Stuttering games since m.2 install

Soldato
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I recently removed all my mechanical drives, I installed a Samsung 1TB evo pro m.2 as well as a 2TB SSD along side my other 1TB SSD.

I partitioned the 1TB m.2 for 100gb for the OC and the rest for games. But any game I install on it, stutters, and badly. It has a heat sink on it but no active cooling, it runs around 60C in games which I know sounds hot, but from what I've read this is normal.

Specs:

Asus ROG Z390-E Gaming
EVGA 2080 ti XC Ultra
16GB Corsair LPX
8700k @ 5ghz (cooled by a Kraken X62 and delidded)

I've reinstalled drivers, tested the game on the other SSD's and it's not as bad, if entirely fine.

I reinstalled Windows after installing the m.2 drive, I'm a bit lost at the cause of this.
 
Man of Honour
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Could it be something as simple as being starved of pcie bandwidth? Have you removed the other two drives and tried with only the nvme? Doesn't the 8700k have 16 lanes on the cpu and a further 4 from the chipset? So your system as it stands is under provisioned in terms of pcie bandwidth. Not saying this is necessarily the issue but you could test by removing the other drives.
 
Soldato
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Could it be something as simple as being starved of pcie bandwidth? Have you removed the other two drives and tried with only the nvme? Doesn't the 8700k have 16 lanes on the cpu and a further 4 from the chipset? So your system as it stands is under provisioned in terms of pcie bandwidth. Not saying this is necessarily the issue but you could test by removing the other drives.

Good shout, I'll give it a shot, I tried on a SSD again and it was just as bad. It was a stuttery mess. Using the Tomb Raider Shadows benchmark. It's horrible, I thought it was just AC Odyssey but any game that actively loads is horrible. OW for example is fine but that's because it loads the whole level before playing.

Let me remove all but the m.2 drive and see if that makes a difference
 
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First test with just the m.2 drive... No stutter, going to run the benchmark again and if no stutter, add in the SSD's one by one with a test between to confirm this may be the cause.

EDIT: AC:O runs smooth as butter. Time to add in SSD's.
 
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Man of Honour
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First test with just the m.2 drive... No stutter, going to run the benchmark again and if no stutter, add in the SSD's one by one with a test between to confirm this may be the cause.

EDIT: AC:O runs smooth as butter. Time to add in SSD's.

:( If it is pcie. you would hope it would just be able to throttle everything enough that the kit would just under perform rather than be a stuttery mess. Even at half bandwidth the nvme and the other drives should still have enough. I don't think 1xnvme and 2xssd is too much to ask for from a platform.
 
Soldato
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Welp, I'm stumped, no stuttering with all drives plugged in, I was even running Crystaldiskmark on both the SSD's while benching Tomb Raider on the m.2 drive... So it's inconsistent it seems.

Unless, now I've never seen this in my decade+ of working in the tech industry and 2 decades of building PC's, but maybeeeee, re-seating the Sata/power for the SSD's solved it?
 
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Nope, had a spike, AC:O had a bunch of random beeps (maybe system?) and it said my controller had been disconnected, disabled bluetooth and used the xbox controller dongle instead. So far, no stuttering...
 
Man of Honour
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Nope, had a spike, AC:O had a bunch of random beeps (maybe system?) and it said my controller had been disconnected, disabled bluetooth and used the xbox controller dongle instead. So far, no stuttering...

me thinks you have over saturated the pcie. usb devices also work over the pcie bus dont they? Or it could just be a faulty usb device?
 
Man of Honour
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Soldato
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Awesome stuff, random way of getting there but you got there pretty quickly :) Good news and I love being wrong when it all turns out well.

In a strange way, I was hoping to convince the wife I needed a 9900k :p Maybe another day haha.

But yea, I'll keep an eye on the issue and if it crops up, I'll do some more thorough testing on the issues you mentioned. Thanks for you help mate :)
 
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