Massive Difference Between Random Write Value on Two Brand New Samsung 980 Pro NVMe Drives

[TakerTX]

So I kind of inherited a computer with an Intel Core i7-9700K, 32 Gigabytes of Ram, a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro, a 2TB WD Blue HDD, and an ASUS PRIME B360M-C Motherboard. There is nothing wrong with the computer and it has recently been purchased over the past 5 months I believe. The NVMe had some issues which was RMAed by the previous owner and a brand new one was sent to her from Samsung that she changed out with the previous one. The computer also has a W10 Enterprise, and the drivers installed, and has pretty much nothing else in terms of additional applications installed on it.

 

The mother board has another NVMe slot which I personally populated with another brand new Samsing NVMe 1TB drive I had around. I installed Samsung Magician and ran benchmarks on both drives and the results reported were pretty much the same, but massively different On the Random Write field.

 

I checked and both NVMe drives have the latest firmware according to Samsung Magician App, and the system seems to be generally snappy at booting up and doing tasks. That being said I was wondering why the massive difference between the two benchmarks? is it because one is the OS drive? Or are there other reasons I need to be worried about?

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, TakerTX said:

So I kind of inherited a computer with an Intel Core i7-9700K, 32 Gigabytes of Ram, a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro, a 2TB WD Blue HDD, and an ASUS PRIME B360M-C Motherboard. There is nothing wrong with the computer and it has recently been purchased over the past 5 months I believe. The NVMe had some issues which was RMAed by the previous owner and a brand new one was sent to her from Samsung that she changed out with the previous one. The computer also has a W10 Enterprise, and the drivers installed, and has pretty much nothing else in terms of additional applications installed on it.

 

The mother board has another NVMe slot which I personally populated with another brand new Samsing NVMe 1TB drive I had around. I installed Samsung Magician and ran benchmarks on both drives and the results reported were pretty much the same, but massively different On the Random Write field.

 

I checked and both NVMe drives have the latest firmware according to Samsung Magician App, and the system seems to be generally snappy at booting up and doing tasks. That being said I was wondering why the massive difference between the two benchmarks? is it because one is the OS drive? Or are there other reasons I need to be worried about?

New vs. old? Different innards? Do they have the same product number?  Just guessing kind of randomly here. 

Edited September 24, 2022 by Bombastinator

[TakerTX]

15 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

New vs. old? Different innards? Do they have the same product number?  Just guessing kind of randomly here. 

Good guesses actually. I have not checked the product number, but both drives were unpacked by myself from inside the sealed retail box they came with.

 

I just checked the boxes and the one benchmarking slower has a manufacturing date of 2020-12-12 and the faster one has the manufacturing date of 2021-11-19.

 

And yes, they both have the same model number and model code on their respective boxes

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, TakerTX said:

Good guesses actually. I have not checked the product number, but both drives were unpacked by myself from inside the sealed retail box they came with.

 

I just checked the boxes and the one benchmarking slower has a manufacturing date of 2020-12-12 and the faster one has the manufacturing date of 2021-11-19.

 

And yes, they both have the same model number and model code on their respective boxes

Ouch.  Supply chain issues hit SSDs perhaps?  Do they advertise the faster number or the slower one?

[TakerTX]

9 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Ouch.  Supply chain issues hit SSDs perhaps?  Do they advertise the faster number or the slower one?

The faster one of course, hence the reason why I am posting here to get to the bottom of it.

[utkuu]

The secondary slot probably connected to a chipset in the motherboard while the primart slot is connected directly to CPU. Try putting drives in each others slot. If the slower one becomes faster and faster one becomes faster this is the answer

 

[TakerTX]

6 minutes ago, utkuu said:

The secondary slot probably connected to a chipset in the motherboard while the primart slot is connected directly to CPU. Try putting drives in each others slot. If the slower one becomes faster and faster one becomes faster this is the answer

 

I actually did just that on a note from a user on Reddit. He suggested pretty much the same thing, and after reading the Manual it seems that one of the NVMe ports is different in features compared to the other one. The manual is sadly very brief and short, but according to it "1@SATA*& PCIe mode, 1@PCIe x4 with Optane memory". Sadly there are no mentions of which is which in the manual.

 

FYI, I had installed the OS NVMe on the port closest to the CPU as that one is usually the Speedier port on many other motherboards I had worked with. So I opened up the computer case and had a closer look at the markings on the Motherboard itself. While both ports are marked (Scoket 3), one is M.2_1 (The one closer to the CPU socket), and the other one is marked M.2_2. Whats is more is that there is a small table next to each, and if I can read signage used correctly, The one closer to the CPU has PCIe x4, and SATA, but No IRST. The other port however, has the PCIe x4, and IRST, but no SATA. Here is the highest quality picture of the motherboard I could find on the internet, if you zoom in you can make out the markings I am talking about.

 

Anyhow, I turned the computer off, and swapped the OS NVMe and the storage NVMe ports around and ran the benchmark test again. Interestingly there were some improvements on the OS drive, and also some improvements on the Storage NVMe drive as well. But in both cases it was not by much.

[kokosnh]

Both M.2 slots on your MoBo are going through the chipset, both should have identical speed

Can you test with AS SSD, and Crystaldiskmark? 
 

[kokosnh]

Is the SSD firmware identical (remember to do a backup, before updating the SSD firmware)