If you're experiencing any of these problems, then fear not, as there are ways that you can try and restore your day one speeds. First things first: verify your drive's true wear state. Download a clean, vendor-neutral hardware utility like CrystalDiskInfo and check the health status percentage and total bytes written metric. If it's above 80%, your drive's physical flash chips are mathematically perfectly healthy, so it's not the silicone itself that's causing the issues.

Another step to take is to enforce the 15% overprovisioning rule. You have to be ruthless with your storage. Delete old games, clear your downloads folder, and force your drive's capacity back down to below 85% utilization, giving the flash controller breathing room. Instantly, it restores its dynamic write cache. Keep this in mind going forward, too. Rid of files you no longer need or uninstall games you haven't played in a while.

You can manually force an OS trim sequence to rectify some of the issues, too. To do this, open the Windows Start menu, type "Defragment and optimize drives," and open the utility. Select your primary SSD and click Optimize. This forces Windows to shoot a massive, long-overdue trim command sequence down the PCIe link.

Running a thermal audit can also be super beneficial. Check for controller thermal throttling by running a heavy benchmark such as CrystalDiskMark while monitoring HWiNFO64. If your drives' controller temps spike past 75°C, the drive is throttling its own speed to prevent overheating. Reseat your motherboard's M.2 aluminum heat sink or swap out a dried-up thermal pad for $5.