PCIE Parameter / Settings

#1

Hello everyone,

I use a Rock5B with 8 GB RAM
Samsung 970 Evo NVMe (256 GB)
WLAN = A8 module (RTL 8852)

Armbian 24.5.5 bookworm (Debian 12) is installed:
Linux rock-5b 6.10.1-edge rockchip-rk3588 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Jul 24 13:54:07 UTC
2024 aarch64 GNU/ Linux.

Starting NVMe takes a relatively long time - about 30 seconds.

With a raspi 5, for example, the boot time with NVMe could be significantly reduced by changing the PCIE settings (from PCIE 2 to PCIE 3)

Klick me

The NVMe speed was doubled as a result.

What speed / how many lanes is PCIE set to on the Rock5B - (Gen 2 / Gen 3 / Gen 4)?
Which command can I use to display and change the PCIE parameters?

Greetings

#2

The Rock 5B NVME port by default is 4 lanes of PCIE 3. You can use overlays to split it up.

#3

Hello inkognito,
thanks for the info!

I just measured my system boot time (with xfce) with m.2 NVMe SSD…

systemd-analyze time:

  • Startup finished in 2.915 s (Kernel), + 1 min 30.47s (userspace) = 1 min 33.386s
  • graphical.target reached after 1mi 30.402s in userspace…

so considerably longer than the 30 seconds I initially assumed…

I find that extremely long for a Samsung 870 EVO NVMe.

  • How can I drastically shorten the boot time?
  • What can I deactivate “safely”?

Greetings

#4

I am a bit confused because the only “Samsung 870 Evo” drives I can find are 2.5 inch SATA drives, no NVME. Are you sure it is genuine?
Also, the pci express version used would hardly affect boot times, because you’re not loading many huge files sequentially (maybe the Linux kernel, but this is still quite small).

#5

Hi Inkognito,

oh sorry my mistake…
it’s a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250 GB (m.2 NVMe)

systemd-analyze-Zeit:

Startup finished in 2.915 s (Kernel), + 1 min 30.47s (userspace) = 1 min 33.386s
graphical.target reached after 1 min 30.402s in userspace…

so considerably longer than the 30 seconds I initially assumed…

I find that extremely long for a Samsung 970 EVO Plus (m.2 NVMe).

How can I drastically shorten the boot time?
What can I deactivate “safely”?

Greetings

#6

Hi There, even my sd cards are faster than that :D! Did you check dmesg for any other errors? Maybe some systemd service is hanging at boot time or something

1 Like
#7

@RockBass you might and to take a look at problems people had with 970 evo ROCK 5B - list of supported NVME
And the pinned guide has some info about this too.