Aspire A517-51 with Samsung 960 Evo SSD has only low transfer speeds

AspireSpeed

Hi, i just installed the Samsung 960 Evo SSD in my Aspire A517-51 with Intel i5-8250u processor. The transfer speed of the PCIE NVME SSD isn´t what I expected. I only get 1800MB/s read and 1400 write. This could be the double. It seems to me that only 2 lanes of the pcie 3.0 bus are active, but HWInfo says that all 4 lanes are active. 

Does anyone have an explanation why the speed is so slow? What causes the bottleneck? Thanks!

PS: I cloned Win 10 from SATA SSD drive but I dont think that this could cause the problem.

brummyfan2

Hi,
Yes, you are right, only 2 lanes are enabled in most laptops, only high end laptops and desktops might be able to use 4lanes, HWiNFO reports only the capability of the motherboard. 

JordanB

@AspireSpeed

That speed is pretty good for a laptop.

If you want to improve your benchmark a little, you can do the following.

1. Make sure you are plugged in to AC charger
2. Go to Power settings and use the High plan
3. Temporarily disable your antivirus

Your speed appears to have beat a Dell 5570 with i7-8550U and Samsung 960

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/8005964

Try Userbenchmark and try AS SSD

And you badly beat an Adata drive.

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/7579416

Keep up the good work. 



Don't forget to re-enable your antivirus when you're done testing.

AspireSpeed

Thanks for the answers. But how can I see how many lanes a notebook offers on the m2 port? It seems that no manufacturer brings up this important fact. I could´t find any detailed info about this neither on the Acer homepage nor in the internet. I have another notebook an HP Probook 470 G5 and searching for this as well.

Does anybody know a webpage where to find infos about how many pcie lanes the m2 port of an notebook offers?

AspireSpeed

I think it is really strange that HWinfo reports that the SSD 960 has a "Current Link Width" of 4x and that the m2 port should be only connected with 2 lanes. I will continue my search for an explanation

AspireSpeed

Even the Samsung Magician tool says that it is PCIe gen 3 x 4. Why should there than only be 2 lanes on the m2 port???

brummyfan2

Hi,
I think that the HWiNFO and Magician are reporting the capability of the motherboard or the SSD, the restriction of 2 lanes may have been made in the BIOS.