Inland TD510 2TB not linking at gen5

kingguy

I got the Inland m.2 drive a couple days ago to do some Gen5 PCIe testing and found it is not linking up at Gen5. Actually worse, it doenst even link up at Gen4 unless I limit the port to only use Gen4. I believe something is happening in the jump from 4 to 5 during the PCIe ltssm where both sides tell each other they can perform at Gen5 and then the drive fails completely and doesn't even link at all. Has anyone verified that these drives actually link up at gen5?

PowerSpec_MikeW

@kingguy

Could you tell us what you're looking at to verify your link speed? Device manager or are you using a third party program? Have you benched the drive with CrystalDiskmark to see if it's in the range of the specs?

kingguy

I used two things to check this:

1) The bios shows only a gen4 x4 connection when connected directly to the motherboard (expected since its only a gen4 slot).

2) using ubuntu I used lspci to verify the speeds when connected through a Broadcom gen5 pcie HBA - it doesn't even link. When limiting the HBA to gen4 however it does link at gen4. Something is going wrong when it tries to jump from gen4 to gen5.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@kingguy

Let me see if I can get a sample and build it up, see what it's being detected as on Linux. What motherboard/CPU are you testing on? Also, what's the mode on that HBA card?

PowerSpec_MichaelB

@kingguy as @PowerSpec_MikeW is alluding to, we will need to know what board/processor combo you are using to determine if the HBA card you are using is receiving PCIe 5.0 lanes from the chipset/processor.

Using AM5 as an example, you have up to 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes from the processor. 16 are dedicated to GPU (1x16 or 2x8), 4 are dedicated to NVMe, the other 4 are dedicated to GPP which can be dictated by the motherboard manufacturer as to how they want to use those extra lanes. This means depending on your board, your top NVMe slot nearest the processor might be wired for 5.0, but others may be wired to 4.0 or 3.0 depending on how the board is designed as the rest of the lanes would come directly from the board chipset.

Since you are using a HBA card likely connected to a PCIe slot on the board itself, we are going to need to know which slot it is connected to in order to determine if the slot is wired for 5.0 and to confirm it's wired for at least x4 link speed.

Lastly, you mentioned when connecting it to the board directly, the BIOS only showed a gen 4 x4 connection. Which slot were you using on the board? Once we know the board, processor and configuration settings, we will have a better idea as to what is going on.

kingguy

So far I have tried it on two boards with the HBA card put closest to the processor. The ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-Plus (Plugged into the only Silver slot which should be Gen5), and the Gigabyte Z790 AORUS Elite. The Gigabyte motherboard was terrible, and only linking up at Gen3 speeds for the slot closest to the processor. I am using the Intel Core i5-13600K Processor. However, regardless of the motherboards and processor, the drive should link up to the HBA at Gen5 speeds, but it will only do Gen4 or not work at all. I can plug the HBA into a gen3 motherboards and still have it link in loopback at Gen5, itll just be Gen3 to the motherboard. I have tried both Base Mode and Synthetic mode with the HBA card. My problem isn't that nothing is linking up and talking to each other, its that the drive itself does not link up at Gen5 to the HBA. I know that limiting the HBA to link up at Gen4 works fine, I can actually see the drive and run I/Os to it. But when I don't limit the HBA card and try to setup a Gen5 connection, the drive just seems to disappear.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@kingguy

Have you tested the NVMe drive connected directly to the board without the HBA card? If so, what were your results? What model is the HBA card?

kingguy

Unfortunately neither of these boards have m.2 slots for Gen5, only Gen4. And it does link up at Gen4 when connected directly to the motherboard. The model I got is the TD510 from inland. I tried looking for a FW update for it to see if maybe that could fix the problem but couldnt find anything.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@kingguy

Sorry, I hadn't looked up those boards. You said the HBA card was a Broadcom, correct? What model?

PowerSpec_MichaelB

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/48923#Comment_48923

It is important to keep in mind that with Raptor Lake (13th gen Intel), PCIe lane bifurcation on Gen5 only works at x8/x8, you cannot bifurcate down to multiple x4 on these slots anymore. This means your HBA card must be wired at x8 and even then, you'll only be able to use x4 with the other 4 lanes going to waste (it has to negotiate at x8, can't use the other x4 unless your HBA supports multiple drives).

If your card is x8 and you are using the top PCIe slot on the TUF Gaming Z790-Plus, it should be functioning at Gen5 speeds (x8 bifurcation from processor to HBA, x4 from SSD to HBA).

As requested by @PowerSpec_MikeW , we will need to know the exact model of your HBA card to dial in on what the issue may be. As for SSD firmware, these drives are brand new and there are currently no firmware updates available. If I hear any news on a firmware update for this drive, I'll let you know.