Does Erica6 Motherboard Support Gen4 (PCIE 4.0) SSD M.2?

[db2000]

Hi,

So we just upgraded our desktop to the HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop TG01-2176z Bundle PC for Christmas.  Upon running initial benchmarks, the weak link appears to be the Intel 660P 512GB M.2 SSD component.  Since we just bought a desktop with a Ryzen 7 CPU and RTX 3060 GPU, I would think I could just buy a Gen4 SSD (980 PRO, SN850, etc) and get Gen4 performance?  But now I'm not so sure.  So this configuration has the HP 8906 version SMVB (aka Erica6) motherboard with the B550A chipset.

My question is:  Does this configuration support PCIE 4.0 for the M.2 SSD or only PCIE 3.0?  

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

I don't believe so.

If you look at the AMD processor specs for the processor your PC has, it indicates the PCIe express revision is 3.0.

AMD Ryzen™ 7 5700G | AMD

[itsmyname]

@db2000 -- the weak link appears to be the Intel 660P 512GB M.2 SSD component.

Are you using this Intel device-driver:  Intel® SSD 660p Series (512GB, M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4, 3D2, QLC)

to achieve optimal performance ?

[db2000]

Wow.  You are correct and I am shocked.  Mainly that AMD would release a Ryzen 7 8-core CPU with on-CPU graphics that is PCIE 3.0, not 4.0.  But that does explain why I go to userbenchmarks.com and there are no Gen4 M.2 SSD speeds of 7,000/5,000 or anywhere near that because most people are buying the Gen4 SSDs (like I almost did) and have no idea that they would be better off just buying a highly-rated Gen3 model and save a few bucks because their motherboard/chipset won't even support PCIE 4.0.  In fact, I can go to Amazon right now and buy any of a number of variations of the B550 motherboard (without the A) that actually are fully PCIE 4.0 compliant.

And when you read a statement like this, it becomes some really confusing stuff for the average consumer to digest:  "Technically, B550A offers support for PCI Express 4.0, though only on the primary PCIe x16 slot."

So thanks for your help confirming what I suspected.  And I kind of feel like I'm splitting hairs since I benchmarked this desktop right out of the box and it was UFO (Gaming and Workstation) on userbenchmarks.com.  Heck, even the slowest M.2 SSD is faster than a SATA mechanical hard drive.  I'm still going to upgrade from the Intel SSD, though.  Just not to a Gen4. 😎

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

While I have not studied this matter in depth, I have yet to find one HP consumer class notebook or desktop that has a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe slot, and that includes notebooks and desktop PC's with the 11th gen core processors.

PC's must exist with Gen 4 NVMe slots though, or why would the drive manufacturers bother making them?

I don't know what kind of max sequential read/write speeds you are getting out of the Intel SSD HP installed in your PC, but the Samsung 980 (not the 980 Pro) seems to be a decent NVMe SSD at a bargain price.

[db2000]

That Intel 660P is the SSD that came with the system.  But I'm not sure it's optimal performance-wise.  First, it's 512GB and for our purposes we need at least 1TB. Second, when I ran benchmark tests the sequential read speed was around 1,500 and the write speed was about 1,000 (using crystaldiskmark).  I already know there are Gen3 1TB SSDs that should provide a performance boost over this Intel 660p.  Of course, my original intent was to upgrade from the Gen3 Intel to a Gen4 1TB SSD.  But this Erica6 motherboard will not fully support Gen4 because it isn't PCIE 4.0 compliant...Only PCIE 3.0.

As such, I will be replacing this 512GB Intel SSD with either a 1TB 970 PRO or 970 EVO Plus after further research...

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, either one of those SSD's should work great.

They do tend to run a bit hot though.

I strapped a heatsink on my Crucial P5 SSD.

Dropped the temps by 12C.

[itsmyname]

@db2000 -- First, it's 512GB and for our purposes we need at least 1TB.

Hmm. Does your motherboard support "RAID 0" ("striped") ?

If so, add another identical SSD, to achieve 1024 GB of storage -- 4 bits of every byte go to one SSD, and the other 4 bits of the byte go to the other SSD.

I wonder if the "overhead" of striping will improve the performance?

[db2000]

I like your RAID 0 idea, but I'd like to try a more basic plug-and-play solution first.  Namely, just buy a new 1TB that runs faster speeds and sell the Intel 660P on eBay.  In fact, at Intel's own website, they post the maximum speeds of this 512GB SSD as (up to) 1,500/1,000 MB/s for Read/Write.  Honestly, even for a Gen3 SSD, that's pretty darn slow compared to other drives.  But I've also run into another problem that I need to put into a new question since this one has been solved.  Thanks for the RAID 0 suggestion.  I may actually end up doing exactly that.