m15 R6, SSD compatibility issue

Hi @Mr.mystify  Support for Alienware m15 R6 Chipset says PCIe bus supports up to Gen3, and Drivers & Downloads provides Samsung PM9A1 PCIe Gen4 NVMe 2TB Solid State Drive Firmware Update. Although PM9A1 is Gen4 NVMe, Dell support fails to provide clarification that PM9A1 drive cards will run at Gen4 speeds or constrained to run at backwards compatible Gen3 speeds. There is no clarification about installing other OEM Gen4 drive cards. 

Click on @DELL-Cares to send Private Message asking for Gen4 drive card clarification, and Dell Support documentation to be updated. 

I'm running dual 2Tb Samsung 980 pros in mine.

Slot 1 is faster, almost double. 

@havefun8  My setup is the same as yours, and I could run 980pro 1TB at almost full speed. I will upload a screenshot later. There are some drivers from Samsung. Did you install them? On my previous Alienware R3  model, I experienced a similar issue with 970pro. Without drivers from Samsung, low speed.. Half of the Full speed approx.

please give me link driver

Do you have any Crystal mark screen shots? Im in the same boat, thinking I need to return this laptop if it doesnt support gen4.

I have this same samsung drive in my amazon cart ready to buy.  I need to also confirm gen 4, I'm still within my return window.  m15r6

Why is this marked as solved?  What's the solution? How do I enable gen 4 on slot one?

Update: According to Crucial scan the hard drive I have is this samsung listed before, came with 2 of these.  I am not seeing those speeds on C at all.

https://www.redcorp.com/en/product/ssd-pci-e/samsung/ssd-pm9a1-1tb-m-2-pci-e-gen4-nvme-mzvl21t0hclr-00b00/1122x064

Samsung MZVL21T0HCLR 1TB M.2

Gen4 delivers sequential read speeds of 7,000 MB/s

IM not seeing gen4 speeds on my C drive. In a support session now feel free to hop on my machine.  I will be returning this if not resolved, I purchased it 3 days ago.

Im confirming the same thing with a stock PM9A1
https://semiconductor.samsung.com/ssd/pc-ssd/pm9a1/

To bad, I returned the unit.  Support told me the laptop would not support gen4 speeds or it will overheat.  Also said my hard drives were firmware governed to gen 3 speeds.  I wasn't going to risk it.  Good luck to you @JusFaulk 

From my experience the support people are better suited to work at Mcdonald's. Mine runs fine. No overheating issues. No data loss. Gen 4 speeds in the slot that supports it.  No issues at all.

Hello @havefun8. Apologies for the delay with my answer, but I do not review all my e-mails (I have around 3k in total ). You can find drivers and also software on this link https://www.samsung.com/ca/support/model/MZ-V7P512BW/

NVMe Driver

If you have any other questions, do not hesitate to ask me. I will do my best to reply more frequently.

That's so bizarre. Sorry about your experience. 

Their information was wrong (and baffling tbh -- there is no good reason why an SSD would overheat in a laptop). The first thing I did with my R6 was to replace the supplied RAM and clone their supplied SSD to a new 980 Pro 2TB, which I installed in Slot 1 instead. It runs at full Gen 4 speeds, and there are no heat issues.