G Skill Phoenix Blade PCIex8 SSD

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I am running a new X99 rig with a 480GB PCIe SSD.

I am blow away with the speed, Windows 7 SP1 took 90 seconds to install (it took 4 minutes to download it!)

When Windows boots the second the animation stops I get my login prompt and the second I enter my credentials the desktop immediately appears.

All good, however, I was having a few BSODs, with my OC, and windows was misbehaving, so I though I'd run a CHKDSK, however it never finishes, it just hangs at 11% stage 4 of 5 checking the files.

So I did a little research and found conflicting views on whether you should be running chkdsk, some say it doesn't work because it is designed for standard HDD, other say it should run but won't do anything.

I also found other threads taking about disabling Defrag, Prefetch, SuperPrefetch and Indexing plus enabling TRIM and AHCI to protect the SSD and extend its life.

I also read that TRIM shouldn't be enabled on SSD's that use sandforce controllers as it doesn't work and could harm the drive, and also AHCI is only for SATA SSD not PCIe SSD.

I'm a little confused and overwhelmed and would appreciate some guidance on the best settings / things I should do to ensure top performance and long life of my new PCIe SSD drive .

Thanks,
1DMF.
 
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Well in the absence of a reply, I asked G Skill support and thought I'd post what they say to help others who want to know the recommended settings for their Phoenix Blade SSD.

Dear Customer,

Chkdsk is geared toward platter based drives, since it checks sectors and reports whether or not it’s good or bad. This function has pretty much automatically done by SSD controllers now, so Chkdsk is unlikely to help very much on SSDs.

Disabling defragmentation is a good idea, since garbage management replaces defrag in SSDs, and defrag reads and writes the same information a lot more often, which really deteriorates the drive’s flash cells, so it’s a good idea to disable or don’t use defrag. Prefetch, Superfetch, and Indexing has little impact, now that SSD performance is very very fast, so in terms of performance, it doesn’t make much of a difference between enabling or disabling. In terms of drive lifespan, disabling Indexing might help a little bit if you are storing tons of small files on your drive. Please note that prefetch and superfetch may impact the stability or performance of the operating system, so it might be best to leave these two on.

TRIM is basically a forced garbage management function, so it does help extending the lifespan of the SSD (by doing a more efficient defrag while organizing the files and flash cells so that future writes will be optimized). TRIM is essentially the lesser of the two evils, as any write process to the flash cells will deteriorate lifespan and some performance over time, but it will let you enjoy optimized performance over the lifetime of the SSD, instead of chugging along at platter based drive speeds after a while. TRIM seemed to have trouble on certain firmware versions for Sandforce controllers, but has since been improved in later updated firmware releases. From what we remember, this happened back in 2012.

AHCI is a set of commands that improves over IDE commands, and this is what enables SSDs to perform better; it applies both to SATA SSD and PCIe SSD. And AHCI should not affect lifespan of the drive very much.

So to summarize:
Chkdsk: generally not useful for SSDs, so don’t bother using this on SSDs
Defrag: don’t use and disable, use TRIM/garbage collection
Prefetch/Superfetch: leave it enabled, as this may impact operating system performance
Indexing: disabling seems to be a better choice. If your drive experiences lots of small file read/writes, then disable. Otherwise, SSDs should be fast enough to compensate for your files not being indexed.
TRIM/garbage collection: use it.
AHCI: use it. This one’s probably mandatory anyway, since some SSDs won’t work or optimally perform under other settings.

We hope this helps. The above information is as accurate as possible according to what we know now, but may change depending on the rapid improvement (or change) of technology.
 
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Hi,

That is a very fast SSD. I can tell you what I know, here it goes:

Windows 7 had a issue with scandisk where it eats up memory and ultimately causes issues. Use HD Tune or WD lifeguard diagnostics or something similar to check the drive. I had similar issues with Chkdsk too.

Trim should be enabled by default by OS, if not, the SSD should have some kind of garbage collection method. When you run HD Tune, it can tell you if it is enabled or not. It can also show you the smart status if the drive supports it. The latest version of HD Tune is 5.50.

And I heard PCIe SSDs are a lot better with Windows 8.1, so you might wanna try it out and see how it goes.

Let us know if anything else, but try not to OC much, keep the system stable, and see how the SSD works :)


I am running a new X99 rig with a 480GB PCIe SSD.

I am blow away with the speed, Windows 7 SP1 took 90 seconds to install (it took 4 minutes to download it!)

When Windows boots the second the animation stops I get my login prompt and the second I enter my credentials the desktop immediately appears.

All good, however, I was having a few BSODs, with my OC, and windows was misbehaving, so I though I'd run a CHKDSK, however it never finishes, it just hangs at 11% stage 4 of 5 checking the files.

So I did a little research and found conflicting views on whether you should be running chkdsk, some say it doesn't work because it is designed for standard HDD, other say it should run but won't do anything.

I also found other threads taking about disabling Defrag, Prefetch, SuperPrefetch and Indexing plus enabling TRIM and AHCI to protect the SSD and extend its life.

I also read that TRIM shouldn't be enabled on SSD's that use sandforce controllers as it doesn't work and could harm the drive, and also AHCI is only for SATA SSD not PCIe SSD.

I'm a little confused and overwhelmed and would appreciate some guidance on the best settings / things I should do to ensure top performance and long life of my new PCIe SSD drive .

Thanks,
1DMF.
 
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Thanks for your input, but it seems I may have to RMA my drive.

It isn't performing like it should and having been speaking with G Skill support, they have confirmed something isn't right.

And I heard PCIe SSDs are a lot better with Windows 8.1, so you might wanna try it out and see how it goes.

No chance, I will never pollute my PC with that junk OS! Of course YMMV, but I hate it more than Vista! Windows 10 doesn't look much better either so I'll be sticking with Win 7 for many years to come, and may even consider Linux over these latest OSes from M$.
 
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oh dear...



using 8 is solid advice. and if you really dislike 8 that much because it has some useless stuck on metro stuff that you'd probably never use anyway, then 10 should still be a valid consideration - it's impressing even the most ardent windows 8 'dislikers' on this forum. Not tried it myself, cant see the sence is trying to use an alpha release as a daily driver but that's me, and that's why it should be a consideration. I probably would have tried it by now if i had the time to test a second OS but i wont consider using it daily inteals its release candidate...probably.

None of that solves your immediate problem though. Only two ways to do that, try different software or try different hardware. You already have the drive, so different software would give you a quicker answer than having to ship the drive back. Up to you though.
 
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well the jury is still out on Win10, but so far they insist on keeping metro, so they bring back the start menu and stuff metro in it?

I refuse to be bullied into using it, I don't want the app store and I don't want their cloud, which currently cannot be uninstalled in Win10.

I detest Win8 on many levels not just the Metro (every Win8 machine at work has IOBit start menu 8 installed), so it's not just the inability to control the OS that peeves me.

I hate the fly out crappy, hot corners , square ugly GUI with the missing Aero, the inability to manage wireless connections without CLI, the list is extensive!

As I said YMMV, but I have yet to meet a happy Win8 user, and considering it's my day job, I can speak from experience of over 300 users!

As for the drive, I have already ran a plethora of diagnostic software and provided it to G Skill support at their request, hence them telling me it needs to be RMA'd.

Which as you can imagine is a royal pain in the behind, especially as I seem unable to get an image backup to complete - very frustrating.

I'll leave it running overnight and hope I'll have something to restore from when my new drive arrives.
 
Soldato
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Honestly a lot of that is personal preference or stuff that can just be disabled. Management of wireless connections I'll give you, it's backwards, but CLI wil do it or there are apps out there. 5 minutes work. Much like installing any start menu replacement. do it once and forget about it. and disable the hot corners, and charm bars. It is, otherwise, a better OS than 7. more so 8.1, anyway.

As I said YMMV, but I have yet to meet a happy Win8 user, and considering it's my day job, I can speak from experience of over 300 users!

Yes but when i think about the reasons it makes me chuckle. 95% of it = "eurgh metro". Which you can pretty much hide all traces of with boot to desktop and a free start menu replacement. And then you're left with what? The restrictions on managing wireless connects wont affect many home users at all so what else is there? the ribbon interface on explorer maybe? We've had 7 years to get used to that. Aero? the lack of semi transparent (which look awful imo) windows is enough to boycott an OS?

What do your 300 users really say about windows 8? I find most people at work changed their tunes when they actually started using it!

As for the drive, I have already ran a plethora of diagnostic software and provided it to G Skill support at their request, hence them telling me it needs to be RMA'd.

Which as you can imagine is a royal pain in the behind, especially as I seem unable to get an image backup to complete - very frustrating.

I'll leave it running overnight and hope I'll have something to restore from when my new drive arrives.

sounds broken enough then!
 
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Yes, Win 8 can be fudged with a few 3rd party apps and a lot of configuring, I just can't be arsed! Also as I said I can't stand the squareness, it really is a hideous design, again just personal preference I guess, I notice a lot of the web has adopted this angular blandness of late, so I guess there is no accounting for taste.

Most users I have spoken to hate Win 8 even when I fix the start menu, such as stupid things like unable to close a PDF when using the app version as there is no [x].

I did a remote with one user to find they had 31 PDF's open and even I had to wrack my brains to remember Alt+F4!

Maybe my next build I'll buy the latest Win OS, or when support for Win7 runs out, but I'm in no hurry to switch.

Anyway, back to the topic...

Yes the drive is truly cream crackered, I went to wipe it before sending it back and after deleting the partitions and formatting the hard drive, windows showed an error code saying the drive could not be used to install windows, good job I didn't want too!

I have now installed an XP941 and am re-installing everything, so far so good, but have yet to try a benchmark or see if an image backup can be performed.

Hopefully I have seen the back of my SSD woes!
 
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Well they say a picture paints a thousand words...

Disk_Bench_Results.png


You can see the G Skill Phoenix Blade baseline in orange compared to the Samsung XP941 in green.

I think it's quite clear to see the Phoenix Blade drive is knackered :eek:
 
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I'm very disappointed with OCUK, I have had an email saying they are sending the drive back to me because they were able to format it and copy files OK.

The product HD-005-GS on RMAxxxxxx has been returned to you, this will be sent on a new order with order number xxxxxxx.

Here is the technicians Test Report:

"CARD FORMATTED AND INITIALIZED WITH NO PROBLEM. TRANSFERS LARGE FILES OK AND BENCHMARKS AT VERY GOOD SPEEDS"

Yet I have confirmation from G Skill themselves that this drive is faulty and needed to be returned, not to mention the issues I had being unable to complete a chkdsk, backup the drive plus all the bench mark test I performed clearly showing a problem with the drive.

From: G.SKILL Eurotech [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 19 December 2014 08:08
To: xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: G.Skill Phoenix Blade - Poor performance in tests

Dear Customer,

Your results seem really strange. If possible, we’d like to do an RMA.

Would you mind letting us know your country? It would help us to see how we may arrange a RMA replacement for you.

Thank you.

Best Regards

Euro Tech Support Team

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.
8F No. 69 DongXing Rd., Xinyi District
Taipei City, 11070 Taiwan (R.O.C.)
+886 2 2766-7889
http://www.gskill.us/forum/
I spoke with OCUK on the phone explaining this, and they agreed to a refund, now they have reneged on this agreement. Not happy at all :mad:
 
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No, as they wanted me to pay to send it to Holland, expecting me to insure the item at my cost while writing on the packet, 'has no value'. Which I find unacceptable, hence returning it to the place of purchase as not fit for purpose as sold to me.

I don't want a replacement, this is the second drive I've had to send back and a well know e-tailer has even discontinued the item so soon after coming to market.

I feel there is an issue with these drives, it has not performed as expected and so have replaced it with a different product and want a refund.

I have instead used my M.2 slot with a Samsung XP941 SSD on my mobo, so I could fit 2 x GTX970's which I just purchased from OCUK on Saturday!

There is no room to put a PCIe SSD drive in my computer as these GFX cards are so large they take up 6 PCI bays.

I took OCUK at their word they would refund the drive based on G Skill confirmation it was faulty and in good faith purchased £600.00 of GFX cards instead - more than the drive actually cost!

In total I have just spent @ £2,000.00 on a new X99 build with OCUK, and at this rate I'll send the lot back for a refund! Under section 75 of the consumer credit act!

I purchased a faulty part as confirmed by the manufacturer and spent the expected refund on other components with the same supplier, I have been more than fair and honest and did not let this affect me continuing to use OCUK as a supplier.

I don't hold them responsible for the faulty drive, these things happen, but I do hold them responsible for refunding my money.
 
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It's not gone well at all.

I rung and was told I couldn't speak to a manager, we have since been engaged in a ridiculous game of postal tennis.

I refused delivery of the returned item, but they sent it back again. I have now sent it back once more, with a covering letter explaining the Credit Card company and my rights under the consumer credit act and the sales of goods act has been initiated via charge back.

If I have to involve the regulators / ombudsman / small claims court that is what I will do!

I've received two faulty items, have confirmation of a faulty drive from the manufacturer, so have lost faith in the quality of this product and requested a refund, I've never had such a fiasco getting a refund for a faulty product in my life!
 
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Hi there

My apologies on this, I've just looked at this product history and the RMA failure rate is at 67% which is an absolute disaster, G.Skill should be ashamed of manufacturing a product with such high failure rate. As such this product is now removed from our website and G.Skill will be removed as a whole due to unreasonable high return rates.

As to how you were treated my apologies and I have my returns manager looking into this now. :)
 
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They have been removed from sale from our site. We are looking in to the poor performance of these drives. Apologies for not spotting this thread earlier and getting it sorted for you.
 
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Thank you, I am glad you are finally realising what I have been saying for the past few weeks.

You are not the first e-tailor to remove these products from sale.

no images with competitor references please

Considering they did this a week after the product came to market, it was rather indicative of an issue with this hardware.

I would also point out that I purchased 16GB of G Skill 2800mhz RipJaws RAM (from another e-tailor as you didn't sell the 2800mhz), and had to RMA the first kit as one of the 4GB stick was DOA. One wonders if G Skill is having serious quality control issues and if they are a manufacturer people should still consider when purchasing computer components.

It is upsetting and frustrating the merry-go-round I have been through with OCUK RMA department trying to get a refund for a clearly faulty product and has tarnished what I thought was a good reputation of not just G Skill, but also OCUK.

I have spent a considerable amount of money with OCUK and although only upgrade my PC once in a while, OCUK have always been my go-to place for good quality, reasonable priced PC components, with what I thought was a peace of mind satisfaction, no quibble guarantee should things go wrong.

I have only ever returned goods to yourself for either being faulty or the one occasion where you sent me the wrong CPU cooler by mistake.

If the items had performed satisfactorily I would be using them and telling everyone how great they were and when I got them from.

However, this current experience has been extremely stressful and tarnished what had been up until now a pleasurable experience shopping with OCUK.

Something I will have to think twice about in the future.
 
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Phew that was a close call as i had just seen Tinytom logans youtube video saying how good the drive was (should be!) luckily everybody is out of stock and oc said it was end of life , so no more Phoenix Blade
 
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Seriously you just dodged a bullet!

I cannot recommend the current M.2 Samsung XP941 enough.

What I'm curious about is why OCUK isn't selling this awesome SSD and instead was selling that pile of junk from G Skill?

Even more curious is why the Intel SSD is hidden form sale on OCUK unless you google it, yet it is meant to out perform the G Skill SSD , personally I believe there is an inherent problem with this latest PCIe SSD technology and we should all hold back from investing until true 32GBPS+ PCIe SSD technology is a reality.
 
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