Running a PCIe Gen 5 SSD signals that you’re after top-tier speed, especially considering the premium pricing for such high-performance storage. You’ve likely paired it with a cutting-edge motherboard that can handle this technology, aiming to get the most out of your investment. Unfortunately, some AMD X670E motherboard users have reported significant slowdowns, seeing performance that falls far short of what these Gen 5 SSDs should deliver.
According to forum posts from those using MSI and Asus motherboards with the X670E chipset—built for the latest AM5-socket Ryzen processors—some users are experiencing their Gen 5 SSDs being throttled to PCIe Gen 1 speeds. Drives expected to hit 10GB/s or higher are only delivering speeds around 1GB/s on x4 lanes. Even though the benefits of Gen 5 SSDs may not always justify the hype, having speeds this low is concerning for anyone who paid for top-level performance, especially when they resemble those of storage drives from a decade ago.
A Crucial representative, whose comment has since been removed according to WCCFTech, mentioned that the issue may stem from the M.2 slot sharing lanes with the PCIe expansion slot commonly used for the GPU. This lane-sharing could be causing the bottleneck. While some users have resolved the issue by moving the SSD to a different slot, this could limit the drive to Gen 4 speeds. Additionally, a BIOS update from MSI has fixed the problem for a few, but others are still encountering the same performance degradation. If you’re facing similar issues, try relocating the drive and ensure you have proper backups in case further troubleshooting is required.