Question Best Drive Config for Ultimate Speed on Refresh to Win 11 on Current High Performance Rig?

[Caveman]

Per rig in signature...

I'm going to roll to Win 11 sometime between now and Oct with the rig below which is used 95% for flight sims (MS2024, X-Plane, DCS, IL-2 GB/Korea and 5% HTPC... Right now, in Win 10, everything operates from a common WD Black SN850X NVMe 4TB drive. It's about 40% full and by PC end of life/rebuild (3 years?) is estimated to be ~70% full. So, unused drive free space should remain "adequate to avoid slowdown".

That said, I've recently learned (perhaps bogus info from one person and a chat GPT chat below) that having my flight sims and other games on a separate drive from my OS will help free memory bandwidth and ultimately optimize the speed of the system (prevent bottlenecks). My system appears to run fine now but I like to keep things as optimized as possible - get every FPS possible and avoid even a single immersion-breaking stutter. I'm assuming (now) that I had some old/incorrect guidance when I built my rig 2 years ago because I thought having all on the same drive was best (perhaps I was remembering old info from SSD days on previous rig?)

For the upcoming refresh to Win 11, I'll most likely (pending feedback here) install a new 1TB drive will be on par with the existing drive in terms of speed. I may go with PCIeGen5 so it may be lighting fast. This drive would have Win 11, and apps for benchmarking, and MS office suite, etc... and be spillover if I needed more space. The current 4TB drive would remain for flight sims and games. Does all this sound like a reasonable, good plan? Or do you have some advice/tips in this context? Is there any argument for choosing the slower drive for the OS or should that always be the faster drive? The Chat GPT chat below covers this topic - things I've highlighted in blue are my emphasis.


When building a fast PC, is it best to install my programs on the same drive as the OS or another drive?

ChatGPT said:​

Whether to install your programs on the same drive as your operating system (OS) or on another drive depends on several factors, including performance, organization, and available storage space. Here's a breakdown to help you decide:

Reasons to Install Programs on the Same Drive as the OS​

1. Performance (for NVMe/SSD drives):
   • If you're using a fast SSD or NVMe drive for your OS, installing programs on the same drive ensures they benefit from the high-speed read/write performance of that drive.
   • Modern SSDs can handle running both the OS and programs simultaneously without significant performance degradation.
2. Ease of Maintenance:
   • Having both the OS and programs on the same drive simplifies system backups (e.g., creating a full disk image).
   • It’s easier to manage system restores since your programs are tied to the OS.
3. Compatibility:
   • Some programs and services expect to be installed on the OS drive and may run better or avoid complications when installed there.

---

Reasons to Install Programs on a Separate Drive​

1. Storage Space Management:
   • If your OS drive is relatively small (e.g., a 256GB SSD), offloading large programs to another drive can save valuable space for the OS and critical system files.
2. Organizational Benefits:
   • Separating your OS and programs makes it easier to reinstall or upgrade your OS without affecting your installed programs.
   • It reduces clutter on your OS drive, improving manageability.
3. Performance in Specific Workloads:
   
   • For heavy workloads (e.g., gaming or video editing), installing programs on a separate SSD can spread the I/O load across multiple drives, reducing bottlenecks.
4. Redundancy and Safety:
   • If the OS drive fails or needs reformatting, having programs on another drive may make it easier to recover their settings or data (though reinstalling the programs is usually still required).

---

Best Practice Recommendation​

• Primary Drive (OS + Frequently Used Programs): Install the OS and frequently used programs (e.g., browsers, productivity tools, and essential software) on your fastest drive, typically an NVMe or SSD. This maximizes speed and responsiveness.
• Secondary Drive (Games, Large Software, and Data): Use a secondary drive (preferably SSD) for large programs like games, creative suites, and non-essential software. If the secondary drive is slower (e.g., HDD), you might notice slower load times for these programs.
• Hybrid Approach: For users with multiple fast drives, consider placing resource-heavy programs (e.g., video editing software) on a separate NVMe or SSD to spread workloads.

Ultimately, aim for a setup that balances performance and convenience while considering your specific use case and storage limitations.

 

[Tech Junky]

There's a few variables to contend with.

% used on drive impacts things
bus on the mobo
drive type / gen

My laptop has dual M2 drives and performance between them is mediocre when moving huge data between them but, moving data to a TB drive boosts speed beyond the internal drive to drive data.

Since you're dealing with huge image files with the sims it's going to be a capacity / speed scenario to get the best performance. For me I decided to go with a U.3 drive which is a 2.5" flash drive with the same speeds as the M2 counterpart but, at a cheaper cost once you hit say 4TB+. I grabbed a Kioxia KCD8XRUG15T3 15.36TB last year for ~$1200 and it hits 6.5GB/s which exceeds any need I have or could get to w/o building another PC with a similar drive and connecting them with 100GE.

So, if you're rebuilding some of the core parts I would look into the MSI Carbon x870e. It has a nice balance of sockets / bandwidth to play around with and 3 slots. I just grabbed one for $499 and waiting on some additional stuff to show up before mucking around with the transplant. Seems like everything right now is on backorder. I also grabbed some 850X's to swap out in various places and up the laptop capacity.

It all comes down to how much you value and want to spend to get the best results though in the end. For ~$2K though you could be good to go for a few more years of flights. You could push it even further with a higher capacity drive either 30/60TB which are going for about $2500/$4500.

 

[manly]

KISS.

I'd like an explanation that 2 NVMe drives optimizes "memory bandwidth" in some way; that doesn't pass the sniff test. ChatGPT is saying there could be some workloads where you benefit from additional storage I/O bandwidth.

Honestly if you project that your 4TB drive will only reach 70% full at "end of life," that is PLENTY of over-provisioning. In that scenario, I wouldn't do anything to "optimize" the situation.

There is no real world benefit to PCI-e 5.0 for your OS boot drive. If you don't mind spending more for the Crucial T705, that's fine but you won't gain anything from it. It's harder to cool, so I'd probably lean towards PCI-e 4.0 to be honest.

Based on what you wrote, picking up a 1TB NVMe for the OS and base apps is fine, but I don't expect you to gain any FPS from it.

 

[mikeymikec]

IMO if modern (let's say gen3 NVMe and later) SSDs came with a counter for the amount of times that they hit their maximum throughput in a real-world scenario, a lot of people would be pretty shocked at the low tally. I've occasionally seen such a SSD hit say >1GB/sec in a real-world scenario.

Even with SATA SSDs in my experience it wasn't all that common. Theoretical bus throughput is one matter, pushing data and processing it for a particular purpose is a completely different ball game.

That said, I've recently learned (perhaps bogus info from one person and a chat GPT chat below) that having my flight sims and other games on a separate drive from my OS will help free memory bandwidth and ultimately optimize the speed of the system (prevent bottlenecks)

Unless you're trying to multitask heavy I/O while gaming, this is rubbish. Decent DDR4 in a decently-spec'd system will easily handle whatever speed the SSD can serve up. IMO the person you're getting advice from is possibly assuming the absolute worst case scenario for background system activity when gaming while assuming the absolute best case scenario for SSD I/O (which frankly makes little sense).

The DDR5-6000 in my AM5 system according to memtest86 can push throughput in the region of 70GB/sec which is way over gen5 NVMe.

IMO if you want ideal gaming performance then don't have unnecessary rubbish running in the background; that will be of far greater benefit than going for some over-complicated setup to work around silly user behaviour.