I recently picked up an ADATA Premium M.2 Gen 4 SSD for my PS5, paying around $93 CAD (about $68 USD). It's in pretty good shape with 99% health. While some games, like Street Fighter 6, load faster, I've noticed that overall, the speed seems to be just 25% of what's advertised. I checked the health with Crystal Disk Info and ran tests with HD Tune without finding errors. My motherboard is an AORUS X470 Ultra Gaming, and according to their specs, I'm using the M.2 B socket which supports PCIe 2.0. I suspect this might be why my SSD isn't performing as expected, but I can't find clear info on the generation of the M.2 B socket. Can anyone help me understand why this is happening?
1 Answer
Your issue makes sense! An M.2 Gen 4 SSD is designed to operate on PCIe 4.0 x4, but it looks like your M.2 B slot only supports PCIe 2.0 x4. That's about 25% of what it could achieve on a Gen 4 slot. To really harness its potential, you'll need to switch to a PCIe 3.0 slot. You’ll still see improved speeds, but not the full max of your SSD capabilities.
So is any number followed by '.0' referring to the generation? I get that I have a Gen 4 SSD in a Gen 2 slot, but moving it to the Gen 3 slot will definitely speed things up, right?