RoadtoRyzen: AMD Ryzen AM4 X370 Storage benchmarks

Over the past few weeks I’ve been running a lot of AMD Ryzen benchmarks. This time we’re taking a look at the Ryzen processor in combination with the X370 chipset and see how well it does with storage tasks!

Video

To start off we have the video that probably brought you here. In the video we go through single SSD, multi striped SSD and combined NVMe and striped SSD tests, check it out!

SSD information

As mentioned in the video the SSDs used for these benchmarks are:

  • 1x NVMe – Samsung 960 Pro 512GB
  • 3x AHCI – Crucial MX300 525GB
  • 2x AHCI – Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
  • 1x AHCI – Samsung 840 Evo 250GB

All benchmarks where performed on a Gigabyte Aorus AX37-Gaming-5 motherboard running the 5Fc BIOS. The 1700x was overclocked to 3.80Ghz with 16GB 2933Mhz memory.

Additional benchmarks

Additional to the video below are extra benchmarks. I tested multiple situations which I’ll highlight below.

Be warned, lots of benchmarks incoming!

1x NVMe Samsung 960 Pro 512GB

Microsoft NVMe drivers

Horrible performance using the Microsoft drivers

 

Again, Microsoft NVMe drivers really under-perform on writes

 

ATTO doesn’t show the slower speeds of the MS NVMe drivers

 

CrystalDiskMark shows fair performance even with the MS NVMe drivers

 

Samsung NVMe drivers

After installing the Samsung NVMe drivers write performance increases ten-fold!

Massive improvements with the Samsung NVMe driver!

 

AS-SSD also shows giant improvements!

 

ATTO doesn’t show too much of a difference

 

CrystalDiskMark is showing impressive scores

6x SSD

Here are some benchmarks with all the 6 SSDs in a stripe/RAID0 together. I tried multiple port configurations but it didn’t show any speed differences.

X370 AM4 Chipset RAID

Better performance then a single SSD but mainly for sequential transfers

 

Impressive performance, writes are even higher then the 960 Pro!

Windows 10 Pro x64 Striping

Windows striping has been hit and miss in the past. But in recent versions and since AHCI has been on the latest revisions it’s actually become quite good!

Anvil scores using Windows striping are higher then chipset RAID0!

 

AS-SSD is showing good scores. 64 Threaded writes are definitely faster then a single SSD

 

ATTO shows linear scaling per SSD you add. Great sequential write and read performance!

 

CrystalDiskMark also shows some impressive performance numbers

 

2x SSD Mirror

To get some extra data security RAID1 or a mirror is often the best choice on a desktop computer. So I tested it both using the X370 chipest and in Windows using software mirroring.

Chipset mirror

The chipset mirror/RAID1 didn’t do so well. Reads seem to do fine but writes show bad performance.

For some reason writes performance takes a bit hit

 

The same can be seen in Anvil. Read IOps are also quite low

Windows Mirror/RAID1

Let’s see how well the software mirror does in Windows!

Windows RAID1/mirror shows A LOT better performance. Especially the write performance and IOps are A LOT higher

 

Read and write performance is the same as without using a mirror, excellent, much better then using the chipset!

 

Ending remarks

And that’s it. As you can see the chipset does pretty good in RAID0 but when using it for mirroring/RAID1 it falls flat on it’s face.

On the other hand it does show that the AHCI performance is great. Also the NVMe drive and the chipset do not share bandwidth and the chipset has more then enough bandwidth available to saturate all SATA ports full performance at the same time.

With the Ryzen CPU supporting ECC memory the AM4 X370 Ryzen platform makes an excellent base for a storage server!

5 thoughts on “RoadtoRyzen: AMD Ryzen AM4 X370 Storage benchmarks”

  1. I have a very similar situation to the situation you were in when you were using the 960 Pro with the Windows NVMe drivers: I have the Samsung SM961 (the OEM equivalent of the 960 Pro, although there are apparently some technical differences between them) together with and AMD Ryzen 7 1800X and a motherboard using the X370 chipset.

    I also get terrible write performance. In fact, the numbers I get are almost identical to yours (before your driver switch).

    The trouble is that Samsung doesn’t provide any downloadable drivers for the SM961. A comment on the Tom’s Hardware review of the SM961 says that “the retail NVMe driver” “doesn’t work with the SM961”.

    So my questions are: Do you think the SM961 will work with the 960 Pro drivers that you used? Where would I even find the driver you updated to?

    1. Thnx for the comment! I wouldn’t know where to get a driver for the OEM part. Maybe check with Dell or Acer (or some other OEM) that use this drive in some of their laptops? They should have drivers available on their website.

      The Samsung 960 Pro NVMe driver is available on the Samsung website, it’s not hard to find.

  2. Hello i’m using two kingston ssd’s in raid 0 and de write performance is terrible
    Also with two regular WD green 1TB the write speeds are very bad.
    What can i do with this situation ?
    I am using the raid driver from motherboard manufacturing.
    What is wrong ? I can’t find a proper driver.

  3. I have a Ryzen 1600 and a X370.

    I have a 3 drive Raid 0 with mechanical drives .
    Its pretty fast in all categories of Crystal Disk 5.5.0
    Except the Sequential Write Q32T1 benchmark.
    I have the latest drivers 17.40 installed.
    I just wonder if a new rom or bios would help too for RAID EUFI rom.

    1. No, the reason you’re Q32T1 is low is because you are using mechanical drives, SSDs are 10x+ faster in that regard. Mechanical drives can only get reasonable sequential performance but even then they deliver only a fraction of a single SSD, even in RAID0. Only use mechanical drives for mass storage now a days.

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