[SOLVED] Recommended Drive for OS: 2TB NVMe PCIe 3.0 vs 500GB SATA SSD vs 1TB SATA SSD ?

Jul 4, 2021
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Hey All,

I'm upgrading my computer with some new parts and I'm curious which drive others would use for the Windows 10 install. I do lots of video editing of 4K videos in Davinci Resolve, lots of photo organizing and editing in Lightroom (cloud and LR Classic, all RAW photos), and lots of gaming (including many mods).

MOBO: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master
CPU: Ryzen 9 5950X
RAM: 64GB (32GB x 2) Crucial Ballistix 3600 CL16
GPU: Gigabyte RTX 2070 OC 8GB
Storage Drives:
Samsung 980 2TB NVMe PCIe 4.0
Corsair MP400 2TB NVMe PCIe 3.0
WD Blue 1TB 3D NAND SATA SSD
WD Blue 500GB SATA SSD
Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD

My plan was:
Use Samsung 980 for video storage and installation of Davinci Resolve (will periodically need to cycle out older videos to an external storage drive to free up space for newest projects)
Use Corsair MP400 for photo storage, lightroom install, and some games
Use SATA SSDs for the rest of my games
Use HDD for backup of key folders (I also have Adobe cloud for photos and iDrive cloud backup for videos and key folders, OneDrive for documents.)

Curious where people think the OS would best fit in this setup to achieve best performance, but considering the tradeoffs.

Thanks!
 
Solution
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I would personally have all apps(and the OS) on the PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive and have that as one physical drive/partition( C drive). Then use the other SSD's as either scrubbing disks/scratch disks/cache disks and/or storage disks. Corsair would be my game library drive, for sure.

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I would personally have all apps(and the OS) on the PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive and have that as one physical drive/partition( C drive). Then use the other SSD's as either scrubbing disks/scratch disks/cache disks and/or storage disks. Corsair would be my game library drive, for sure.
 
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Solution
Jul 4, 2021
3
0
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OS on the Gen 3.0 drive, video projects on the Gen 4.0 (assuming that is a 980 Pro, not just a 980)

Where is the OS now?
Right now OS is on the 500GB SATA SSD, but I’m starting fresh with the new MOBO and going to format the old system drive. Yes the 4.0 drive is the 980 Pro. Thanks for your input.
 
Jul 4, 2021
3
0
10
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I would personally have all apps(and the OS) on the PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive and have that as one physical drive/partition( C drive). Then use the other SSD's as either scrubbing disks/scratch disks/cache disks and/or storage disks. Corsair would be my game library drive, for sure.
Thanks for the feedback. All the new parts will be here in a couple days so I’m excited to get into it. The main reason I was hesitating with installing the OS on the Corsair gen 3 NVMe was because in past I’ve liked having the OS isolated on my smallest drive for easy reinstall while leaving all other applications and photos untouched. I think with the way things are going though the 500GB SATA SSD would slow down my system and potentially be too small for future windows installs. I’ll need to buy more drive space in the not-too-distant future, so when I do I’ll move my photo library (700GB) from the OS drive to the new drive, leaving more space on the 3.0 NVMe for apps and games.