960 PRO For OS/APPS or Project Files?

[Adamvou]

Hi folks,

I've been a reader a long time and here is my first post

After hours of searching I'm still not sure about this.

First, I am building new pc for editing and only thing I'm missing is harddrives.

I want to purchase samsung 960 pro 512 gb and I also need second SSD for ex. Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5" SSD, or you suggest other type?

960 Pro is fastest and there is different opinions on the internet what should be installed at this disk. OS and programs or media files like project files,cache, previwes,exports?

Can someone explain it to me, please?

Btw if it matters here is the rest of my setup:

1. I7 6800K
2. Asus ROG Strix x99 Gaming
3. RAM Corsair Vengeance DDR4 32GB 2X16
4. EVGA SuperNova 750W G2
5. Asus GeForce GTX1080 ROG Strix
6. NZXT Kraken X62
7. Phanteks EVOLV tempered

Thank you!

[Bill_Gehrke · Accepted solution]

With my Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) I have tested that.  The test drives were  a SATA III 840 Pro and a M.2 950 and two M.2 960 Pro.  I tested all combinations with the fastest  M.2 960 Pro always being used for the export drive, including having everything on the 512 GB M.2 960 Pro and could not find any real difference.  So I am going with a 950 Pro for OS/Applications and the 1TB M.2 960 for Projects.  I have many hard disk drives which I will plug-in to an external docking station like this:   StarTech SDOCKU33EF Black External docking station for 2.5in or 3.5in SATA III 6Gbps hard drives - e...

So if you have a decent SATA III SSD use that for your boot drive as opposed to buying a new SSD

[Adamvou]

Hi Bill, ok I get it, what about 960 EVO instead of pro?

[Bill_Gehrke]

Do you want a three year warranty or five year warranty?

[Adamvou]

I will get 5 years anyway from the store I'll purchase. Ok I need to find out what my motherboard supprots. If it has 2 slots for 960 EVO 512 GB I would like to take 2 of them. Othervise I'll go with 850 pro sata ssd for os/apps and 960 pro for projects.

[Adamvou]

BTW here is motherboard

ROG STRIX X99 GAMING | Motherboards | ASUS Global

can anyone see how many m.2 it does support?

Edit: Ok it look like it does not support more then 1 m.2 and it has 1 slot for u.2

I guess I have to stick with 960 evo and a sata III ssd...

[Bill_Gehrke]

It depends on your choice of CPU and what PCIe slots you are using.  Here is the specification on expansion

3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 ( x16, x16/x16, x8/x16/x8 mode with 40-LANE CPU; x16, x16/x8, x8/x8/x8 mode with 28-LANE CPU)

1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode)

2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 *¹

IF you have an open PCIe slot that is Gen 3 and at least x4 you can put in an adapter board like I have to support a second  and thied M.2 SSD as below.  Three M.2 running at once.

[Adamvou]

Thank you Bill, I didn't know that, is there any popular "good quality" types of these adapters? I will definetily buy one and purchase 2 of 960 EVO.

[Bill_Gehrke]

What you see there is an ASUS Hyper x4 M.2 Mini and a Lycom DT-120.  There are several others JUst make sure that you have a PCIe Gen 3 x4 (or x8 or x16} slot available, you do have a PCIe Gen 2 slot on that motherboard and it will work in a Gen 2 x4 slot but at a much reduced performance.

[Adamvou]

I'm not sure what will be available, have not got the parts yet to test it so...I need to put in there 2 stiks with ram, gtx1070 and cpu. It looks like it enough space but...I don't know

[Adamvou]

maybe I should have chosen other motherboard

[RoninEdits]

with the 28 lane cpu: from the manual it appears that the last x16 size slot (named pciex8_3) will split lanes with the first x16 size slot (pciex16/x8_1), so if your gpu is in the first slot and you put something in the very last slot, the gpu will drop from 16 to 8 lanes and the last slot will take the other 8 lanes. not many motherboards are able to split x8 down further to x4/x4, i don't see any listing of that in the manual. if you place something in the third x16 size slot (pciex16_2, second x16 slot with orange light in your picture above) it should have its own 8 lanes and leave the first slot alone at 16. so with a 28 lane cpu, you can have the gtx 1080 at x16, one m.2 ssd in its m.2 slot, and one free x16 size slot at 8 lanes for one other device, like a display i/o card, thunderbolt 3, raid card, second m.2, etc.

there might be some performance loss if using x8 lanes with the gtx 1080. possibly 5-10%, it would depend on the software or game, but with premiere pro being cpu based its less likely you would see performance loss with premiere. if you will be adding enough hardware to drop the gtx 1080 to x8 and are worried about loosing some performance, then you have to decide if its worth the extra cost to upgrade to a 40 lane cpu and possibly the asus deluxe or WS motherboard to properly handle your hardware.

i'm not sure why you are considering two m.2 drives, are you planning on using one for os/apps? you will be fine with a sata ssd for os/apps and then the m.2 ssd for cache/projects/media. a m.2 for os/apps won't actually help with application performance. if you need two for capacity, samsung sells up to 2tb size with the pro, but they are also very expensive. most projects do not need the m.2 speeds, they are just nice to avoid raid sata ssd, but raid sata ssd can be much cheaper when getting into large capacity media setups.

[Adamvou]

Thank you so much for all that info Ronin, really appreciate. Yes I was thinking to use one of m.2 to os/apps as I thought it would increase program performance, but how I see it not worth that cost. I'll take sata ssd (samsung 850 pro 500gb should be a good option?) and one 1Tb 960 pro for projects/cache, still not sure about pro and evo, but if it a minimal with speed difference I would buy EVO.

[Bill_Gehrke]

The speed difference is a minor reason, the major reason is that Samsung offers 3-year warranty on the EVO versus a 5-year warranty on the Pro.  Some dealers wiil offer different terms

[Adamvou]

Bill and Ronin, just want to thank you again, I'm done with building PC and now enjoying it  

[chrisw44157881]

here is how each drive setup actually influences premiere's speed for the following:

Media Importing

Conforming Audio

Generating Peak Files

Multistream Playback

Render Previews

Exporting to H.264

Exporting to DNxHD HQ & DNxHR HQ

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-4-Storage-Optimization-854/#Mu...

[Adamvou]

Great! Thank you for answer Chris, it good to know!

[Bill_Gehrke]

With your I7 6800K you only have 28 PCIe lanes that then limits your expansion to:

3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 ( x16, x16/x8, x8/x8/x8 mode with 28-LANE CPU)

1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode)

2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 *¹

That means after installing your X16 GPU you could install one more card at x4 before you would probably drop the GPU to x8.  I could be wrong maybe someone else could give us an answer as to whether two x4 cards equals x8 or if filling the third x16 connector with a second x4 card automatic would drop the first x16 card to x8.

But in any case if you do not plan any additional expansion one PCIe M.2 adapter would work fine