Samsung 970 Evo Plus slow Random read/write

[GazCBG]

I have a Samsung 970 Evo Plus (bought in Dec 2019 and still under warranty) as my C drive and it appears to be having Random Read/Write issues, according to Samsung Magician and Crystal DiskMark (only tested with them)

I have put 3 screenshots below, Samsung Magician and 2 Crystal DiskMark MB/s and IOPS with the SSD profile enabled under the settings tab

In the Samsung Magician
This is the best result

Sequential Read (MB/s): 3312
Sequential Write (MB/S): 2742
Random Read (IOPS): 279541 - 41% slower then 480,000 IOPS as in the specs
Random Write (IOPS): 280761 - 48% slower then 550,000 IOPS as in the specs

PC Spec is:
Motherboard: MSI X570-A Pro
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Master Liquid Lite 240
RAM: 16GB DDR4 (2x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
Graphic Card: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Ventus OC – 8GB
OS: Windows 10 Home - Latest version
Other: Using the Samsung Driver

Samsung 970 Evo Plus specs from their site:
Sequential Read: Up to 3,500 MB/s
Sequintial Write: 500GB: Up to 3,200 MB/s
Random Read (4KB, QD32): 500GB: Up to 480,000 IOPS
Random Write (4KB, QD32): 500GB: Up to 550,000 IOPS
Random Read (4KB, QD1): 500GB: Up to 19,000 IOPS
Random Write (4KB, QD1): 500GB: Up to 60,000 IOPS

[antikythera]

What size is the drive? The smaller ones are slower (it will say so on the EVO 970 Plus website in the full specifications) and also your RAM is partially limiting factor. I got the full speeds for my EVO 970 500GB with DDR4-3200 and my old Ryzen 5 1600, now I have a Ryzen 7 3700X and it's still the same. The drive is near 2 years old and still hitting the stated performance levels.

[GazCBG]

It is a 500GB.

The problem is, the drive seems to lag out, go ultra slow at times, with minimum CPU or RAM usage, then need to reboot the PC to get it working again.

[GazCBG]

Theses are the specs on the Samsung website for the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB specs from their site below. - Which I also put in my first post.

Sequential Read: Up to 3,500 MB/s
Sequintial Write: 500GB: Up to 3,200 MB/s
Random Read (4KB, QD32): 500GB: Up to 480,000 IOPS
Random Write (4KB, QD32): 500GB: Up to 550,000 IOPS
Random Read (4KB, QD1): 500GB: Up to 19,000 IOPS
Random Write (4KB, QD1): 500GB: Up to 60,000 IOPS

I got a 960 Evo 500GB in another computer and that hasn't dropped off as much according to the specs for the 960 and a lot older and used a lot more.

[GazCBG]

I put all the info, in the first post, be it in text or first screenshot.

So you saying I should be down over 40% on my random reads and write due to my ram on a 500GB Evo Plus 970?

I even put in the percentages, what I was down on and when I bought it.

I am so glad your 500GB Evo is working great on your Ryzen 7

[antikythera]

It may also be heat related then if it lags out after a while, mine isn't covered by a motherboard supplied heatsink, it's in airflow adjacent to my GPU on an MSI B350 PC MATE. Like I said though, the drive performed the same with a 1st gen Ryzen 5 before I upgraded the CPU only. RAM bandwidth is a factor because it's a bottleneck. While the CPU can read from the drive at the full speed but when large packets of data are being loaded into RAM you'll get the reduced transfer speed of the RAM's data rate versus the upper limit of the drive.

[antikythera · Accepted solution]

The key wording is up to. For reasons already given you may not achieve that speed in your system. The 970 Plus seems notorious for this unfortunately. Loads of owners are reporting slow speeds. Search Evo 970 plus running slow on duckduckgo. Samsung are telling these folk that the performance is normal so it begs the question what they actually benchmarked the drive with and in what environmental conditions to get those website figures

[GazCBG]

Just want to say thatnks for the replies.

[antikythera]

No problem

[evanron]

Just updated 970 EVO Plus 2TB to firmware 2B2QEXM7. Write took a 40% hit. Nothing has changed on my rig since the last test a couple of days ago.