Brand new KC3000 NVMe disconnecting when gaming

[GungnirGS]

Hi, few days ago I bought a new Kingston KC3000 2TB NVMe as a secondary drive. After moving some games over and running them, the games (tried Girl's Frontline 2 and Wuthering Waves) will crash and the KC3000 drive will go missing. Restarting the PC restores the drive but the problem repeats once I run the games again.

 

Specs:
MB: MSI MAG x870 Tomahawk Wifi
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
RAM: XPG Lancer Blade 16GB x 4 6000MT/s
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3070
OS: Windows 11
HDD1(OS): KINGSTON SNVS2000G 2TB (Working fine so far)
HDD2: KINGSTON SKC3000D2048G w/ firmware EIFK51.2 (NVMe in question)
HDD3: GIGABYTE GP-AG4500G
HDD4: WD Black 1TB HDD
PSU: CM MWEv3 Bronze 750w
BIOS: 7E51v1A4, running EXPO, re-size BAR on, PBO on

 

Symptoms:
1) Game will hang and crash after running for a short while
2) Task Manager will show disk usage of 100% for a brief moment before dropping to 0%, tab for the disk stays there with no readings
3) HWinfo will stop showing any changes in SMART data after the crash, last recorded temperature is around 52 degrees Celsius
4) Event viewer shows error 129, 11 then a lot of 51 along with 50, 140
5) Other programs (Kingston SSD Manager, CrystalDiskInfo/Mark) will stop detecting the drive after the crash

 

Other things I've tried:
1) Running CrystalDiskMark benchmark multiple times (passed every time with appropriate Gen4 R/W speed, peak temperature ~60 degrees Celsius)
2) Updated to latest BIOS
3) Updated AMD Chipset Driver (currently 7.02.13.148)
4) Changing the drive into different slots (tried M.2_1, M.2_2, M.2_3) and facing the same problem
5) Changing the slot with the drive to Gen3 and Gen4 (tried for M.2_1), all cases face the same problem
6) Made sure SATA is running in AHCI mode
7) Turned off ASPM, used high performance in Power Management, Link State Power Management to "Off"
8) Swapped to a different KC3000 from the same shop (once, currently holding the 2nd one)
9) Checked for latest firmware for the KC3000 using Kingston SSD Manager (currently EIFK51.2)
10) Top reply in https://old.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/6ciyje/disk_activity_on_ssd_spikes_to_100_and_freezes_at/

11) CrystalDiskInfo says the drive is healthy
12) Ran CHKDSK
13) Disabled "enable writing cache on the device" under policies tab in device manager > disk drives
14) The drive works fine on at least 2 other motherboards

CrystalDiskInfo SMART

Spoiler

Update
I have decided to swap the drive in question to a different brand due to not wanting to waste more time tinkering with this issue and it has worked fine since.

[Mumintroll]

You've done plenty of troubleshooting steps already.

You got another KC3000 and getting the same problems with that one too.

So just in case I would test that KC3000 in another pc. Ask a friend if you can bring that to his pc for testing.

It would be really bad luck if both KC3000 were faulty, but you never know.

 

Since you looked at its SMART table in CrystalDiskInfo, were there any other value than 00000000000 (only zeros) in the field Media and Data Integrity Errors?

[GungnirGS]

5 hours ago, Mumintroll said:

You've done plenty of troubleshooting steps already.

You got another KC3000 and getting the same problems with that one too.

So just in case I would test that KC3000 in another pc. Ask a friend if you can bring that to his pc for testing.

It would be really bad luck if both KC3000 were faulty, but you never know.

 

Since you looked at its SMART table in CrystalDiskInfo, were there any other value than 00000000000 (only zeros) in the field Media and Data Integrity Errors?

Here is a screenshot of CrystalDiskInfo SMART table. I'll see if I can get another pc to test out the drive later in the day.

[HonestXO2]

Hey man, I just found your thread, I have the almost exact identical bug. You gave up, changed your drive and no problems so far? 

My concern with that approach is that my drive is like 16 months old, it worked flawlessly on Windows 10, then a month after installing Win 11, this happened, meaning I'm not 100% sure it's simply the drive.