WD SN850 Slower than expected performance

[monkeyboy46800]

Hi,

Just picked up a WD SN850 1TB.
Did a fresh install of latest version of Win 10 and installed latest AMD Chipset & Nvidia Gpu drivers.
Compared to review sites it seems my SSD is lacking in performance.
PCIe links are @ 4.0 and its installed on CPU lanes.
Temps max around 75c.
I have also disabled write cache policy on the SSD in device manager but that makes no difference.

Any help would be appreciated

Left is my benchmark, right is review site benchmark

 

[LTUGamer]

Firstly I can see, that you are using this drive as a system drive while speed should be tested while OS is in different drive. I think that it is the main issue.

Also test results are comparable when identical system is used. You can check how test results deppends on motherboard:

Also there is some more minor issues such as different software versions used in Crystal Disk Mark test. Also there was some data writen in your disk, while reviewer's SSD was empty

 

[monkeyboy46800]

Hi,

Did a test straight after and used it as D drive, but still hitting the same brick wall with writes not exceeding 3.1 GB/s.

A fan and heatsink has been added and temps don't exceed 55c.

Looking at below screenshot there is definitely a wall which has been hit for writes:

 

[Vya Domus]

In crystaldiskmark set the size to 4-8GB and see what sort of results you get. I've observed these benchmarks become very inaccurate with really fast drives and small sized tests.

Even with my low end NVME drive I often don't get the rated speeds unless I increases the size.

 

[monkeyboy46800]

Still hitting a wall, the writes really do suck

 

[elemelek]

Putting my scores for comparison. Its 2Tb SN850 tho. As a system drive.

 

[LTUGamer]

Still hitting a wall, the writes really do suck

View attachment 188005

You can try to update your Firmware

 

[TheLostSwede]

System spec? UEFI version?

 

[yotano211]

Still hitting a wall, the writes really do suck

View attachment 188005

"The write really do suck", lol

 

[Space Lynx]

"The write really do suck", lol

yep I read some reviews on Amazon that said write speeds slow down after a month or so usage on these new gen4 phison controllers. thats main reason I have held off on it. honestly im happy with my old 2tb ssd i have had for like 4 years now... everything loads super fast for me, all i do is game so eh.

 

[monkeyboy46800]

This is a brand new drive.
UEFI is latest available for Asrock X570 ITX/TB3, running 5950x & RTX 3070

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Tweak town sure likes it

WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD Review

Western Digital seemingly comes out of nowhere and delivers the best performing flash-based SSD we've ever tested with the SN850.

www.tweaktown.com

 

[Space Lynx]

Hi,
Tweak town sure likes it

WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD Review

Western Digital seemingly comes out of nowhere and delivers the best performing flash-based SSD we've ever tested with the SN850.

www.tweaktown.com

tweaktown probably just did a couple days of testing though, not daily usage for two months then more testing. that's the problem with review sites. :/

 

[monkeyboy46800]

tweaktown probably just did a couple days of testing though, not daily usage for two months then more testing. that's the problem with review sites. :/

This is a brand new drive. Not getting anywhere near what reviewers got.
I reckon WD are sending out duff drives...

 

[TheLostSwede]

How did you partition it?
GPT or MBR? If it's MBR, try changing to GPT.

What Windows version are you on? Some of them have had some glitchy NVMe performance.

I very much doubt it's a bad drive. I had a similar issue in the past, changing to GPT fixed it for me.

Similar thread here.

very slow nvme speed compared to my friend who has the same drive

My specs: Ryzen 2700x Asrock taichi x470 Gskill 2x8Gb 3200 cl14 running at xmp profile Adata 120GB sata ssd Crucial 512GB sata ssd Seagate 1TB Hdd Intel 600p nvme 1TB ssd My friend's specs: Intel 9900K Gigabyte z390 aorus master corsair 32gb 3000mhz Kingston 128GB sata ssd Intel 256Gb nvme...

www.techpowerup.com

Tom's seem to verify that the performance is there.

WD Black SN850 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Top-Tier Storage for Gamers and Pros (Updated)

With WD’s Black SN850 now in the lab, we will see if it really is ideal for those looking for fast, consistent storage.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[ThrashZone]

tweaktown probably just did a couple days of testing though, not daily usage for two months then more testing. that's the problem with review sites. :/

Hi,
If I remember correctly @tabascosauz had interesting comparison of black and blue series and said he prefers the blue
Save a little money and gets better performance out of the blue.
Can't seem to find the thread atm though :/

 

[yotano211]

yep I read some reviews on Amazon that said write speeds slow down after a month or so usage on these new gen4 phison controllers. thats main reason I have held off on it. honestly im happy with my old 2tb ssd i have had for like 4 years now... everything loads super fast for me, all i do is game so eh.

I've been using a intel 660p for over a year now and its good enough for me. Game drive, movie drive, editing drive, it gets used.

 

[Sihastru]

Make sure you have the latest AMD chipset driver. From 2/4/2021.
If you do, then try a 4K LBA sector size instead of 512B. Here's mine with 4K:

And 1 million read / 700k write IOPS:

 

[monkeyboy46800]

I do have latest Chipset drivers and latest bios and currently formated with GPT.
How do I format with 4K LBA sector size instead of 512B ?

 

[tabascosauz]

Hi,
If I remember correctly @tabascosauz had interesting comparison of black and blue series and said he prefers the blue
Save a little money and gets better performance out of the blue.
Can't seem to find the thread atm though :/

I have the SN750, not many reasons to get it over the SN550. The SN850 is all-new PCIe 4.0 and actually kinda impressive on most aspects.

Looks like OP's board just got the short end of the firmware stick, and either has to roll back to an older AGESA if he really cares enough about a benchmark, or wait until the next BIOS update. Even the boards themselves can have quite the impact on SSD performance.

Chipset drivers have been limited to minor bug fixes for months now. Main NVMe slot on the X570-TB3 comes off the CPU.


However, the X570-TB3 also has its only M.2 slot on the back of the board because the layout leaves no space on the front. I'm not sure which case it's been put in, but I can pretty much guarantee that a scorching PCIe 4.0 drive is not having much fun back there running benchmarks constantly, even if OP says it "only" gets up to about 55-75C. The CDM benchmark still takes a minute or two, and in my experience all WD NVMes heat up pretty damn fast. SN850 is not a cool running drive, even if its throttle point is 75-80C.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I guess it got a good review here too, so...
Seems to be very resilient to thermal throttling.

WD Black SN850 1 TB SSD Review - The Fastest SSD

The WD Black SN850 is the fastest SSD we ever tested thanks to support for the fast PCI-Express 4.0 interface. In our extensive real-life testing it beats the Samsung 980 Pro, the Phison E18-based Corsair MP600 Pro, and even the MLC-based Samsung 970 Pro.

www.techpowerup.com

I do have latest Chipset drivers and latest bios and currently formated with GPT.
How do I format with 4K LBA sector size instead of 512B ?

I doubt this is your issue though.

 

[Sihastru]

I did a secure erase from inside the UEFI BIOS. It asked if I wanted 512B or 4K LBA. If you have motherboard firmware issues, all you can do is wait for updates. My SN850 also had a firmware update, but I didn't notice differences in CrystalDiskMark.

 

[jesdals]

This is a brand new drive.
UEFI is latest available for Asrock X570 ITX/TB3, running 5950x & RTX 3070
View attachment 188022

Looking at your board and manual I have to ask if your using a riser card/cable for your Graphics card and thus have set the graphics card to pcie 3.0 in bios?

And will try to do a try on the latest Crystal disk mark when I get the chance - had a bug in the test at one point my self but dissapeared with chipset and windows update

can see that your sending the drive back, just be sure that non of the above is a problem or you might se same result with other pcie 4 gen drives

 

[monkeyboy46800]

Hi,
No riser card.
NVME detected and running @x4 Gen4
Booted into Ubuntu and still hitting the same wall on this drive, there is just definately bad drives out there or issue with AGESA ComboAM4v2 1.2.0.0
To be honest looking at the quality of updates coming from AMD at the moment, I would probably presume AGESA issue.
Latest bios update also makes Wi-Fi undetected on this board when running Ubuntu: X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 3.00 BIOS breaks WiFi/Bluetooth : ASRock (reddit.com)

 

[TheLostSwede]

Trust me there's nothing wing with that drive. WD will send it back, as is to you.

Your WiFi issue has nothing to do with the AGESA, talk to ASRock as that'll be on them.