Extremely slow results from Samsung 980 m.2 SSD

Samsung’s Magician software is finally showing the horrible write speeds that I’ve been experiencing with Chia. Looks like it is just a bad drive! Thanks for all the suggestions everyone!!

Avoid Samsung if you only have Linux!!!

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Dang I wouldn’t have expect any OS would still be mounting SSDs without enabling TRIM by default. Good to know.

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Yeah we got bitten by this HARD at work. Real hard. Some distros of Linux don’t enable SSD TRIM for some super obscure “safety of data” reason… it’s really bogus. Meanwhile a lot of people suffer because of this default, as you can see… :cry:

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Hi rgFarmer,

You have to be careful when filling up the 980 Pro because it will do so quicker than you might expect. Samsung’s 980 Pro sustained 100GB of writes to its TurboWrite cache at a rate of 4.5 GBps before performance degraded. Once its cache filled, write speed averaged 1 GBps until full, outwriting the competition. Cache recovery is on the slower side, however. While the static 6GB cache recovered immediately, the ‘Intelligent’ dynamic cache did not recover within a half-hour idle window.

I belived the answer to your questions is on this graph

Also, you want to watch this video he goes into details about why not to plot with the 980

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Huh interesting, thanks for sharing this, could you summarize why? It’s hard to block off time to watch a video versus read text…

On a quick glance it sounds like the problem reported in the Samsung community.

Samsung release a new firmware (3B2QGXA7) that’s supposed to fix the issue.

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hello,

as i understand trim functions works periodically to trim ssd drives. whats is the default schedule for trimming in Ubuntu and what should it be?

thanks.

edit:
Oh i found it works once a week. One week is OK or should be it more frequently?

btw these are my trim results. my ssds did not have discard option. after adding discard, i ran trim manually.
I don’t know if these results are normal or not.

Hrmmm, trying to decide now whether it’s worth messing with the plotting on my Samsung 980 machines to do the firmware. Anyone got any reports on whether this has made a big difference for Chia plotting specifically?

my reason was to try trim that i was getting teribble results with my samsung 980 1tb.

Now i trimmed and i will try. i post the results here.

Btw: i have upgraded firmware of it in windows but i was still getting really bad results.

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Important note: I do NOT have the 980 pro!!! It is just the 980… Samsung acknowledged that there were firmware issues with the 980 pro but still have not with the plain 980. The Samsung Magician software started showing sub 100 MB/s write speeds so I’m sending it back for RMA!

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Thanks! I actually do not have the 980 Pro, its just the plain 980 with no additional modifier. I’m guessing that the 980 does use the same cache system as the Pro but I’ve been getting more like .5GB/s speeds!

did you get expected good results (around 2000mb/sn) for write speeds with fio and dd in ubuntu but not good results (around 500-600 mb/sn) with disk benchmarg tool (gui) in ubuntu?

I am about to be crazy. i did trim, i get good results with fio and dd but terrible results with disk benchmark tool. When it comes to plotting, results are terrible too.

I checked the write results with magician on windows. these results were ok too.

But i still do not know why i get bad results with benchmark tool and plotting.

btw way, my both ssds are running on temperatures as below,

Temperature sensor 1 - 60-65C
Temperature sensor 2 - 90-97C

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i thought the trim thing was a linux issue that windows was unaffected/or did it automatically. i don’t recall where i read that but if windows does benefit i’d love to know!

Way too high for sensor 2 (the controller). This will cause throttling. Use a heatsink with good airflow.

hmm thanks for the feedback. i guess this is something that i need to fix somehow. i do not how to solve yet because i am using a workstation hp laptop and two m2 ssds are inside the laptop, there is no place to install a heat sink.

I will think about to cool my ssd. If you have any ideas, would be great to hear.

THanks.

Below is samsung 980 1tb and not expected plotting times.

below is another ssd with acceptable results.

Place it on a raised platform and leave the covers removed so the heatsinks can stick out. Then place a fan blowing across the bottom.

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i will check that. thanks.

btw do you guys have any idea regarding that io values on plotman?
io values are always higher on bad ssd rather than good one.

Well I got almost the same values, isn’t this normal?

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are you referring my post or which one?