Primary M.2 Socket vs Secondary M.2 Socket Which is Faster?

The FPS Review may receive a commission if you purchase something after clicking a link in this article.

Synthetic Storage Benchmarks

PCMark 10

We are using PCMark 10’s Full System Drive Storage Benchmark. It outputs an overall score (higher is better) that is derived from the Bandwidth (higher is better) as well as access time (lower is better) results.

Primary M.2 socket versus Secondary M.2 socket PCMark 10

Right off the bat, we find there to be a loss in performance running the exact same SSD off the secondary M.2 socket versus the primary socket, despite both being PCIe 4.0 x4 slots.  The drop in PCMark10 is 3%, for a test that is very consistent, this is a decent amount.

Primary M.2 socket versus Secondary M.2 socket PCMark 10

The PCMark 10 bandwidth test continues the trend, with the secondary M.2 socket being 3% slower as well in the bandwidth test.

Primary M.2 socket versus Secondary M.2 socket PCMark 10

Even the access time is slower on the secondary M.2 socket at 70 versus 68, certainly pointing toward latency increasing.

PassMark PerformanceTEST

We are using PassMark’s PerformanceTEST Disk Mark benchmark only. This test benchmarks Disk Sequential Read, Disk Sequential Write, IOPS 32KQD20, IOPS 4KQD1 tests and outputs an overall score (higher is better.)

Primary M.2 socket versus Secondary M.2 socket PassMark PerformanceTEST Disk Mark

The PassMark PerformanceTEST Disk Mark benchmark continues the trend, though it isn’t as extreme here, with less than 1% difference.

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

Recent News