My SSD writes and reads at absolutely rubbish speeds!

Hi guys, I built my very first pc yesterday (and a day after here comes my first post...). The spec is as follows

x470 gaming plus mobo
ryzen 2600x cpu
rx 480 8GB gpu
kingston a400 480GB SSD
1TB HDD
2x8GB Corsair Vengeance lpx 3000mhz ram

I never had an SSD before but the instructions on connections were the same as on HDD, grab sata 3.0 cable and connect it to sata 3.0 port (all 6 of my ports are sata 3.0 so could not go wrong here). I formatted the entire system, installed Win 10 and started running benchmark tests on Userbenchmark. ( a lot of them). Here are some:

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/12529995

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/12529671

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/12529496

I am starting to worry that the disc is malfunctioning. I mean it reads with speeds lower than 140 Mb/s and writes with speeds of 100 Mb/ps. Only reason for buying a SSD was to increase the read and write speeds for gaming.

Could someone suggest any possible troubleshooting? Thank you.
 

OmniDyne

Active Member
Check to make sure AHCI is enabled in the BIOS.

The Kingston a400 is a terrible drive, and definitely should be avoided as an OS drive.

Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsa...a_3_25_3299/e88stjq?utm_source=reddit-android

u/NewMaxx said:
DRAM-less Phison S11 with 2D/planar TLC. The Phison S11 is notorious for being an unreliable controller even among DRAM-less ones, the SMI SM2258XT (as found on the ADATA SU650) is more robust. Many budget drives with older controllers, for example with the SMI SM2246XT (which is roughly on par with the S11), use 2D/planar MLC which is actually just fine. 2D/planar TLC, however, is where TLC got the reputation for being unreliable in comparison to MLC. The S11, unlike the SM2246XT, is designed for 3D NAND which is why we see it on the Inland drives (effectively a Toshiba TR200) and many other budget offerings; this is unlike its DRAM-based sibling, the S10, which had to be retrofitted to work with 3D NAND. I mention it because going back to 2D on the S11 is kind of weird. The A400 is a popular suggestion for builds unfortunately, but do not think this is anything but a bottom-of-the-barrel drive. There IS worse but nothing sold regularly on the market...well I guess the HP S600 qualifies (bad drive).

So of course the drive people will be comparing it to is the SU650. These drives are a match on peak results, and the SU650 has a much higher SusWrite (sustained write) score under average - this is due to a larger SLC cache, something ADATA does on its 32L drives including the DRAM-based SU800. We also get faster sequentials (read/write) from the SU650; unsurprising with 3D TLC. The A400 seems to win on 4Ks and higher queue depths. Obviously in real world terms these are pretty close. Again, the S11 isn't as reliable and the NAND isn't, either; the 3D NAND SU650 (32L) is at 140TB TBW for warranty, the A400 at 80TB TBW. Here is also a comparison to the Inland drives, which use the same controller (S11) but 64L 3D TLC instead.

Now, the technical stuff (only nerds read further). Phison is known for having a high CE (chip enable) count, this extends even to their new E12 - that one is 8-channel like the SM2262 competitor, but has 32 CE lines each while even the upcoming SM2262EN only has 4. So you have the dual-channel S11 with 16 CE and the SM2258XT with just 4. Point being, less dense memory - like 2D/planar NAND - lets you saturate the controller better with higher CE. 2D/planar is typically 128-Gbit (16GiB) per die so a SSD of this capacity is 16 dies (16x16 = 256GiB), so look at the S11 as being 2x8 with the SM2258XT as 4x4 (the SU drives use 384-Gbit NAND in 768-Gbit modules so is a bit different). So this explains how even a drive with 64L like the Inland (4x2 or 8x256-Gbit) isn't really faster. Notably Samsung uses this strategy on their 960 EVO - the 250GB SKU actually uses 32-layer (128-Gbit) instead of 48-layer (256-Gbit) 3D NAND in order to better saturate CE to maintain performance. It's also why Samsung has developed 512-Gbit QLC as differs from the 1-Tbit used in the 660p/P1.

tl;dr budget SSD only suitable for ancient/unimportant machine, if not used for storage/games, as applies to most DRAM-less SSDs; beware that this has the S11 and 2D TLC
 
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Yeah I'm looking at Amazon's return policy and I think I can return it. I will have to pay the postage, but well my fault for not doing research correctly.

I am currently looking at this:
https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/337874/WDC-WDS500G2B0A-00SM50

But yeah, if you have some recommendation I would be grateful for help.

I am from UK, and trying to spend no more than £60. 500 GB is desirable, but if it is a really good drive (relative to money spent of course) then 250 is not the end of the world.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
As an avid redditor I would caution you against using it too much as a source for stuff. The more I learn in the professional world the more I realize a lot of people there are just keyboard warriors spouting what they've heard from others (I'm guilty of this as well) and even in bigger subs like buildapc just flat bad info floating around.

Not saying any of your sources thus far look wrong, but just throwing that out there. :)

That's a steal though. I'm waiting for 1TB's under 100 bucks though.
 

OmniDyne

Active Member
As an avid redditor I would caution you against using it too much as a source for stuff. The more I learn in the professional world the more I realize a lot of people there are just keyboard warriors spouting what they've heard from others (I'm guilty of this as well) and even in bigger subs like buildapc just flat bad info floating around.

Not saying any of your sources thus far look wrong, but just throwing that out there. :)

That's a steal though. I'm waiting for 1TB's under 100 bucks though.

Absolutely, you're right. The Reddit user I often quote references reviews from Anandtech and Chris Ramseyer from Tom's Hardware. He specializes in that area, also.
 
Thank you guys very much. With this comprehensive list I will have some choice. At the moment I need to wait for Amazon on their decision regarding possibility of sending it back.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Depends on your circumstances but probably wouldn't be terrible difficult to resell at a minor loss. Return is preferable though of course.
 

OmniDyne

Active Member
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