Question Questions about adding NVME SSD to my build

dmavro

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Feb 11, 2010
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I have an i7-7820X running on an Asus TUF x299 Mark 2 mobo. Currently I have a Samsung 850 PRO 512GB as my boot drive and a 1 TB WD for files and backups.

Im wondering what would be the best way to incorporate a NVMe into the system? Since the Mark 2 has 2 slots should i add 2 drives and try and do a Raid array? Would there be any benefits if i did? Or should ijust add one as my boot drive and keep the 950 PRO for all my files and backups?

Im also using 2x AMD Radeon HD 7750's with an 8 monitor array. The i7-7820 X in 28 lanes only so i believe my PCIe1 slot is running at x16 and PCIe2 slot is runnning at x8.
Would i have any issues with that if i add a NVMe drive? And should I add it to the M.2 1 or 2 slot?

Last but not least, What NVMe drive would be best to go with. Im a big fan of the Samsung SSD's already and have been looking online. New Egg has quite a few and im getting very confused.
950 PRO,
960 PRO, 960EVO,
970 PRO, 970EVO, 970 EVO PLUS

And then there are even different Model#'s for some of thoughs all with varying prices. Very, very confusing.
Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!
 

gn842a

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There are several types of RAID and I would say that your decision to have, or not to have, a RAID system should be independently of whether you get an NVMe. Often times the second NVMe slot is slower than the first, never mind the speed of the NVMe, so be aware of that, in certain kinds of raid with real-time updating the slower of the two drives will be the limiting factor.

If you want to use an NVMe than try one. Stick it in, format it, and get used to it as storage at first. If you want to install an OS on it and make it into your boot drive give it a whirl.

For run of the mill users the advantages over SATA SSD are not huge. It is faster, but SATA SSD is already fast (especially if you grew up in the era of 5 inch floppies). My boot time fell from about 35 seconds (sata ssd OS) to about 20 seconds (NVMe OS). That's an improvement but it's not going to revolutionize your life, compared to the XP days when you turned the machine on, stepped over to the bathroom to shave, went down to the kitchen for some coffee, then climbed back up to find the machine just finishing its boot. (And that's if there were no updates) If you're into benchmarking in the top 100 worldwide than NVMe should be part of your plans.

For my purposes what's nice about NVMe is that you get two drives without having to run the corresponding wires. It allows one to envision the day when the storage and even the OS is sold installed in the mobo. And also, there is going to be more and more NVMe out there, so you might as well get familiar with it.

You will have to decide whether you want eventually to clone from the SSD SATA to the NVMe to have that one running your OS. It can be done, but after reading through it and watching some videos (many resources on the net) I decided I'd rather spend the hundred bucks and do a "simple clone for simple people" from one NVMe to another NVMe. (I am in the habit of keeping a clone of the OS in case of problems). SSD to NVMe is a bit trickier. Or just install the OS on the NVMe.

You probably won't be in this situation but I finally realized my 2012 version of Acronis was no longer good. It can't "see" NVMe drives as drives on the system. But current versions of Macrium etc. can.

Because NVMe sits on the mobo it gets hotter than the storage media connected by SATA in the bays. My NVMe was running 50C when I had an RX 590 gpu, when I installed the 1660 TI the NVMe's typical temperature fell to about 38C (much cooler gpu, and the whole build got cooler). The drives in their bays run around 25C, just slightly above room temp. I think there is a real tradeoff there in potential durability due to heat. But the bigger lesson is that you need to be "GPU heat conscious" in considering your build, because your OS may now be on a drive that's right down in there on the mobo.

Greg N
 

dmavro

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Feb 11, 2010
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There are several types of RAID and I would say that your decision to have, or not to have, a RAID system should be independently of whether you get an NVMe. Often times the second NVMe slot is slower than the first, never mind the speed of the NVMe, so be aware of that, in certain kinds of raid with real-time updating the slower of the two drives will be the limiting factor.

If you want to use an NVMe than try one. Stick it in, format it, and get used to it as storage at first. If you want to install an OS on it and make it into your boot drive give it a whirl.

For run of the mill users the advantages over SATA SSD are not huge. It is faster, but SATA SSD is already fast (especially if you grew up in the era of 5 inch floppies). My boot time fell from about 35 seconds (sata ssd OS) to about 20 seconds (NVMe OS). That's an improvement but it's not going to revolutionize your life, compared to the XP days when you turned the machine on, stepped over to the bathroom to shave, went down to the kitchen for some coffee, then climbed back up to find the machine just finishing its boot. (And that's if there were no updates) If you're into benchmarking in the top 100 worldwide than NVMe should be part of your plans.

For my purposes what's nice about NVMe is that you get two drives without having to run the corresponding wires. It allows one to envision the day when the storage and even the OS is sold installed in the mobo. And also, there is going to be more and more NVMe out there, so you might as well get familiar with it.

You will have to decide whether you want eventually to clone from the SSD SATA to the NVMe to have that one running your OS. It can be done, but after reading through it and watching some videos (many resources on the net) I decided I'd rather spend the hundred bucks and do a "simple clone for simple people" from one NVMe to another NVMe. (I am in the habit of keeping a clone of the OS in case of problems). SSD to NVMe is a bit trickier. Or just install the OS on the NVMe.

You probably won't be in this situation but I finally realized my 2012 version of Acronis was no longer good. It can't "see" NVMe drives as drives on the system. But current versions of Macrium etc. can.

Because NVMe sits on the mobo it gets hotter than the storage media connected by SATA in the bays. My NVMe was running 50C when I had an RX 590 gpu, when I installed the 1660 TI the NVMe's typical temperature fell to about 38C (much cooler gpu, and the whole build got cooler). The drives in their bays run around 25C, just slightly above room temp. I think there is a real tradeoff there in potential durability due to heat. But the bigger lesson is that you need to be "GPU heat conscious" in considering your build, because your OS may now be on a drive that's right down in there on the mobo.

Greg N

Thanks for replying. Going to buy 1 of them. Stick it in M.2 slot 1, make my bios changes to accept it as a boot drive and then do a clean install of OS. I trade for a living and want to make sure I buy what is best for what i am doing. Therefore, I have 3 more questions for you...

1. Which Samsung NVMe would you recommend for my motherboard? I do not read or write large files but i am constantly writing data to cache file for my trading application. Ive read mixed reviews on the EVO Plus's. But believe that is probably what I should get. Either that or one of the Pro's.

2.Should I be looking at 960's or 970's

3. I have a H100i v2 cooling my CPU and 2 case fans( 1 in front and 1in back) in an older CoolerMaster HAF922 mid tower. Since I have 2 of those AMD 7750's in there also would you reccomend a NVMe cooling solution(ie. heatsinks and/or fan) or maybe just another case fan?

Thanks,
Dean
 

dmavro

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One other thing...

Are any of he Samsung drives that are out now 96L NAND? If so which ones? Keep reading about it in articles but having a hard time finding it listed in product descriptions on Newegg so not sure if they are available yet.

If not would it be worth going to a different brand like Micron just to get the extra layers or should I not worry about it and just get a one of the Samsungs that are 64L
 

gn842a

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I would get 970 Evo pro. I would get two, and after you install everything and test the OS (such as on Unigine Heaven benchmark, to test stability under stress), clone the first to the second then remove the clone from your build and put it in the closet. Every three to six months redo the clone to keep it updated. This is because you say you earn your living doing this.

A more sophisticated solution is to get a back up system these can be expensive. There are a lot of ways to do backups so it's really a separate topic. Some folks run business grade backups at their homes. I split the difference I put my energy into multiple file backups because simpler and more at the level of my brain. But it is VERY HANDY to have an extra OS drive in the house and you don't know it till it happens.

Anyhow I don't want to bring all that up but since you are talking about a one drive system and since things do go wrong you need to plan ahead.

Manufacturing reliability in almost all categories increases with scale. Camries are more reliable than jaguars or porsches. So don't get something that is hard to find unless non critical system. I might go for enterprise grade wifi though.

For fans most anything will be better than nothing. I use Noctua on CPU and plan to put it everywhere else as other fans fail. But I might go before they do. Noctua is known to be quiet, reliable, and effective. It actually beat water cooling in a Linus tech test.

I am not aware of specific NVMe fan. That day may come. Meantime your best bet is thorough ventilation so get the extra case fan. You can monitor system temps with something like cpuid app.

You may think, as a home trader that you need speed. Whatever speed you can get is good but no matter what you do you will be beat by billion dollar trading companies that hire physicists and engineers and who locate themselves physically close to critical servers in order to shave millionths of a second off trading times. You don't want a clunky old XP system but dual card or single card graphics is unlikely to make you or break you. It's relevant because dual card doubles the heat in the system and reduces reliability.

My advice is free and worth every penny. You might also invest in Malkiel's book A Random Walk Down Wall street which can be bought used for $3.

Good luck, Greg N
 

dmavro

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Feb 11, 2010
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I would get 970 Evo pro. I would get two, and after you install everything and test the OS (such as on Unigine Heaven benchmark, to test stability under stress), clone the first to the second then remove the clone from your build and put it in the closet. Every three to six months redo the clone to keep it updated. This is because you say you earn your living doing this.

A more sophisticated solution is to get a back up system these can be expensive. There are a lot of ways to do backups so it's really a separate topic. Some folks run business grade backups at their homes. I split the difference I put my energy into multiple file backups because simpler and more at the level of my brain. But it is VERY HANDY to have an extra OS drive in the house and you don't know it till it happens.

Anyhow I don't want to bring all that up but since you are talking about a one drive system and since things do go wrong you need to plan ahead.

Manufacturing reliability in almost all categories increases with scale. Camries are more reliable than jaguars or porsches. So don't get something that is hard to find unless non critical system. I might go for enterprise grade wifi though.

For fans most anything will be better than nothing. I use Noctua on CPU and plan to put it everywhere else as other fans fail. But I might go before they do. Noctua is known to be quiet, reliable, and effective. It actually beat water cooling in a Linus tech test.

I am not aware of specific NVMe fan. That day may come. Meantime your best bet is thorough ventilation so get the extra case fan. You can monitor system temps with something like cpuid app.

You may think, as a home trader that you need speed. Whatever speed you can get is good but no matter what you do you will be beat by billion dollar trading companies that hire physicists and engineers and who locate themselves physically close to critical servers in order to shave millionths of a second off trading times. You don't want a clunky old XP system but dual card or single card graphics is unlikely to make you or break you. It's relevant because dual card doubles the heat in the system and reduces reliability.

My advice is free and worth every penny. You might also invest in Malkiel's book A Random Walk Down Wall street which can be bought used for $3.

Good luck, Greg N

Greg,

Thanks for your input. I know its not the best but I use File History in windows 10 and I do a windows backup to a seperate drive in each PC nightly. I also have Tradestation doing backups on 2 PC's every afternoon to the cloud at 4;30. On top of that I always make a recovery disk for each machine after i do a clean install and install all my programs. Again I know its not the best solution but it works for me.

These are a few of the heatsink/fans i was talking about.....
NVMe M.2 SSD Cooler Heatsinks with 20mm Fan Powerful Cooling
Advancing Gene M.2 NVMe Cooler Heatsink with 20mm PWM Fan (3rd Gen)


You hit the nail on the head with everything you said pertaining to speed. In todays age all the big trading firms out there hire brilliant people . A computer science grad has a better chance then a finance major at getting a job.

And i dont even want to get into talking about the algo's I compete against on a daily basis. Plus the fact that all these huge entities can afford to collocate on servers that are literally across the street from the CME exchange in Chicago. That and all the cloud based solutions out there like Amazons's AWS have made my trading a lot more complicated then it was years ago. Having my roots start over 20 years ago on the NYMEX trading floor and watching the changes year over year has made for one wild ride. And what a long strange trip its been!

Oh and I actually have a copy of that book around somewhere. I should read it again one day.

Thanks,
Dean
 
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gn842a

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Well those NVMe fans are interesting and new to me. I am ambivalent about them. My NVMes are showing 40C and 37C respectively compared to 34 for the CPU and 37 for the GPU. I've been surfing and streaming all night, trading wouldn't push temps much higher if at all. So if I used one of those NVMe things I would get increased noise and increased complexity and I would, I think, get no more than 3 or 4 degrees based on the rest of the build. So I'm going to stick with my "naked" NVMes for now. When I was using an RX 590, though, temps were 10C higher throughout the build, so my biggest thermal control benefit was from taking it out and putting in the 1660 TI. (I wasn't expecting that bonus). If my NVMe were still hitting 50, which it used to do, I would probably consider a fan.

Sounds like you have most things under control! Your data backup practices are similar to mine. I use a file backup app called Iperius which you might evaluate in comparison to windows utility. Would be interesting to know which was better. If you were able to keep your trading going through 08 you have nothing to learn from me (or from Malkiel), IMO.

Greg N