Question Samsung EVO990 with or without Heatsink

[nutshellml]

Morning all, Building a PC and the bundle comes with ASUS Z790-P PRIME WiFi Intel LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard, I’m going with the Samsung EVO PRO 990 just trying to debate if I need a heatsink or not. Not too verse on this, thoughts? Planning to use CPU for photo and mid-range video editing. No gaming. The 990 will be used as OS/Programs and I’ll have sep SSD for storage/scratch drive. Any thoughts on if the heat sink is required…

 

[Misgar]

If your motherboard has heatsinks for all the M.2 drives you intend to install, use them. My motherboard has three M.2 slots but only two integral heatsinks. I fitted a heatsink to my third M.2 drive just for peace of mind.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Unless you're constantly hammering the drive with stuff to do for extended periods of time, I'd argue you won't need a heat sink. But if it helps you sleep better at night, by all means, get one.

 

[nutshellml]

Unless you're constantly hammering the drive with stuff to do for extended periods of time, I'd argue you won't need a heat sink. But if it helps you sleep better at night, by all means, get one.

Thanks. Don’t plan too and if not needed don’t want to spend unnecessary $.

Main use will be Lightroom and light video editing.

 

[Misgar]

I use an M.2 drive exclusively as a cache for video editing programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Topaz Video AI.

Next time I boot up the machine, I'll check to see how hard this cache drive is being used and the operating temperatures during long sessions.

I use a different M.2 drive as a destination for work-in-progress when rendering videos. This receives continuous writes for the duration of the render.

The third M.2 drive contains Windows and programs plus the Windows page and swap files, so it sees a fair amount of use.

All three M.2 drives have heatsinks. Two heatsinks are integral to the Asus motherboard, the third M.2 heatsink is from eBay.

Given the price of the rest of the computer, a few dollars more spent on an M.2 heatsink is chicken feed. I doubt my M.2 cache drive is throttling but the GPU restricts air flow over the naked drive so a heatsink seemed a sensible precaution.

 

[geofelt]

For the most part, m.2 drives not of the gen 5 kind do not need heat sinks.
A ssd will remain cool enough under normal conditions and heavy random I/O.
It is only when doing sequential processing for say 30 seconds that a m.2 might heat up a bit and slow down to protect itself.
Really, the best thing to do is to see that the motherboard gets some airflow over it.

 

[Misgar]

The compartment containing the motherboard in my Lian Li full tower case is so cramped (with NH- D15 and GPU) there's very little space above the three M.2 drives for the free passage of air from the front panel fans to the rear panel exhaust fans.

It's such a pain to remove the GPU card I decided to fit heatsinks on all three M.2 drives during construction (a combination of built-in motherboard heatsinks and stand-alone heatsinks).

Admittedly all three M.2 drives are unlikely to throttle for more than a few seconds, but I'm happier they're fitted with heatsinks.

There are occasions when I'm copying directories full of 55GB video files from one disk to another, so there are times when I'm reading/writing hundreds of GB of data. This might have an effect on heating.

 

[nutshellml]

I use an M.2 drive exclusively as a cache for video editing programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Topaz Video AI.

Next time I boot up the machine, I'll check to see how hard this cache drive is being used and the operating temperatures during long sessions.

I use a different M.2 drive as a destination for work-in-progress when rendering videos. This receives continuous writes for the duration of the render.

The third M.2 drive contains Windows and programs plus the Windows page and swap files, so it sees a fair amount of use.

All three M.2 drives have heatsinks. Two heatsinks are integral to the Asus motherboard, the third M.2 heatsink is from eBay.

Given the price of the rest of the computer, a few dollars more spent on an M.2 heatsink is chicken feed. I doubt my M.2 cache drive is throttling but the GPU restricts air flow over the naked drive so a heatsink seemed a sensible precaution.

Can you tell me more about using a dedicated m.2 as cache drive? Benefits? I’m planning one m.2 as windows/programs, then was going to use ssd 2.5 for storage and potentially scratch/working drive. I will be doing light-med video editing most likely w same programs you use and your post peeked my interest. Thanks!!

 

[Misgar]

Most video/photo editing programs describe how to improve performance by separating disk intensive read/write operations. This usually entails using one drive for the OS & program plus other drive(s) for processed data.

Further (slight) improvements can be made using yet another drive as a scratch disk for exclusive use by the app. This keeps the program's scratch files separate the Windows page and scratch files.

As to how much improvement you're likely to get over using just one drive for everything I doubt it's more than 10%. The only way to quantify the benefit is by running targeted benchmark programs such as those created by Puget Systems.

This is my system configuration.

I use a fast PCIe Gen4 M.2 NVMe drive for Windows (including its own page and swap files) and the main apps (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Topaz Video AI).

My source files are usually located on fast 8TB hard disks (250MB/s max read speed).

Edited files (photos or videos) are written directly to a second M.2 NVMe drive and eventually transferred to various hard disks.

The scratch disk for apps is a third M.2 NVMe drive with no other function.

In total, I use three M.2 NVMe drives and one hard disk during video editing. This is probably overkill but my motherboard came with three M.2 slots so I use them all because they're there.

You don't need to split things between four drives like I do. I doubt there'd be more than a 2 to 3% difference if I used two SSDs instead of three SSDs + a hard disk.

I'd hazard a guess that intensive 4K video editing will reap the biggest rewards of using multiple drives. For 1080p work you might not notice much difference. For Photoshop, practically none unless you do a lot of batch processing.

Do some more reading, especially on the Puget Systems web site, It's full of useful reviews and comparisons of different hardware configurations for video/photo editing.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti.../adobe-premiere-pro/hardware-recommendations/

 

[nutshellml]

Most video/photo editing programs describe how to improve performance by separating disk intensive read/write operations. This usually entails using one drive for the OS & program plus other drive(s) for processed data.

Further (slight) improvements can be made using yet another drive as a scratch disk for exclusive use by the app. This keeps the program's scratch files separate the Windows page and scratch files.

As to how much improvement you're likely to get over using just one drive for everything I doubt it's more than 10%. The only way to quantify the benefit is by running targeted benchmark programs such as those created by Puget Systems.

This is my system configuration.

I use a fast PCIe Gen4 M.2 NVMe drive for Windows (including its own page and swap files) and the main apps (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Topaz Video AI).

My source files are usually located on fast 8TB hard disks (250MB/s max read speed).

Edited files (photos or videos) are written directly to a second M.2 NVMe drive and eventually transferred to various hard disks.

The scratch disk for apps is a third M.2 NVMe drive with no other function.

In total, I use three M.2 NVMe drives and one hard disk during video editing. This is probably overkill but my motherboard came with three M.2 slots so I use them all because they're there.

You don't need to split things between four drives like I do. I doubt there'd be more than a 2 to 3% difference if I used two SSDs instead of three SSDs + a hard disk.

I'd hazard a guess that intensive 4K video editing will reap the biggest rewards of using multiple drives. For 1080p work you might not notice much difference. For Photoshop, practically none unless you do a lot of batch processing.

Do some more reading, especially on the Puget Systems web site, It's full of useful reviews and comparisons of different hardware configurations for video/photo editing.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti.../adobe-premiere-pro/hardware-recommendations/

Thanks! so when you mention your source files are on a HDD, you mean that when you're in your editing software you are using the video files from the HDD? I would think that would slow things down reading the video files from HDD.

I was planning to have all my OS/Apps on one M.2 Drive, us either another M.2 or SATA SDD for my scratch editing. ie. import any videos i'm working on to that scratch drive and work from there vs. a HDD. then a large HDD like you mentioned for file cuts/storage until.

PS: what 'fast' HDD are you using?

 

[geofelt]

The only reason to use a HDD today is to save the cost per GB.
Use as a storage volume for sequential files such as videos or backups is probably the best use.
Past that, any ssd will be superior in any metric. They are 40x faster in random I/O and 3x to 10x faster sequentially, they are also more reliable.
There is little advantage in using multiple ssd devices from a performance point of view. A single large C drive space is easier to manage.
Start with a 2tb m.2 ssd and add storage as you need it.

 

[hotaru.hino]

PS: what 'fast' HDD are you using?

This will likely depend more on the capacity than anything else. I've see 4TB drives hit 100-120MB/sec, while I've seen up to around 200MB/sec on a 12TB drive.

 

[Misgar]

I have a couple of 8TB WD Purple drives picked up cheap on eBay (brand new, unused).

I like Purples because they're CMR not SMR. Purples are optimised for continuous video writes in multi-camera surveillance systems, but I'm quite happy with their read performance.

Measured data rate at the outer edge of the 8TB disks is 250MB/s. When the heads are near the spindle it's down to 125MB/s. This is still fast enough when reading 1080p video.

Smaller capacity Purples will be slower, e.g. 180/90MB/s. Faster drives (7,200rpm) will generally be quicker than 5,400rpm drives of the same capacity

I have three M.2 and five hard disks in my video rig. I don't need five HDDs at the moment but they were to hand and they'll fill up eventually.

If I have Windows installed on a large drive and want to use the remainder of the disk for data. I partition the drive to keep the data separate from the OS + programs.

If Windows becomes corrupted or you lose your main User Profile, it makes life more difficult recovering data that might be located inside the profile (My Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music, etc.).

It's also easier to back up or image the C: drive using Macrium Reflect if it doesn't contain vast quantities of data.

Similarly, you can re-install Windows back on its own partition without disturbing the data files stored on a separate partition. Mind you, you'd be daft not to back up the data first.

 

[nutshellml]

I have a couple of 8TB WD Purple drives picked up cheap on eBay (brand new, unused).

I like Purples because they're CMR not SMR. Purples are optimised for continuous video writes in multi-camera surveillance systems, but I'm quite happy with their read performance.

Measured data rate at the outer edge of the 8TB disks is 250MB/s. When the heads are near the spindle it's down to 125MB/s. This is still fast enough when reading 1080p video.

Smaller capacity Purples will be slower, e.g. 180/90MB/s. Faster drives (7,200rpm) will generally be quicker than 5,400rpm drives of the same capacity

I have three M.2 and five hard disks in my video rig. I don't need five HDDs at the moment but they were to hand and they'll fill up eventually.

If I have Windows installed on a large drive and want to use the remainder of the disk for data. I partition the drive to keep the data separate from the OS + programs.

If Windows becomes corrupted or you lose your main User Profile, it makes life more difficult recovering data that might be located inside the profile (My Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music, etc.).

It's also easier to back up or image the C: drive using Macrium Reflect if it doesn't contain vast quantities of data.

Similarly, you can re-install Windows back on its own partition without disturbing the data files stored on a separate partition. Mind you, you'd be daft not to back up the data first.

Thanks very helpful. Think i'll start with the following:
Drive 1 - Windows/Programs: 1TB M.2
Drive 2 - Working/editing/project drive: 2TB M.2
Drive 3 (will add possibly depending on how i see performance going) - Cache 500GB or 1TB M.2
Drive 4 - Photo/Video Storage: 8TB WD/Seagate HDD 5400

Backups - Cloud continously, external HDD kept offsite.

 

[Misgar]

Check the Seagate and make sure it's not SMR. You might be better off with one of the new WD Blue drives but make sure to buy the CMR version.

Shingle drives can be much slower for writes after they start to fill up.