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April 3rd, 2023 14:00
Why doesn't my 7560 run Samsung 980 PRO SSD's at full speed?
Recently bought a 7560 Precision work station. Based on the Customization page, the only SSD drives they offer are PCIe Gen 4 drives. In the Service Manual for the 7560, on page 16, where it shows how to remove the secondary M.2 SSD, it states ": This slot supports only M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Solid-state drive and does not support any Optane, or M.2 2230
Solid-state drive."
In the Precision 7560 Technical Guidebook, on page 39, you'll find specifications for a 1 TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
When I installed (2) Samsung 980 PRO drives in the available slots on the motherboard, they ran at PCIe Gen 3 speeds.
Samsung Magician could not report the Interface nor could it figure out the driver in use for the new drives
I changes the boot mode from RAID to AHCI (no small feat - see other threads about how to do that)
Now Samsung Magician is reporting the interface is PCIe Gen 3 and the driver is "Microsoft"
Samsung does not have a driver specifically for the 980 PRO and if I try to load the driver they DO have, I get an error, "Samsung NVM Express Device is not connected."
Tech support insists the slots are PCIe Gen 3 and that seems to be the case. Why then, would all the Dell documentation I can find indicate that you CAN run gen 4 drives AND the only drives they offer to customers on their customization page are gen 4 - that will only run at gen 3 speed?
Has anyone actually gotten gen 4 speeds out of the secondary SSD slots? The Primary slot for the OS drive does run at gen 4
pward76
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April 4th, 2023 10:00
Being a retired IT professional, and therefore, by definition, a little OCD, I did a little digging and have come up with the following information and theory.
2x8 and 1x4 or
1x8 and 3x4
The Nvidia RTX A3000, which I have in my 7560, connects to the system using a PCIe GEN 4 1x16 interface.
This tells me that the PCIe configuration in my 7560 is:
1x16 (the gpu) and 1x4 (the SSD slot currently used for the OS SSD).
The rest of the PCIe devices, therefore, must be communicating via the chipset at GEN 3.
All that said, and understanding that Tech Support has no input on this, I find it unethical of Dell to obfuscate the fact that the additional SSD slots cannot run at GEN 4 speeds. When ordering the system, on the Customization page, the only SSD's offered by Dell are GEN 4. The assumption to be made by customers is that these slots will run at GEN 4. Why are customers being sold GEN 4 SSDs that will not run at GEN 4 speed? One wonders then, if the 7670 and newer Precisions are similarly limited and if customers are being made aware.
In the Dell Precision 7560 Service Manual, on page 16 - where replacing the Secondary SSD is discussed, you will find this:
"NOTE: This slot supports only M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Solid-state drive and does not support any Optane, or M.2 2230 Solid-state drive."
In the Dell Precision 15 7560 Laptop Owners Manual, on page 18 you will find the following:
Nowhere is it specified that only one SSD drive is capable of running at GEN 4 speed.
Also, in the Dell Precision 7560 Technical Guidebook, on page 39 are the technical specs for GEN 3 and GEN 4 SSDs. The fact that only one SSD slot in the system is GEN 4 is not mentioned.
I wonder to whom at Dell I might address this?
DELL-Cares
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April 3rd, 2023 14:00
Welcome to Dell Social Media Support.
Could you private message us the Service Tag, so we can look into this for you right away? You could refer to the below link to find the Service Tag: https://dell.to/3KEx2n7
pward76
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April 3rd, 2023 14:00
I sent it - I think... hopefully it attaches to this thread
Asheville Hawker
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April 4th, 2023 16:00
I just went though exactly this on my 7760. Same SSD even.
After lots and lots of digging I found that the 7760 (which I assume is the same as the 7560 other than the LCD) supports the main middle SSD as Gen 4 but all others (the three in the lower left corner) are only Gen 3, which is half the speed.
Very unfortunate and disappointing for me as well. So anything that needs to be fast has to be on the main (middle) SSD.
pward76
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April 4th, 2023 17:00
Yep - If you have an 11th gen CPU, and it sounds like you do, that is the case.
Interesting note - the 11th gen Intel CPUs were released in May of 2021 - the same time the 7X60 Precision work stations were released. Gen 4 PCIe SSD's were pretty new back then, with manufacturers releasing them throughout the first half of 2021.
At least we got one fast SSD port - I run my OS drive in that spot, and the Gen 3 SSDs are program / data drives
pward76
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April 5th, 2023 19:00
Yes, the difference is noticeable. I built my desktop about a year ago with a gen 12 i7, and the MSI motherboard I used has 4 SSD slots, one of which is PCIe 3, the others are PCIe 4. The research I did for this issue explained that little oddity as well - again number of gen 4 lanes available. Moving data from gen 4 to gen 4 runs over 1GB/s. Moving data from gen 4 to gen 3 is significantly slower than that - but as you point out - still bunches faster than dealing with SATA speed
Asheville Hawker
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April 5th, 2023 19:00
Thank you for explaining that so clearly. Yes I have an 11850H
I had not heard anyone attribute that spec to the chip-set or processor so that was super helpful.
I do as you say. My main drive is the Gen 4 and runs the OS and whatever I need frequent access to (main files). The other two SSD drives (not using the 4th one) are data and archive drives so not needed as fast.
1 Gen 4 is pretty nice, Even Gen 3 is faster than SATA SSD, and I got this laptop when Dell had a great sale so I can't complain.
Both Gen3 and Gen 4 are lighting fast compared to my last Precision workstation, which only had SATA and mSATA SSDs. I can really feel the difference in large file transfers. But I can also super feel the difference between the Gen 3 and Gen 4 drives when I move large archive files around or do lots of file processing. I didn't expect to feel that big a difference since it was all so much faster than my last Precision.