Should I return this Black SN850X drive due to under performance?

[bacillus]

I’ve just built a new pc that comprise:
Asus Prime z790P wifi motherboard
Intel I7 13700K
MSi radeon rx6700xt graphics card
WD_Black SN850X NVMe 1TB (DOM 16 NOV 2022) Firmware Version 620311WD.

The NVMe is in the slot closest to the cpu (slot M_ 1) and the bios setting for the drive is set to Auto detect (I’ve also tried forcing the Gen 4 setting manually).
The WD dashboard app tells me it’s Gen 4 using 4 lanes.
In device manager the drive policy states write caching is enabled.

I’ve tried running with and without the Intel rapid storage technology setting enabled in bios with no performance improvement.

As you can see from the pic , the drive falls far short of the expected up to 7300MB/s speed claim.

What else can I try or should I just replace the drive?
btw I’ve had no response from Support with logged Incident #: 230221-000210

[Keerti_01]

Hi @bacillus,

Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for the best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

[bacillus]

Yes I’ve opened a case four days ago Reference #: 230221-000210…

[Raiden85OCUK]

Drive is more than likely fine, I find the As SSD benchmark tool to be a poor one for showing full drive speeds, best tool to use is CrystalDiskMark as this is a far more popular tool for benchmarking drives.

Here is my As SSD result

And here is my CrystalDiskMark one, vastly different results, even Samsung’s own Magician tool does a better job showing the drives full speed than As SSD.