Question Clarification on SSD

[Leif D.]

I am in the process of making a list on a computer build and I am a novice. I am not building a gaming computer but a computer to edit video. I have read that I want SSD NVMe M2 drive with a minimum of 1500 mbs write speed. I have 2 questions should I have 2 SSD cards 1 for OS and 1 for storage? What size for each would be best if that is in fact the best route? The motherboard I was planning on is
MSI MPG Z490 GAMING EDGE WIFI LGA 1200 Intel Z490 SATA 6Gb/s ATX Intel Motherboard
What would my best options for SSD be?

 

[Billy Tallis]

You should probably get at least a 1TB drive, because lower capacities are slower due to having fewer flash chips to access in parallel. Most consumer NVMe drives can handle 1.5GB/s writes to their SLC cache, but that fills up (temporarily) after some number of GB that is usually not more than a few tens of GB, and the cache gets smaller as the drive fills up.

There are relatively few consumer drives that can sustain 1.5GB/s writes even after the SLC cache fills up: see https://www.anandtech.com/show/16087/the-samsung-980-pro-pcie-4-ssd-review/3 and https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16087/fill-avg.png for typical results. The best options right now for high sustained write speed on a PCIe gen3 platform are probably the SK hynix Gold P31, WD Black SN750 and Samsung 970 EVO Plus. The WD and Samsung also have 2TB versions if you can afford that. They're not really much faster, but if you're throwing data around at 1.5GB/s then a 1TB drive fills up pretty quickly.

 

[Leif D.]

You should probably get at least a 1TB drive, because lower capacities are slower due to having fewer flash chips to access in parallel. Most consumer NVMe drives can handle 1.5GB/s writes to their SLC cache, but that fills up (temporarily) after some number of GB that is usually not more than a few tens of GB, and the cache gets smaller as the drive fills up.

There are relatively few consumer drives that can sustain 1.5GB/s writes even after the SLC cache fills up: see https://www.anandtech.com/show/16087/the-samsung-980-pro-pcie-4-ssd-review/3 and https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16087/fill-avg.png for typical results. The best options right now for high sustained write speed on a PCIe gen3 platform are probably the SK hynix Gold P31, WD Black SN750 and Samsung 970 EVO Plus. The WD and Samsung also have 2TB versions if you can afford that. They're not really much faster, but if you're throwing data around at 1.5GB/s then a 1TB drive fills up pretty quickly.

So if I understand correct I shouldn't have a seperate OS SSD(500GB) and a storage SSD(1TB) in seperate m.2 slots? It won't slow down the system doing both on a single SD? Sorry I am new to this... Thanks for the info

 

[UsandThem]

So if I understand correct I shouldn't have a seperate OS SSD(500GB) and a storage SSD(1TB) in seperate m.2 slots? It won't slow down the system doing both on a single SD? Sorry I am new to this... Thanks for the info

Not really needed. Unless you do something like editing/writing 4k video as a job, having both on one drive is fine.

In my desktop, I have a 1TB WD Black NVMe drive, split with 500 GB for the OS (more than needed because I keep a lot music on that partition), and 500 GB for programs. I've never had a slowdown doing multiple things at the same time.

 

[Leif D.]

Not really needed. Unless you do something like editing/writing 4k video as a job, having both on one drive is fine.

In my desktop, I have a 1TB WD Black NVMe drive, split with 500 GB for the OS (more than needed because I keep a lot music on that partition), and 500 GB for programs. I've never had a slowdown doing multiple things at the same time.

thank you for your input...

 

[damian101]

As SSDs have very short access times and more than enough bandwidth for normal tasks and video editing, having a dedicated SSD for video editing won't noticably improve your video editing experience. I'd rather buy a single bigger SSD than two smaller ones, at least as long as price per capacity isn't much worse for the bigger SSD.
However, do you really need an SSD for video editing? I've always edited my videos directly from a hard drive and the only time I felt limited by the hard drive speed was when I tried playing the video back at 8 times the speed, which resulted in dropped frames. From my current RAID 6 setup (8 local 10TB hard drives) not even that would be a problem, due to the much higher read bandwidth. Of course, scrubbing through footage might feel slightly more responsive on an SSD, but as long as there is no additional load on the HDD that should be only barely noticable, if noticable at all. There are professionals who edit their videos directly from HDD network storage, which increases access times compared to a local HDD and offers lower bandwidth when used over standard 1 Gbit/s Ethernet.

 

[Leif D.]

As SSDs have very short access times and more than enough bandwidth for normal tasks and video editing, having a dedicated SSD for video editing won't noticably improve your video editing experience. I'd rather buy a single bigger SSD than two smaller ones, at least as long as price per capacity isn't much worse for the bigger SSD.
However, do you really need an SSD for video editing? I've always edited my videos directly from a hard drive and the only time I felt limited by the hard drive speed was when I tried playing the video back at 8 times the speed, which resulted in dropped frames. From my current RAID 6 setup (8 local 10TB hard drives) not even that would be a problem, due to the much higher read bandwidth. Of course, scrubbing through footage might feel slightly more responsive on an SSD, but as long as there is no additional load on the HDD that should be only barely noticable, if noticable at all. There are professionals who edit their videos directly from HDD network storage, which increases access times compared to a local HDD and offers lower bandwidth when used over standard 1 Gbit/s Ethernet.

Thank you for you advice. Being novice in this I am currently using a iMac and it is sooooo slow.... I decided I will build my way out of the problem.... I am really trying to think ahead so that I wont have to replace as fast as I am with my current iMac.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Thank you for you advice. Being novice in this I am currently using a iMac and it is sooooo slow.... I decided I will build my way out of the problem.... I am really trying to think ahead so that I wont have to replace as fast as I am with my current iMac.

Haha! Awesome! DIY desktops are slightly more expensive in the beginning but save you money in the long run by replacing only the components you need. Sell the used one on Craigslist/eBay and even better! I only did CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrades for 6 years, and I didn't always needed to replace the RAM.

 

[damian101]

@Leif D. Good thing PCs are easily upgradable
You could get a big HDD first, and get a second SSD later if the HDD is too slow for editing. I would recommend getting a big HDD anyway for archive your projects, HDD storage is cheap. Best deal in my experience are used enterprise hard drives with 8-12TB capacity, just make sure they use SATA interface and not SAS.