will still be NVMe.

 

You should be able to put the drive in your PC and use it as a secondary disk, but you won't be able to boot from it. 

So... Okay, so if the PCIe adapter card supports NVMe, is it safe to say it ALSO supports SATA m.2 drives as well? And like yeah, that makes sense, so an NVMe drive is only going to be NVMe, and a SATA m.2 drive of course won't benefit any more than it could on SATA. Something like that, right?

 

But... And I know this is a dumb question, but if the best the board supports is SATA2, would the SATA m.2 drive still be limited to those speeds? Then again, I added a USB 3 card just fine, and the board itself doesn't support that. That might be a weird broader question on how the hell expansion cards work. Again, hopefully that question even made sense conceptually... 

 

So let's just say I went with this guy...

 

https://www.ebay.com/p/M-2-NVMe-SSD-NGFF-to-PCIe-3-0-X16-Adapter-M-Key-Interface-Card-Full-Speed/5018668252?iid=223077293049#UserReviews

 

 

It's cheap, which is nice haha. It's marked NVMe, but can I assume it'd support SATA drives just fine? And if so, is it also safe to assume that a proper working drive on this adapter, would be working at true SATA3 speeds, rather than being throttled down by... Whatever the hell is going on with my board, or SSD or whatever? I do want to boot with it, so I'd probably skip an NVMe drive for now..

 

In other words... Just buy this thing, throw an "M" key M.2 SATA SSD into it... set, forget, and enjoy? Or am I still missing something?

 

Edit: Nvm, apparently that one is NVMe only. Another did support SATA, BUT needed a SATA connector, which... At that point, I figure it's still only going to be the SATA 2 that it's connected to...

 

I'm such a noob, I'm really sorry about this. You just hear all these damn terms and it definitely gets really confusing... At least for my anxious mind where I worry about every little issue lol. Thanks again for all your help so far, and the rest of you guys as well!

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

7 hours ago, bmichaels556 said:

I'm such a noob, I'm really sorry about this. You just hear all these damn terms and it definitely gets really confusing...

meh, no worries.  We've all been there at some point. 

 

As you found out, you can't just put a SATA M.2 drive in an NVMe adapter.  And yes, that SATA connector would indeed need to be plugged into your SATA2 port, which would limit you to SATA2 speeds.

 

----

 

I've been thinking about this some more, and I think (not 100% sure though) that you might benefit from a HBA (Host Bus Adapter) card, which should pass through SATA3 via the PCIe connector.   That should work even on SATA2 motherboards because it uses the HBA's SATA controller instead of whatever is on the motherboard itself.

 

Based on reports I'm reading online, the Highpoint Rocket 640L should work just fine for that purpose, including allowing you to boot from disks that are connected to it.  So that would be a solution.  I've read some mixed reports about longevity and it choking on heavy loads though, but then again you'll read negative stuff about every single electronics device. 

I wouldn't be surprised if this "choking" is simply thermal throttling under sustained loads.  Those controllers do tend to run hot and this one  doesn't have any heatsinks on it.  So not advised if you plan to move lots of data in a low-airflow case.

 

I happen to have a Rocket 640L here, I'll throw it in my old (Z77) rig later tonight and connect the boot SSD to it.  I'll report back in an hour or two.  

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Okay, that was interesting ...

 

I unplugged the Linux and data SSDs from my old rig, plugged in the HBA and connected that to an old 840EVO that still had a Win7 install from that machine on it.  (that allows me to do benchmarks etc.  Also Windows is much more likely to throw a tantrum about hardware changes than Linux is).

 

The BIOS recognized the HBA right away, found the SSD and booted from it just fine. 

I then ran Samsung Magician's optimizers to make sure the SSD was performing perfectly and launched Crystal Disk Mark.

 

 

 

That's better than SATA2, but not quite what I expected from this drive.  So I turned the machine off, connected the Windows SSD to the on-board SATA3 controller and ran Crystal Disk Mark again.

 

 

 

So yeah, overall performance is nowhere near the claimed "SATA3 6Gbps", but then again it seems to outperform my onboard controller when it comes to small queued random reads and writes, something the OS tends to do a lot. 

 

It's still a massive increase compared to the numbers you are getting now, so it's probably worth trying. 

Perhaps you could look into getting a higher tier HBA that has better cooling and more speed, the 640L really is low-end.   Make sure it has SATA ports though, a lot of HBAs have SAS ports.  That's not necessarily a problem, but you'd have to buy "SAS to 4x SATA" cables for those. 

 

Where are you located and what stores do you usually buy from?  I don't mind having a quick look at what's available in your region.

[bmichaels556]

4 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

Okay, that was interesting ...

 

I unplugged the Linux and data SSDs from my old rig, plugged in the HBA and connected that to an old 840EVO that still had a Win7 install from that machine on it.  (that allows me to do benchmarks etc.  Also Windows is much more likely to throw a tantrum about hardware changes than Linux is).

 

The BIOS recognized the HBA right away, found the SSD and booted from it just fine. 

I then ran Samsung Magician's optimizers to make sure the SSD was performing perfectly and launched Crystal Disk Mark.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

That's better than SATA2, but not quite what I expected from this drive.  So I turned the machine off, connected the Windows SSD to the on-board SATA3 controller and ran Crystal Disk Mark again.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

So yeah, overall performance is nowhere near the claimed "SATA3 6Gbps", but then again it seems to outperform my onboard controller when it comes to small queued random reads and writes, something the OS tends to do a lot. 

 

It's still a massive increase compared to the numbers you are getting now, so it's probably worth trying. 

Perhaps you could look into getting a higher tier HBA that has better cooling and more speed, the 640L really is low-end.   Make sure it has SATA ports though, a lot of HBAs have SAS ports.  That's not necessarily a problem, but you'd have to buy "SAS to 4x SATA" cables for those. 

 

Where are you located and what stores do you usually buy from?  I don't mind having a quick look at what's available in your region.

Man... Tons of great info there. I think if worst comes to worst, I'd go with the 640L. Since I only really care about a faster boot drive mostly, and my external drive is running fine at USB 3 speeds... It wouldn't really matter what form factor the drive is in, as long as I'd be properly utilizing SATA3 speeds. That's enough for me honestly. 

 

VERY interesting results. I was reading about some people talking about the SAS controller on the T7500 seeming to slow down their drives. So I tried disabling and not being able to boot (couldn't find the drive), only to find the manual and realize that several of the ports on the board are directly tied to the LSI controller as per the manual. Also interesting... It does seem that this board has both SATA1 and SATA2. I guess since this thing originally supported the Xeon 5000 series, which I think came out in 2009, that makes sense I suppose.

 

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_dell_precision_workstation/precision-t7500_service manual_en-us.pdf

 

The problem? It doesn't seem to specify which ports are which standard, so I'm now on the journey of just switching things around lol. Here are initial results on my first try completely moving off the other ports. So... Apparently two areas slowed significantly, and everything else sped up. I'm perplexed at this lmao. Far as I can see though, I'm still at SATA1 speeds, unless it's all the drive's fault... Actually, that's the next test. 

 

 

[bmichaels556]

Okay... Switched the ports around, and then also tested a cheap Drevo SSD that I used to use for mining. Very similar numbers all around. Disabled the SAS controller (not that I think it would make a difference if its not in those slots... Was originally set to AHCI instead of ATA, but I always got an error saying "No AHCI Bios Installed" or something, so I figure that won't make any difference either since it was probably unable to use it regardless...

 

I'm just trying to figure out why this thing is talking about supporting SATA2 when there's no way to enable it or whatever the case may be. Could this be a Windows-related issue? It doesn't seem to be the drive itself, since both are doing the same thing...

 

EDIT: I just realized something else... Maybe the SAS controller wouldn't let me use AHCI, and that on these other normal SATA ports, I NEED to activate AHCI in order to utililize full SATA 2 speeds? Crap, but it might break windows... Then again, maybe Windows 10 will automatically figure itself out? It's been pretty good in the past... 

 

I think I'm going to clone my OS over to the Drevo drive and just see what happens. If nothing breaks... Then who cares?

 

https://www.dell.com/community/Storage-Drives-Media/T7500-and-SSD-Samsung-evo-840-AHCI-not-activated/td-p/4165397

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Clone the OS so that you have a backup if it goes wrong.  However it is very unlikely that something will happen to your data.  Most likely the BIOS simply will not recognize your drive anymore until you switch it back. 

[bmichaels556]

54 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

Clone the OS so that you have a backup if it goes wrong.  However it is very unlikely that something will happen to your data.  Most likely the BIOS simply will not recognize your drive anymore until you switch it back. 

Yeah, wouldn't boot properly as expected. "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE". 

 

I'm on the clone drive now, since I figured this would be a good test run, and who knows, maybe the clone went wrong lol. Better off test running it here on the clone, rather than the original install. Just my thinking though...

 

Off to do the registry edits and stuff... Hopefully it works lol

[bmichaels556]

3 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

Clone the OS so that you have a backup if it goes wrong.  However it is very unlikely that something will happen to your data.  Most likely the BIOS simply will not recognize your drive anymore until you switch it back. 

Test run was semi-successful. 

 

Speeds are significantly better. But they are in line with what SSD Sean mentioned for real-world performance, so I guess... Mission accomplished..?

 

Anything else you could think of to improve this, or does it seem like the best I'm gonna' get without an expansion card? This is all so weird... Honestly, this is MUCH better than before, and I'd almost be satisfied with this for such an old workstation..

 

Cheap Drevo drive tested after cloning:

 

OCZ Arc 100:

 

 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

hmm ... this is weird. 

 

I'd swear that SATA2 translates to 375MB/s (3GB = 3000Mb -----> 3000Mb / 8 = 375 MB), but when I just started to look up SSD benchmarks on SATA2 I only saw numbers around 260-280MB/s.  So it looks like you're right in the ballpark.

 

https://superuser.com/questions/545157/highest-effective-transfer-rate-on-sata-ii

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/850-evo-ssd-on-sata-ii.2323681/

 

My Z77 board has four SATA2 ports and I still have that 840EVO attached to that PC.  So guess what I just did?

 

 

So yeah, it looks like there's a ton of overhead.   Seems like you're getting all the speed that SATA2 is going to give you. 

The next step up would be to plug in a SATA3 card.

 

Personally I'd use the PC like this for a while and then see if you crave speed that much that you're willing to invest more money in what is essentially a 10 year old rig.  It's not like you'll have a use for that card when the PC eventually dies and/or you upgrade to something more modern. 

[bmichaels556]

1 hour ago, Captain Chaos said:

hmm ... this is weird. 

 

I'd swear that SATA2 translates to 375MB/s (3GB = 3000Mb -----> 3000Mb / 8 = 375 MB), but when I just started to look up SSD benchmarks on SATA2 I only saw numbers around 260-280MB/s.  So it looks like you're right in the ballpark.

 

https://superuser.com/questions/545157/highest-effective-transfer-rate-on-sata-ii

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/850-evo-ssd-on-sata-ii.2323681/

 

My Z77 board has four SATA2 ports and I still have that 840EVO attached to that PC.  So guess what I just did?

  Hide contents

 

So yeah, it looks like there's a ton of overhead.   Seems like you're getting all the speed that SATA2 is going to give you. 

The next step up would be to plug in a SATA3 card.

 

Personally I'd use the PC like this for a while and then see if you crave speed that much that you're willing to invest more money in what is essentially a 10 year old rig.  It's not like you'll have a use for that card when the PC eventually dies and/or you upgrade to something more modern. 

Yeah, guess that's just it then. Eh, performance is great. BUT, considering the total cost of this thing... Something like $250-ish, I basically have a workstation with the multi-core performance of a Ryzen 7 1700. All things considered, that's crazy good in my opinion. And it hasn't been half-bad at gaming either. Not a major bottleneck at 1440p even. 

 

I think I may just keep it this way, and have this as a spare, or maybe try using it as a web server or something once I finally go Ryzen 3000 series, which I've waited for long enough after skipping on the first two releases. Maybe in the end, I'm too worried about every bit of performance, and it's making me ignore that I have a totally decent rig for pennies on the dollar, even if it is a 10 year old machine. 'Course I did upgrade to dual X5675, so even that made a big difference.

 

Eh, I'm rambling... Then again, I won't have much to lose either, by going for something crazy cheap off Ebay. 

[SSD Sean]

Hey man, nice updates! Glad to see you found the issue. I always suggest using the native Intel or AMD SATA ports whenever possible. Third party add on chips typically leave performance on the table and/or have stability issues. I even go as far as to disable them automatically on any board I have these days lol. 

 

You said you were in ATA mode or what is probably known as IDE mode, which doesn't support native command queuing. So, your random performance was lower from that too. Not just the port. As you can see your multi queue results improved drastically, which is great to see. QD 1 performance can be improved a bit more I think. What you can do now to try pushing it more is disable Intel Speed Step and C-States in the BIOS and set power mode to high performance within Windows. 

 

Also, depending on what you do, NVMe/PCIe SSDs won't improve your system's responsiveness the same way going from an HDD to an SSD did. The real-world difference is super minor between a PCIe, NVMe based 970 Pro and SATA based Crucial MX500 when it comes to app loading and light workflows. Seriously, it is not really noticeable if you just game, browse the web, do some office tasks, and photo editing. All you get is higher sequential performance for file transfers and, depending on the drive, better worst-case performance too. At least that's my opinion as a professional storage reviewer. PCIe 4.0 even shows little to no perceivable gain in the user experience. 

[bmichaels556]

19 hours ago, SSD Sean said:

Hey man, nice updates! Glad to see you found the issue. I always suggest using the native Intel or AMD SATA ports whenever possible. Third party add on chips typically leave performance on the table and/or have stability issues. I even go as far as to disable them automatically on any board I have these days lol. 

 

You said you were in ATA mode or what is probably known as IDE mode, which doesn't support native command queuing. So, your random performance was lower from that too. Not just the port. As you can see your multi queue results improved drastically, which is great to see. QD 1 performance can be improved a bit more I think. What you can do now to try pushing it more is disable Intel Speed Step and C-States in the BIOS and set power mode to high performance within Windows. 

 

Also, depending on what you do, NVMe/PCIe SSDs won't improve your system's responsiveness the same way going from an HDD to an SSD did. The real-world difference is super minor between a PCIe, NVMe based 970 Pro and SATA based Crucial MX500 when it comes to app loading and light workflows. Seriously, it is not really noticeable if you just game, browse the web, do some office tasks, and photo editing. All you get is higher sequential performance for file transfers and, depending on the drive, better worst-case performance too. At least that's my opinion as a professional storage reviewer. PCIe 4.0 even shows little to no perceivable gain in the user experience. 

Wow... Some very decent gains.

 

Before disable C-States and Speedstep (High Performance is already on):

 

 

After disabling C-States and Speedstep:

 

 

Interesting that even my initial test a few minutes ago showed better numbers than a couple days ago, but either way, disabling C-States and Speedstep seemed to lead to pretty big percentage gains in Q1, and some marginal improvements anywhere else... Not too shabby.  

[bmichaels556]

Sorry I'm late to do this you guys, but thanks so much for both of your help @Captain Chaos and @SSD Sean. I gained a ton of performance and overall, it didn't take terribly long and was definitely worth it.

 

I think I'm more than satisfied with my gains until I build a Ryzen 3000-series rig, but if it weren't for you guys, I might have had to go out and buy a bunch of stuff and maybe even end up with mixed results anyway...

 

That's huge, you guys. Thanks again.