My 2TB SSD is beginning to run low on space, so considering doing a 4tb update. Was wondering if anyone had any experience with the Lexar NM790 and whether it was a thought to be a good SSD to run with their system?
1 Like
I have a 2TB NM790 waiting for my batch 5 to arrive. When it does, I will post back here, but the reviews are very, very positive on performance and power consumption. e.g. TechPowerUp
Just out of curiosity, what would you need so much (portable and active) storage for?
Is offloading some older projects to external sources ( external drive / backup storage) no option?
In my case increasing storage of laptop would also mean increasing backup and offsite backup storage capacity to make sure that when I lose the laptop or my house I will not lose any data.
My primary use case for the laptop is software development not gaming or video/audio production.
Like I said… just curious 
I am a Digital Humanities Scholar, working a lot on manuscript and translation projects. I use my framework to keep a couple of thousand plate scans, and I frequently end up with new typescript models for my OCR projects. One book can easily end up being 5-10GB of material.
I am also a bit of an audiophile with a taste for Opera, so I keep my music collection as FLAC!
3 Likes
Remember to regularly perform data backups.
1 Like
Same here - very keen to hear if anyone has the NM790 working, particularly on Ubuntu / Linux, and if so what was needed to get it going!
I’ve already bought a 4TB NM790, for it to go in an AMD Framework 13 (coming in batch 8). I’m aiming to use Ubuntu as the OS.
I’ve been reading up more, and it seems like the NM790 works fine with Windows 11, but there’s gotchas with linux.
I’m no linux expert, but from what I understand the Maxio MAP1602 controller used in the NM790 has compatibility issues in linux. These have been addressed in a patch “add NVME_QUIRK_DELAY_BEFORE_CHK_RDY for MAXIO MAP1602” that went into linux kernel 6.5.5 very recently.
Ubuntu 23.10 ships with Kernel 6.5, which I’m guessing means 6.5.0, if so I think I’d hit problems installing to this SSD unless I could find a way to a 6.5.5 or above kernel with a fresh Ubuntu install. I can find plenty of info on how to update the kernel on an existing ubuntu installation, but not on a fresh install.
The upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS due after April next year is meant to ship with Kernel 6.6 or 6.7, so by then there should be no problems for the NM790.
Would be great if anyone could give me any pointers - also if my understanding of the issues is wrong please let me know.
Worst case, I guess I’ll pick up e.g. a WD SN770 2tb to use in the mean time with 22.04 LTS, then switch over to a new install on the NM790 once Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is available. The SN770 could then go in my desktop as extra capacity.
Cheers!
1 Like
Would be interested if anyone is running the final release of Fedora 39 successfully, and without patching, with a NM790. I installed in a VM, and the kernel version seems to be 6.5.9
Just did a fresh install of Fedora Workstation 39 on a Framework 13" (11th Gen intel) with a 4tb NM790 and it seems to work without patches. Default kernel is 6.5.6.
KDiskMark showed a read of about 6,500 read and write of 3,700 MB/s for the SEQ1M Q8T1 benchmark. That seems a bit slow? Should be getting around 7100 MB/s read and 6600 MB/s write according to this review: Lexar NM790 2TB PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 NVMe SSD Review - Page 8 - eTeknix
I hear this drive relies on HMB so my hunch is that’s the issue.
That’s great to hear NM790 is working with Fedora 39 workstation - much appreciated!
That’s a great option if I can’t get Ubuntu going. I checked the manifest for Ubuntu 23.10.1 and it does look like its on kernel 6.5.0. Hopefully the AMD frameworks are working well with Fedora 39. Cheers!
I use a 4TB NM790 inside the Ryzen Framework, no issues so far.
If you want Linux to recognize it you need a fairly recent Kernel (>=6.5.5 I think).
1 Like
I get better writes with the 4TB one (Settings->NVMe SSD, note that I tested on BTRFS here which might have a slight negative performance impact).
KDiskMark (3.1.4): https://github.com/JonMagon/KDiskMark
Flexible I/O Tester (fio-3.36): https://github.com/axboe/fio
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
[Read]
Sequential 1 MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 6496.912 MB/s [ 6344.6 IOPS] < 1248.90 us>
Sequential 128 KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 6359.824 MB/s [ 49686.1 IOPS] < 639.04 us>
Random 4 KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 1593.242 MB/s [ 398311.7 IOPS] < 323.85 us>
Random 4 KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 72.902 MB/s [ 18225.5 IOPS] < 54.63 us>
[Write]
Sequential 1 MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 5566.337 MB/s [ 5435.9 IOPS] < 1270.44 us>
Sequential 128 KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 2877.528 MB/s [ 22480.7 IOPS] < 1187.78 us>
Random 4 KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 155.651 MB/s [ 38913.8 IOPS] < 3036.06 us>
Random 4 KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 120.774 MB/s [ 30193.6 IOPS] < 27.07 us>
Profile: Default
Test: 1 GiB (x5) [Measure: 5 sec / Interval: 5 sec]
Date: 2023-11-10 22:18:44
OS: arch unknown [linux 6.6.1-AMD]
1 Like
Don’t know how good of a deal the 2TB variant is but when I saw the 4TB one entering the market I was blown away. It’s basically the cheapest PCIe 4.0 4TB NVMe SSD you can buy right now (at least in Germany) while providing performance way above what you would expect from a budget SSD according to multiple reviews (despite being DRAM less). Power consumption, esp. in idle seems also to be on the lower end.
So seems at least for me like a perfect choice as I don’t need the fastest SSD in the world anyways but sill want sth. which is not woefully underspecd compared to the rest of the system.
One downside may be that both controller and flash are not really considered brand-name products currently so one might have concerns about reliability. But on the other hand if you read relatively recent news even big names like Samsung or WD had some SSD “incidents”.
Well I bought one, so I will report back how it works after I clone my disk over. Should be good to move from a PCI3 Sabrent 2tb, to something a bit more modern…
Hi all. I have the NM790 2TB working well in Windows (7000MB/s seq read), and would now like to install Ubuntu.
@Thomas_D - did you manage to work out how to have the Ubuntu installer run on 6.5.5 or above? I can see how to update the kernel to mainline once Ubuntu is installed, but not sure how to install it in the first place!
hi @sgilderd - unfortunately I didn’t find anything on how to get the ubuntu installer to use a newer kernel before install, just on how to update kernel after install.
It might be worth trying a Ubuntu 23.10 install anyway. It probably won’t work, but during ubuntu install “you will be asked to connect to wi-fi, this will allow Ubuntu to download updates and third party drivers (such as NVIDIA graphics drivers) during installation.”
I’m guessing it still won’t bring a new kernel, but could be worth a shot.
If that doesn’t work, I’m planning to go with Fedora 39 for now, which ships with a newer kernel that has the NM790 support. Fedora 39 sounds fairly friendly to use, has official Framework support, and I might try out the KDE “spin” of Fedora to see if I like that UI. When Ubuntu 24.04 LTS comes out mid next year I’ll probably switch back to that.
Universal blue/silverblue/Fedora39 Workstation can all make use of native toolbox containers and/or distrobox.
If you have workflows/reliance on ubuntu-isms you can distrobox create ; distrobox enter and get everything you expect from ubuntu/$otherdistro on a base fedora system.
Toolbox:
Distrobox 
1 Like
Literally just bought an NM790 4tb on Amazon yesterday for my batch 10 AMD Ryzen DIY build. Good to know there are some distros that are already supported as I’m planning to go Linux on this pc.
Hi there,
I’ve just received my AMD 13 yesterday and installed an NM790 (1TB). Works fine, here’s a KDiskMark. I’m running opensuse tumbleweed (kernel 6.6.2)
My 4tb should arrive either tomorrow or on Tuesday. Going to let you know how it works once I clone over my system drive.