We’ve heard isolated reports of Socket AM5 systems struggling with fast NVMe storage, but apparently the issue comes down to more than just a few incidents. We say that because of a statement from memory vendor Crucial’s support team that acknowledges user complaints claiming that when PCIe 5.0 SSDs are installed in 5.0 slots on AMD X670E motherboards, they suffer the risk of being limited to PCIe 1.0 speed, or possibly failing to be detected at all.
Curiously, the issue seems constrained entirely to motherboards with AMD’s X670E chipset, and it isn’t strictly limited to Crucial’s PCIe 5.0 SSDs, either, as users have reported problems with other drives including the Sabrent Rocket 5 and the MSI Spatium M570 PRO. The issue only occurs when the drive is installed in the first M.2 socket offering a direct PCIe 5.0 link to the CPU; put the drive in a PCIe 4.0 slot and all is well.
Crucial’s statement, posted by Celestion on the ASUS ROG forums, seems to directly blame motherboard manufacturers and say that the only solution will be a BIOS update. Indeed, MSI has apparently released a BIOS update that addresses this issue for at least the MEG X670E GODLIKE board, if not others. Users have posted saying that the firmware update fixed their PCIe 5.0 SSD woes.
Given that it can apparently be resolved with a firmware fix, we think this issue is likely down to a power management function gone awry. Unfortunately, users have reported that disabling various power management features in both Windows and BIOS does nothing for the problem. It looks like bedraggled users really will have to wait for a BIOS update to enjoy full PCIe 5.0 storage speeds on their X670E motherboards.
This story comes to us by way of WCCFTech, who compiled a handful of links to users complaining about this problem on various forums. According to that site, ASUS has largely been telling affected customers to contact their SSD manufacturers for support. In the meantime, moving the SSD to a 4.0 slot may offer stable—if somewhat slower—performance.