Poor NVMe performance on Optiplex 7080

Question

Recently bought a few Dell Optiplex 7080's from the Dell refub store to replace some aging 3020/7020's we have. We opted for the 7080 because we wanted to have two NVMe drives installed one for OS/Apps and one for a cache drive for Photoshop as we use a lot of large Photoshop files.

The Optiplexs came with Dells 'Class 35' drives which in our case were WD SN520's. I have bought some Adata SX8200 Pro drives to go in the second NVMe slot, which should have a read speed of 3500MB/s and a write speed of 3000MB/s.

As you can see from the poor photos of the CrystalDiskMark results, I am getting near the expected speed for the SN520, but nowhere near 3500/3000MB/s for the Adata, and I was wondering if there's anything I need to check in the bios.

Is slot one (the one the SN520 is installed in) generally a better performing slot?

Any recommendations greatly appreciated.

SN520 SpeedsAdata Speeds

Lumengaz · Answer

I have been playing around with this today. Swapped the ssd to slot 1, no improvement. Switched RAID-ON to AHCI in bios and got a minor improvement. Swapped the SSD for and other identical model I had, no improvement. Updated all system drivers, no improvement.

Lumengaz · Answer

I’ve just found a pc with a Samsung Evo 970 in. Stuck that in and getting 3512MB/s read and 3274MB/s write. Just going to try the Adata in a different pc (the dell 7040 that the evo came out of)

bradthetechnut · Answer

It is sounding like the Adata drive.  There's nothing in BIOS that I ever heard of to slow down or speed up NVMe drives.

Tesla1856 · Answer

1. I’ve just found a pc with a Samsung Evo 970 in. Stuck that in and getting 3512MB/s read and 3274MB/s write. 2. Just going to try the Adata in a different pc (the dell 7040 that the evo came out of) ========================= 1. Yeah, that is more like it. So the OptiPlex-7080 is fine. Good troubleshooting. 2. You get what you pay for. Samsung EVO's are faster/proven/reliable, etc. and even coming with 5-year warranties now. The Samsung-Pros are even better.

speedstep · Answer

The Adata Drives are cheap.  You get what you pay for.

Lumengaz · Answer

Just to update the thread... I tested the Adata drive in an Optiplex 7040 that we have (that the Samsung 970 Plus was in), and got 2766MB/s read but only 934MB/s write, so while better, still relatively rubbish. I contacted Amazon (where I bought the Adata drives) and their 'tech support' told me that it's correct that the 3500MB/s bandwidth is shared between read and write so I can only expect 3500MB/s TOTAL bandwidth. When I pointed out that this was rubbish and that a Samsung drive in the same PC behaves totally as expected, they agreed to accept both Adata drives back for a refund. I have since ordered a pair of WD Black SN750 drives to replace them which arrived yesterday so will be trying those out today.

Lumengaz · Answer

>>The issue is X2 vs X4 slot M2 slot speed.
>>Models with 2 M2 slots get X2 for each M2 slot

I'm not convinced that is the case as the Samsung 970 Plus performs as expected. Additionally, x2 speeds are 1000MB/s but have been seeing over that.

Optiplex Desktops

Poor NVMe performance on Optiplex 7080

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