SSD Samsung 960 EVO performing way below expectations on UserBenchmark

[eera5607]

Hello everyone! I have one question about some results that I got on a website called userbenchmark.com. According to the results everything but the SSD is performing as expected. I get a warning on the SSD (Samsung 960 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2 500GB) section that says: Performing way below expectations (15th percentile). The SSD is connected to the PCIe M.2 header on a Asus MAXIMUS IX CODE. The CPU is an Intel i7 7700k and RAM Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200 C16 4x8GB. These are the full results in case are needed (http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/4955842).  I checked and there are no programs or apps writing o reading anything at the moment of starting the benchmark process. What can it be? What can I do to correct this? Thank you very much for your help.

[DocSwag]

Try using something like crystal disk mark instead as it's way easier to see stuff.

 

It could just be because your drive is 80% full, really.

[RadiatingLight]

Does it have lots of airflow?

maybe it's thermal throttling (a real problem with M.2 SSDs)

[Zebedeeboing]

Ideas:

 

1) It's not plugged into a 6Gb/s sata slot (I did this for years without noticing!) 

2) Thermal throttling.. very unlikely over a sustained period

3) The drive is nearly full. SSDs do not like being full. They slow a LOT as they approach max capacity. Clear your drive as much as possible. 

4) Try Samsung Magician to check on the health of the drive.. it might just be a bad drive/dying. 

[Zebedeeboing]

Excuse point number 1, I had read that as an SSD not M.2 NVME. 

[Himommies]

3 minutes ago, Zebedeeboing said:

It's not plugged into a 6Gb/s sata slot

It's a m.2 drive

[Zebedeeboing]

Just now, Himommies said:

It's a m.2 drive

I did comment on that right below my original post, tired eyes. My bad.

[Himommies]

Just now, Zebedeeboing said:

I did comment on that right below my original post, tired eyes. My bad.

Oh i see

[eera5607]

On 9/9/2017 at 4:46 PM, DocSwag said:

Try using something like crystal disk mark instead as it's way easier to see stuff.

 

It could just be because your drive is 80% full, really.

Thank you! I did two more benchmarks including Crystal Disk Mark these are the results: 

And these are the results for AS SSD Benchmark:

Maybe, there is a misunderstanding, the drive is partitioned and the original benchmark only showed the allocated space for Windows 10. The drive is 20% full at most. 

On 9/9/2017 at 4:49 PM, RadiatingLight said:

Does it have lots of airflow?

maybe it's thermal throttling (a real problem with M.2 SSDs)

What can I do to check the temperatures on this drive? I tried with Speccy and it didn't detect any sensors for SSD temperatures. The SSD is inside a cover on the mobo just below the GPU card. I think it do not receive a lot of airflow. Check this picture:

On 9/9/2017 at 4:52 PM, Zebedeeboing said:

Ideas:

 

1) It's not plugged into a 6Gb/s sata slot (I did this for years without noticing!) 

2) Thermal throttling.. very unlikely over a sustained period

3) The drive is nearly full. SSDs do not like being full. They slow a LOT as they approach max capacity. Clear your drive as much as possible. 

4) Try Samsung Magician to check on the health of the drive.. it might just be a bad drive/dying. 

2) Any idea on how to check the temperature? 

3) As I clarify before the drive is 20% full. It is just partitioned. 

4) These are the results for Samsung Magician. 

 

Thank you all for all the help. 

[RadiatingLight]

3 minutes ago, eera5607 said:

What can I do to check the temperatures on this drive? I tried with Speccy and it didn't detect any sensors for SSD temperatures. The SSD is inside a cover on the mobo just below the GPU card. I think it do not receive a lot of airflow. Check this picture:

Try taking off the cover, pointing a fan on it, and running the test again.

[eera5607]

2 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

Try taking off the cover, pointing a fan on it, and running the test again.

Thanks I will try that. First I need to take out the GPU... I'll get back to you after that. Thank you! 

[DocSwag]

32 minutes ago, eera5607 said:

Thank you! I did two more benchmarks including Crystal Disk Mark these are the results: 

-snip-

The writes seem a bit low... Have you made sure that the SLC caching is enabled in Samsung Magician (they call it something other than SLC caching but yeah)

[eera5607]

On 9/9/2017 at 6:18 PM, DocSwag said:

The writes seem a bit low... Have you made sure that the SLC caching is enabled in Samsung Magician (they call it something other than SLC caching but yeah)

Is RAPID (Real Time Acceleration Processing of I/O Data) Mode the same as SLC caching? Samsung Magician says that this drive does not support RAPID mode. 

[Seanzky]

I posted something similar here: 

Not sure why it's performing like that even with Samsung's own software.

 

 

[DocSwag]

13 hours ago, eera5607 said:

Is RAPID (Real Time Acceleration Processing of I/O Data) Mode the same as SLC caching? Samsung Magician says that this drive does not support RAPID mode. 

RAPID is DRAM caching, which is different.

[DocSwag]

13 hours ago, eera5607 said:

Is RAPID (Real Time Acceleration Processing of I/O Data) Mode the same as SLC caching? Samsung Magician says that this drive does not support RAPID mode. 

Actually I just figured out what the SLC caching is called, Samsung calls it turbowrite.

[eera5607]

9 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Actually I just figured out what the SLC caching is called, Samsung calls it turbowrite.

Thanks! I don't see that option on Samsung Magician (Turbowrite option). I think it has that technology but it is enabled by default. There is no way to turn it off or on from Samsung Magician. 

[eera5607]

Thanks @DocSwag @RadiatingLight and @Zebedeeboing ! I discover something that help a little. I had the Windows NVM driver installed:

and not the oficial driver that you can download from Samsung's website:

I keep getting a benchmark "below the expectations" but before it was "way below expectations" on UserBenchmark. 

The problem in this benchmark is definitely related to this section:

I still have to try taking out the GPU and taking  off the cover of the SSD to check if it is related to temperatures. The thing is that is working fine with the other two tests and bad with the last one (DQ Read, DQ Write, DQ Mixed).

 

Thanks!

 

[pyrojoe34]

This is what you should expect with the 500GB 960 Evo:

 

 

So your CrystalMark benchmark is right where it should be.

[ARikozuM]

18 hours ago, DocSwag said:

The writes seem a bit low... Have you made sure that the SLC caching is enabled in Samsung Magician (they call it something other than SLC caching but yeah)

Are you thinking of RAPID or TurboWrite?

 

Never mind.

[eera5607]

6 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Are you thinking of RAPID or TurboWrite?

TurboWrite, my SSD is NVMe and does not support RAPID.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, eera5607 said:

TurboWrite, my SSD is NVMe and does not support RAPID.

I've got one as well, but I found that he already found out which one. Did the Samsung driver help your EVO?

[eera5607]

Well it seems that it is working as expected now. Now UserBenchmark says the EVO 90 is "Performing way above expectations (91st percentile)" (Complete results: http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/4965874). A big difference with original benchmark: ¨Performing way below expectations (15th percentile)" .

This is what I did:

On 9/9/2017 at 5:48 PM, RadiatingLight said:

Try taking off the cover, pointing a fan on it, and running the test again.

I discovered that Corsair Link shows the SSD temperature and tested it after placing the GPU on the PCIe x16 slot that is not blocking the air intakes of the PCIe M.2 slot where the SSD is connected to the motherboard. During the benchmarks the SSD reached 39 °C and that seems to be ok. 

On 9/9/2017 at 6:18 PM, DocSwag said:

The writes seem a bit low... Have you made sure that the SLC caching is enabled in Samsung Magician (they call it something other than SLC caching but yeah)

7 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

I've got one as well, but I found that he already found out which one. Did the Samsung driver help your EVO?

I also installed the oficial NVMe drivers from Samsung since it was using the Windows ¨generic¨ drivers. That in combination with changing the GPU position helped the performance on UserBechmark A LOT. Thank you all for the ideas and contribution to solve this issue.