Question M.2 storage access lag on Z590 Asus RoG Strix E-Gaming mobo

[yacoub]

System:
Asus ROG STRIX Z590 E-Gaming WiFi
Core i7 11700
32GB Corsair (2x16) compatible DDR4-2132 RAM in the recommended slots 2 & 4 per the mobo manual
GeForce RTX 2060 Super in the top PCI-E slot
Samsung 980 Pro 2TB M.2 in the PCIe4.0 slot, uses default Microsoft driver (any day now, Samsung), over 1TB of free space remaining
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB M.2 in the next M.2 slot which is PCIe 4.0 capable but this drive is PCIe3.0, uses Samsung's latest driver, over 1TB of free space remaining

Note: If you populate both M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots on this board, manual says they will both run at 4x and the GPU is cut to 8x from 16x.

Mobo is running latest firmware as of last month (April, 0707 I believe) and I believe I installed all the drivers for the various hardware and whatnot from Asus' website, including the Intel Management Engine, but not the Wifi drivers since I'm running on a wired LAN connection, nor the Bluetooth driver since I'm not using any BT devices, and I installed the Intel RST driver but not the Optane app (even though I'm not using RAID or SATA drives, I installed the RST driver to see if it would help somehow. It did not change the symptoms.

Issue:

When I pop open Windows Explorer and click into a folder with media files, be it videos or mp3s, sometimes, randomly, not to any pattern I can detect, instead of the contents displaying right away, nothing will appear while the system "thinks" and the green bar scrolls across the directory location bar as if the drive has to remember what-all is in the folder. It can take up to 20-30 seconds to display the contents. This happens even if I have it set to List view and normal alpha a-z sort order so it shouldn't have to read meta data on the files or do anything fancy with the sorting before displaying the contents to me.

I am coming from another Asus rig I build a couple years ago with Samsung 970 Evo and 970 Evo Plus drives that worked flawlessly. They never choked trying to open a folder in Windows Explorer and even the meta-data came right up when required.

I don't think it's a bad drive, as it happens on occasion with folders located on either drive. And I let Samsung Magician scan both drives for any bad cells and they came up 100% fine.

I am guessing this is either a driver issue or some sort of weird bandwidth issue (maybe even a bug?) with the BIOS or chipset driver, where running this particular configuration of a PCIe4.0 M.2 drive in the first 4.0 capable slot, a PCIe3.0 M.2 drive in the second 4.0 capable slot, and a GPU in the first PCIe GPU slot.

I haven't been able to find any other reports of similar issues out there, but maybe I'm not looking in the right places. Any help is appreciated.

The only other thing I've noticed is this system, particularly the CPU, runs quite a bit hotter than the previous one, but the M.2 SSDs are around the same temps as my old rig, hitting 50C-52C without any issues.

 

[kschendel]

I certainly could be wrong here, but I simply don't see how this can be hardware unless something is overheating. (and it shouldn't be possible to cool things down so quickly that a simple reboot fixes it.)

You can try a CMOS reset, which ought to put everything in the BIOS back to factory defaults. I can't imagine that it will make any difference.

Given that it can affect opening files in programs as well as windows explorer, I'm wondering if it's related to an antivirus program somehow.

If this were linux I could offer more concrete suggestions, but not with windows unfortunately.

 

[yacoub]

It's Windows 10 with the built-in Windows Security antivirus only, no crazy software installed.

I may try resetting the CMOS however the defaults already include all sorts of AI stuff turned on from Asus, which was part of what was so annoying about their BIOS. I just want everything OC-related OFF. There isn't even a clear indication of what RAM setting equates to that. There's XMR, XMR2 and two other settings and none of them are labeled like "factory default" or "just use the out-of-the-box timings". It's the curse of buying a mid-to-high-end board that has tons of features I don't really want or need, but happens to have the right I/O ports for my needs.

 

[yacoub]

Another weird symptom observed: I am downloading a large file and noticed it was taking forever and only getting a tiny fraction of the bandwidth available on my pipe. I have a large file transfer also occurring on the local network, from one mapped drive to another, each drive physically located in a different box, neither drive in this PC. I paused the network file transfer (which was only ~56MB/s, about half what I would have expected as I usually transfer files on the LAN at around 100MB/s) and the download from the Internet immediately picked back up to where it should be at around 12-15MB/s. I've never seen that sort of bandwidth issue before, where one causes the other to slow to a crawl. And the two combined are not maxing out the normal bandwith of the network. So again, the issue appears to be related to something with this system's Windows install or system drivers or BIOS configuration, where something isn't configured properly and isn't running at full capacity..

I also notice that while the large file transfer is going on on the LAN, it is also causing this computer to be more lethargic. Which is odd because the files are moving from NAS to another, neither of which are physically attached to this PC. They are however on the same network switch and the file transfer is being performed through this machine in a sense, in a standard Windows file transfer status window from one mapped drive to another.

 

[MadRat]

Windows Update with a pending install makes a Win10 system sluggish.

But like someone said earlier, Windows Defender makes the system slow down at times for no consistent reason.

 

[yacoub]

I think I've narrowed it down to a memory issue. I'm seeing all sorts of lag loading/displaying things, whether embedded videos on webpages or Windows Explorer listing contents or status of drives/folders, when as little as 12GB of the 32GB is in use. I will have to run a MemTest and also try swapping around/out the RAM.

edit: Well, the RAM won't run in XMP or XMP 2 (even with trying to manually bump a few voltages recommended on Asus forums), so it's stuck with 2133Mhz anyway. Nothing I can do about that. MemTest didn't show any issues, and the sticks are in slots 2 & 4 as recommended by Asus. Guess it's just a cursed build at this point.

 

[MadRat]

There is a known issue when right clicking for menues that contain 3rd party options. I know troubleshooting one in windows explorer was a real PITA. Once I cleaned up junk links in the registry mine started working much faster. But there is still random right clicks when using Win10 where it never seems to finish bringing up it's menu. Funny thing is there is no rhyme or reason when they occur.

 

[yacoub]

Update: I think I fixed it by swapping the RAM. I was on Corsair 2x16GB CMK32GX4M2E3200C16 which would only run in SPD setting.
I just replaced that with Corsair 2x16GB CMK32GX4M2D3600C18 which runs XMP 2 settings. Everything is much snappier. Nothing feels lethargic.
Amazing what a slight difference in RAM model can make. I chose the latter set because it's on the latest QVL for the board, and the other set wasn't despite being so similar. Wild.
I'll post again if the lagginess returns but this already feels a lot faster in responsiveness all around.

 

[yacoub]

Update: Same crap still happens, just a little less frequently. Can't get the folder contents to list, it just keeps thinking and the green bar progresses across the address bar in Windows Explorer forever. Most likely SSD cache or driver related nonsense. Samsung really needs to drop a proper driver for their 980Pro, I bet that would fix a lot of this.

 

[yacoub]

Update: Replaced 980Pro with a 970 Evo Plus, cloning the old OS drive, so now there are matching 970 Evo Plus M.2 drives in the system as the only storage. Just eliminating possibilities like the driver discrepancy between the 980Pro which uses MS Windows driver vs the 970s that run Samsung's driver as I try to track down what's causing the folder reading lag that seems to eventually crop up after the system's got some RAM and cache in use.

Also returned the BIOS setting to "Auto" from "Gen4" for the M2.1 slot since it is now a Gen3 drive.


Update: So far, so good. Occasional very minor folder reading delays but nothing anywhere like the 980Pro. Samsung really needs an optmized Windows10 driver for that drive. Right now it might as well be a paperweight.

Update: October/November - The issue remains. I'll be using this as an excuse to replace the entire board and CPU with 12th gen setup. This was the worst system building result/experience I can recall in the past twenty years.