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)???

Report · Dec 06, 2015

Hi,

I plan to edit 4K family videos as a hobby.I plan to use adobe premiere and learn adobe after effects later on.

I am upgrading my system and I want to know how to setup the SSD/HD.

i7-5820K

Asus X99-Pro/USB3.1

Asus Geforce 960

32GB Ram (still going to buy)

I have a used M4 Crucial 256GB SSD

I have an unused 500GB Samsung 840 EVO

I have two 3TB HDD (for storage space)

I can buy more SSD if needed.

How should I set up my SSD/HD to give me the best performance?

(bootup/programs/games/scratch disk/storage/etc)

Thanks

Report · Dec 07, 2015

Moving this discussion to the Premiere Hardware Forum

Thanks,

Rameez

Report · Dec 07, 2015

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"

Report · Dec 07, 2015

Thanks for the reply.

I don't think I can easily dispose the Samsung 840 EVO 500GB via ebay since I am from the Philippines. Won't it be ok to use it as the boot drive?

1) Can i do it this way?:

c: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB = Windows(Boot) + Pagefile + Games (Starcraft2+DOTA2) + Adobe (Premiere+After Effects) + MS Office

d: Samsung 950Pro PCIE M.2 500GB = Media cache + Cache + Previews + Project files + Exports + Global Performance Cache (After Effects)

e: Hard Drive 3TB = RAW video files (4K)

f: Hard Drive 3TB = RAW video files (1080p/etc)

2) Won't I be able to use the M4 for anything? (maybe let it hold my games?)

3) I believe I am using a Corsair 860 AXi power supply (860w). Won't that be enough? Do I really need a 1000w PS? I only plan to Overclock to 4.0 or 4.1 Ghz (Don't want to abuse CPU)

4) Can I use the Samsung 950Pro PCIE M.2 on the Asus X99-Pro/USB3.1 ? The 950Pro uses 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes but the X99 motherboard seems to have only 3x PCIe slots and I am going to use 1 of those for my Videocard. (Link:http://www.asus.com/US/Motherboards/X99PROUSB_31/)

5) If I use the M.2 950Pro, will all my 6 sata slots still be available to me? (I will connect my other SSD and HD drives here)

Note: It doesn't really bother me if the boot time of Windows nor my games are fast or slow. I rarely play games anyway (2x a week for 2hours). My only concern is the speed while doing Adobe Premiere projects (frame drops/etc).

Report · Dec 07, 2015

JFPhoton is correct, but I have a few comments

#1 Since you already have itI would try the 840 EVO as your boot drive. My biggest complaint with the EVO SSD is it has a lousy write speed but since you will primarily be reading from the boot drive you may be happy with the performance.

#2 Probably a good way to segregate the games..

#3 That is a great "Platinum" power supply and may be adequate for a single GPU with your two hard drives. Be careful later of adding items that are power hungry like hard drives and additional GPU's.

#4 The Samsung 950 M.2 does not plug into any of your 4 PCIe slots it has it own on-board connector. That motherboard does disable PCIe slot four when the M.2 connector is used. With your i7-5820 processor also the The PCIe x16_3 slot support x8 devices only.

#5 No conflict with the SATA III connections

Report · Dec 07, 2015

Thanks for the reply.

Some other question/s:

1) Does RAM speed matter that much? I've read somewhere that for this board, it is better to get RAM with either the following speed: 2400Mhz, 2800Mhz, 3200Mhz. Is this true?

2) Does RAM speed matter that much if I will be using this primarily for adobe premiere and after effects? Or would any RAM speed above 2400Mhz do? (Like a Gskill 2666Mhz) I don't intend to max overclock this. Maybe upto 4.1 only.

Thanks

Report · Dec 07, 2015

Yes it does for both performance with GPU acceleration especially at higher resolutions and grade ie quality of memory chips. You want 2666+ normally for any higher grade DDR4.

Eric

ADK

Report · Dec 07, 2015

.......you COULD try making a RAID 0 off the motherboard , using the two 3 TB HDDs, ( assuming they are 7,200 rpm ), to have your media files on.......HOWEVER, you would then need to buy a large BACKUP HDD to insure you won't lose the data if the RAID 0 fails ! The performance of that RAID 0 would likely only be 250 to 280MB/sec. read and write speed, but, you would have 6 TB of capacity. A 6 TB backup drive , Enterprise quality is about $300 in the U.S.

The Samsung 950 Pro would blow that RAID 0 AWAY with over 2GB per second read, and 1.5 GB per second write speed !!!.........why handicap your self using stone age, spinning mechanical hard drives in your edit process ???........a newer 1TB 950 Pro is coming soon, as well. Just use youe existing , spinning drives for backup and archiving. You could even put them in a RAID 1 off the motherboard for extra security for all your media, project files, and valuable data.

It is important to have your your media, ( your video footage), on your fastest drive to achieve the best performance......for $350, the 950 Pro will do that.....

Report · Dec 07, 2015

JFPhoton - Ummm. I really would be using the 3TB hard drive as a storage drive. When I said RAW video files, what I meant was it is where I would dump all the videos from my 64GB SD card. I would then choose what I need from the 3TB drive and copy them to the Samsung 950Pro M.2 (this would then be my project files). After finishing the project, I would copy the finished project (from the 950Pro) back to the 3TB drive and eventually to an external drive as backup.

I don't think the Samsung 950Pro M.2 500GB or even a 1TB would be able to contain all my video files (my old files and future ones). As of now, I will be shooting our family vacation/ parties/ etc in 4K video using a Panasonic GX8 and a Sony AX33 Videocam and an hour of footage will already be roughly 64GB. (and I have 2x cameras - 1 of which would be handled by someone else). I know the SD card to HDD transfer would take a lot of time but that's no problem. After our vacation/party I can start the transfer of our SDcard to the HDD and just leave the comp open all night long. Video transfer from the 3TB HD to the 950Pro M.2 will also take some time but that will only take a night or two.

What I am really concerned with is the speed during the editing process. (drop frames, etc).

So to recap:

c: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB = Windows(Boot) + Pagefile + Games (Starcraft2+DOTA2) + Adobe (Premiere+After Effects) + MS Office

d: Samsung 950Pro PCIE M.2 500GB = Media cache + Cache + Previews + Project files + Exports + Global Performance Cache (After Effects)

e: Hard Drive 3TB = Storage files of all my videos

f: Hard Drive 3TB = Storage files of all my videos

Is this the right way to do this? or is there a better way?

Thank you very much for the help.

Report · Dec 07, 2015

Go for it!

Report · Dec 07, 2015

Bill - yeah, I will be ordering the Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB today 😃

The Asus X99-Pro USB3.1 is decent enough right? I plan to get that within the week then I will get my i7-5820 next year when they release haswell-e. (i will either get the new release or the i7-5820 which by then will be much lower in price)

Hmmm do you know a good memory to use for the Asus X99-Pro USB3.1 ? I will only moderately overclock it to 4.1Ghz so I don't need the best ram. I would rather get the best ram for the buck (price/performance wise).

Note: If you are wondering why I don't just buy everything at once, it is because I am from the Philippines and most good items aren't sold here. Even if they are, the prices are more expensive

Report · Dec 07, 2015

Your i7-5820K is the entry level Hasewell-E processor The next generation desktop processor early in 2016 will be the Broadwell-E.

I like G-Skill look at this one. Memory has very little effect on the CPU clock frequency

Report · Dec 07, 2015

I checked the link but unfortunately, the Gskill you are suggesting isn't included in the QVL.

I am actually having a hard time sourcing compatible 32GB RAMs here in the Philippines that is included in the QVL.

So far, these are the only 32GB RAMS available which are included in the QVL:

Gskill - F4-2666C15Q-32GRR = $236

Gskill - F4-2666C15Q-32GRK = $224

Gskill - F4-2666C15Q-32GRB = $204

Gskill - F4-2400C15Q-32GRK = $240

Gskill - F4-2400C15Q-32GRB = $240

Question:

1) Which would you get from the list above? (strange that the slower 2400 is more expensive than the 2666. Is there a logical reason behind this?)

2) Is it really necessary that the RAM should be listed in the QVL? What are the chances that it wouldn't work. The hard thing here is that if we buy items in the US and it doesn't work, then there is no way for us to return it.

Edit: I just read that the Asus has a bug which fries the CPU. Is this resolved already? If not what alternative motherboard would you suggest? Can my setup work with the Gigabyte GA-X99 Gaming G1 ? (This is the same price as the Asus X99 Deluxe)

Report · Dec 08, 2015

Maybe we can get Eric Bowen to come up with some answers for you. He is the professional in this kind of stuff.

Report · Dec 08, 2015

Gskill - F4-2666C15Q-32GRR

Those are the sticks you want. QVL shows the detection has been updated to the sticks used but is not absolute. The QVL is often done before the board launches and then sporadically throughout the life of the board. Dimm manufacturers change chips used in their Dimm's when pricing or availability forces it. The stepping will also change on the ram chip die which also negates the QVL testing and has to refreshed. So this is a very fluid support chart and may be accurate for 1 model and out of date for another. It's better to know what timings and speed reflect the Fab manufacturer for the chips and grade level than use the QVL. However if you don't know what to look for and sourcing trends used by the Dimm manufacturers then asking someone who does is best followed by the QVL as the last source.

BTW Ram speed does effect the clock speed of the CPU when overclocking the CPU and higher clocking the ram above platform spec. Often times you cannot clock a CPU as high the higher you clock the ram.

Eric

ADK

Report · Dec 08, 2015

Thank you Eric. My 64 GB 2800 speed RAM in my X99-E WS board I can only get 2666 out of it if I run the CPU clock to 4.5 GHz. ASUS has neat feature in the boot process that will down clock the memory if it finds it unstable.

Report · Aug 28, 2017

Is my system adequate for 4k video in Premiere Pro and After Effects?

Specs:

i7 5960x

16gb ddr4

Samsung 850 evo 500gb

Seagate 1tb SSD

Samsung T3 SSD

GTX 780 3gb

Report · Aug 07, 2016

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.

Report · Feb 03, 2017

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.

Report · Apr 21, 2018

Your comment makes me smile.

I too am a professional. Your sober realism is refreshing. Thanks

- Craig

Report · Aug 01, 2017

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.