How to fix Samsung 9100 PRO 8TB PCIe 5.0 speed in Expeditions Rome?
Seeing an 8TB drive with PCIe 5.0 specs got me hyped, but the actual loading bar was moving like a snail. It was a total letdown. I checked Samsung Magician and found the drive was stuck in PCIe 4.0 mode, capping the bandwidth at 8GB/s. I tried enabling Windows Fast Startup, but that only shaved off a second—completely useless. I went into the BIOS, changed the M.2 slot link speed from 'Auto' to 'Gen5', and flashed the latest 1.0.4 firmware. In the 3DMark storage benchmark, sequential reads rocketed to 12.5-13.2GB/s, and the game load time dropped from 22 seconds to just 7. I did experience a brief drive disconnect after forcing Gen5, which only stopped once I upgraded to a beefier heatsink to keep temps under 62℃. The drive now sits between 58-65℃ under heavy load. The storage protocol switch worked perfectly, and the system is finally utilizing the hardware.
