advice for SSD "setup" in new PC

[Jan Arvid Grimsrud]

Heya. I'm currently trying to figure out which parts to use in a new gaming / photo video editing PC.

According to Adobe forum discussions, it is highly adviced to have a hard drive setup like this to get the best and quickest workflow for video editing:

SSD 1: OS + Programs
SSD 2: Project media (After finishing the project it can be moved to a storage disk)
SSD 3: Cache, temp adobe stuff.

Currently, I have ended up with "wanting" two of the Samsung 970 EVO 500GB PCIe M.2 SSD
I therefore need a third SSD, which has to be SATA connection. I'm thinking about this one: Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD.

My questions are:
Is 500GB enough for OS and programs/games? I will probably only play PUBG and BF1,2,4.
Will I see any difference if I put all my games on the SSD 2 or SSD 3 disk?

Should I use the Samsung 860 EVO disk as system disk, or is 550/520 R/W speed to slow?

 

[Journey]

The third drive doesn't need to be SATA you can just get an M.2 to PCI-E 4x adapter card, or if your board supports Bifurcation on one of the 16x PCI-e slots, and it is running at a full 16x lanes, not being segmented by the chip-set you could use something like the Asus Hyper M.2 4-way card, or the ASRock equivalent and have all three drives installed onto it, then slotted in.

Link to the Asus - https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboard-Accessory/HYPER-M-2-X16-CARD/overview/

Link to the ASROck one - https://www.asrock.com/mb/spec/product.asp?Model=ULTRA QUAD M.2 CARD

Here's the little one that just does one drive. https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboard-Accessory/HYPER_M2_X4_MINI_CARD/

500GB is fine for hte OS, but TBH I'd be looking at the ADATA SX8200 as a boot drive for the faster 4k speeds, and the other two drive as 970 EVO's.

 

[Jan Arvid Grimsrud]

I know nothing about SSD disks, so could you please explain what you mean with "faster 4k speeds"?
I see that the specs is 3050/1700 R/W, versus EVO 970 3400/2300. There is only one store in Norway that has that SSD, and it's a little bit cheaper than the 970 EVO when adding freight cost.


Nice tip using a adapter card. I didn't know that existed. I will probably end up with a ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero, Socket-1151. I don't know if it supports Bifurcation?

 

[sideways14a]

Sata3 is usually more than quick enough for most tasks anyway, just put the games or cache on it and it will be fine.
That said i would prob just stick the video files being worked on, on a cheeper larger sized ssd.

You want the OS and apps on a nice fast m2 drive, after that i doubt you really will see a massive difference.

 

[Journey]

I know nothing about SSD disks, so could you please explain what you mean with "faster 4k speeds"?
I see that the specs is 3050/1700 R/W, versus EVO 970 3400/2300. There is only one store in Norway that has that SSD, and it's a little bit cheaper than the 970 EVO when adding freight cost.


Nice tip using a adapter card. I didn't know that existed. I will probably end up with a ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero, Socket-1151. I don't know if it supports Bifurcation?

The drive that has the operating system on, will typically be doing a lot more I/O (input/ouput) operations on it, and most of those will be smaller read/writes for several different programs, operating system functions, and such all at the same time. The 4K read/write speeds are most important as these represent the most real world application on a O/S disk, the 970 EVO with a 4K Q1T1 (queues/threads) speed of <50 MB/s on the larger 1TB capacity, and less on the 500GB, the ADATA SX8200 does somewhere between 65-80MB/s on the same test, so it can be as much as 50% faster than the 970 EVO in some instances.