Fixing PCIe link resets on Samsung 9100 PRO 8TB?
It was infuriating seeing distant ruins load in as blurry pixel blocks before slowly snapping into focus—a total immersion killer during stealth sections. It turns out the Samsung 9100 PRO 8TB's aggressive power saving was erroneously dropping the link state from Gen 5 to Gen 3 during high-frequency random reads. I tried swapping to a beefier M.2 heatsink first, but the lag didn't budge, which made me realize this was a protocol issue, not a thermal one. I went into the BIOS, forced the PCIe speed to Gen 5, and disabled every single Link State Power Management option. Now, Device Manager shows the bus bandwidth staying rock steady above 13GB/s without those sudden dips. Funny enough, my boot time actually slowed down by 2 seconds after locking the protocol until I disabled Windows Fast Startup. Drive temps are sitting between 52-60℃, feeling warm to the touch. After ten consecutive map stress tests, the texture pop-in is gone and RAM temps are holding at 58-63℃.
