PCIE issue with Samsung 970 EVO 250 G on NUC8i7BEH

[RP5]

I have the same issue as had on this thread

Bios shows 970 EVO PCIE NVMe with only 2 lanes assigned vs 4. Read performance is 1702 which is half specified for this drive.

I have the latest Intel and Samsung drivers. Is there going to be a bios update for this issue?

Thanks!

[Ray_W_Intel]

When you check in device manager under the Storage Controllers > Standard NVM Express controller > Details > pcie current link speed, and pcie current link width.

Can you take a screenshot that shows the two values within windows?

[RP5]

I'm using the current Samsung driver, device manager for Samsung storage controller shows link speed 3 and link width 4.

[RP5]

This morning I ran Crystal disk mark (CDM) to compare to the original Samsung magician results and the CDM results were great!

So I reran the Samsung magician results and they were to spec also, here's how they compare:

Read Write

Samsung spec 3500max 1500

CDM 3325 1539

Magician 3282 1535

So I went back into the bios and now it's showing using x4 speed 8GT/s.

Here's what I think happened. I installed Windows 10 on the NUC with new drive and memory. At this time the Windows NVMe controller was being used. Then I downloaded and ran the Samsung magician benchmark.

The next morning I found and installed the Samsung NVMe controller. I did not rerun Samsung magician.

The first time I went into the bios to poke around was days after the new driver was installed. I think I unchecked the M2 box to see what would change, to see if I could choose 4 PCIe lanes vs the 2 shown,

and I realized it was just an enable M2 checkbox, then I rechecked it again and exited the bios without saving.

I think it's possible due to my actions in the bios, even though I didn't save any changes, that it reconfigured on reboot from 2 to 4 lane PCIe.

What do you think happened?

Sorry for any confusion and hopefully I haven't cast any shadows over this model NUC, I love it!

[Ray_W_Intel · Accepted solution]

Its possible that during the first initialization of the M.2 NVMe controller that you may have misconfigured the controller by using the checkboxes, however it is great to see your drive is now performing as expected. There is also a possibility that windows may have had some background tasks that were taking away some of the drive performance.

Please keep us informed on if you see more degradation of performance and have a great day!