Best setup of SSD/HD for video editing? Where do i put the fastest SSD? (ex. 256GB fastest SSD on Boot / 500GB mid-speed SSD for programs / 256GB slowest SSD for scratch / 3TB HDD for backup)???

i completely agree. I make videos for a living and I was using till last week a PC with a i7 3770 3.4 from 2012, 16gb ram and GTX 960 4gb GPU and a Samsung Evo for boot drive and an HDD for scratch disk and I was editing my a7s HD and a6300 4k videos without any problem from an external usb 3.0 drive. I sometimes needed to switch to 1/2 resolution in Adobe Premiere but everything was smooth enough.

Were you really trying to help this guy? I know this was posted ages ago, but for the sake of anyone using this as a resource now, I wanted to include this. The idea people here were making suggestions to a hobbyist that he needed more than he's listed is ludicrous. We get it guys, you know how to blow your pay-cheques. We all seem to be so enthused as how to spend someone else's hard-earned money, without thought (while looking down from on-high). Many pros wouldn't even get too fussed over what Samsung SSDs they run (all of mine are 850 evos btw, and I haven't had any issues). When you do this stuff for a living, you're normally editing using proxies of your 4k footage (and this makes infinite sense to anyone that's not editing the latest Peter Jackson movie), so why in the world go nuts for some home videos editing in actual 4k? Putting his kids through college probably makes a little more sense, no? He could get away with editing in 720, and completely blow everyone away with the hardware he already had. Choose not to to be an enabler in what's already a silly party of people shopping more than shooting or editing. Don't believe the hype. Put your wallets away. Don't be sheep, be cheap.

Not sure if anybody does still check this topic, but I performed several hours testing variations for drives (my other specs are identical to original poster) and I got even more confused

Even though crystaldisc app show 12x times faster speeds of RAMdisk then my SSD speeds (which also holds system and every important app), SSD compared to RAMdisk got basicly zero performance boost. Can anybody advice why is that?

The test is directly made for my style of workflow:
Import into project -> make timeline -> Render timeline (originals are h265) -> cut to pieces -> color picked cuts -> warp (and/or denoise if needed -> Sometimes render these edited cuts for quality check -> render out.

Bellow you can see a link to table with numbers in % of performance load on my PC parts. Numbers below the table shows either time for render (in-out on specific 10sec long cut) or dropped frames.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8833983/Screenshot%202016-08-07%2016.45.30.png

I believe there SHOULD be bigger difference.
Ramdisk 6800/7500MB/s vs Transcend SSD 512GB doing about 550/450MB/s

Thanks for any possible help.

1. CPU - is Good....be sure to overclock it to 4.5 Ghz using a good air cooler....doing so will give a good pwerformance boost...esp with 4 K

2. GPU - 960 is weak......change to at least a 970 with a minimum of 4 GB video memory......it needs that for "frame buffering" in 4k.   980ti is ideal, but, expensive

3.  32 GB - is OK for now ...in future, AEffects loves all the ram you can throw at it

4. Storage -  the speed of your storage drives is critical to good performance.Here, you have less than ideal SSDs.

Recommend :  buy the Samsung 950Pro PCI SSD and install into M.2 slot....this drive will NOT be used for boot drive.

                          since the EVO has had problems, and the M4 is old, neither is recommended with your system........ebay them.

                          Buy a Crucial MX200 series SSD for the boot drive, 256GB is plenty, it has almost the same great performance as the best Samsung 850 Pro, but is cheaper.....place ONLY the OS, programs and Windows page file on this drive.

                          ALL other files will go on the 950 Pro PCI SSD which has INCREDIBLE SPEED .  The speed at which your media files are "served up" is very important to performance, and this drive will provide it for that and ALL the other files like "media cache". "cache", "previews", "project files", and "exports". Also, this drive can serve as your After Effects "Global performance cache "

                         because the capacity of the 950 currently is only 500GB, you should only keep ACTIVE files and projects on it to achieve best editing and render performance.....when finished with a project, you will need to "offload" the media files, project files, and export files to your archive HDD(s)

                         Upon completion, use your existing 3 TB drives as backup drives and for archiving your project files and media, etc.....provided they are 7200 rpm and in good shape.

                        Other alternatives are to create a RAID 0 array using several SSDs off the motherboard, but, you won't need to do this.

P.S.                 Make sure your power supply is plenty adequate....usually a minimum 1000 watt "gold" type is recommended.......esp. for when  overclocking. Under sized power supplies WILL cause problems including the feared " Black screen of DEATH"

Moving this discussion to the Premiere Hardware Forum

Thanks,

Rameez