SSD Setup for gaming

[gedwards913]

So I've dropped some money during Black Friday and I came out with a pretty solid rig. Here is what I am dealing with:
Intel i7-6700k
MSI M7 Gaming Motherboard
ASUS GTX 1060 Strix OC 6gb
G.skill Tridentz PC3000 2x8GB
Corsair RM1000x PSU

Now here are the hard drives. I got both on sale.
Samsung Evo 850 500GB SSD
ADATA Ultimate SU800 256GB 3D NAND SSD

So currently I have my OS/applications on the Samsumg and big performance titles too. The ADATA I have been putting lower end titles and music/documents/etc

Am I doing this the best way to be optimized for gaming? Thanks in advance!

 

[Multipack]

Both very good SSD's, and perfectly configured imo. That ADATA is seriously underrated with 3D NAND flash memory, and Samsung's in-house V-NAND is even better.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Using SSDs for data storage is expensive and a bit of a management issue. You can fill 256 GB right quick ... GTAV is 95 GB .. Witcher 3 was 40 GB and then had 16 DLCs and multiple expansion packs.

I recommend a SSD for boot drives (250 GB minimum) and applications and then an SSHD (2 TB) for games and data

 

[Multipack]

Or just buy more SSD's 😉

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Doesn't solve the management issue of fitting lots of stuff on small drives, costs way more and in 6+ years of observing and testing have yet to observe a real impact. I mean SSDs look great when benchmarked but we never really use them under those conditions... I could take the Porsche outta storage and use as a a commuter car back and forth to work, but the 145 mph top speed doesn't get me to work any faster during rush hour when highway speed limits are irrelevant in the bumper to bumper traffic. I mean we have all seen he various youtube "proofs" o SSD superiority where the guy proves how great SSD's are by opening 50 tabs in Chrome .... but hey ... a) who opens 50 tabs at a time and b) if he's worried about speed, he wouldn't be using Chrome. I have a test box set up to boot from 7200 rpm enthusiast 2 TB HD, 7200rpm 2 TB rpm SSHD or 256 GB Samsung pro SSD... and been comparing the 3 of them for 37 months now

Boot to Windows:
7200 rpm HD = 21.2 seconds
7200 rpm SSHD = 16.5 seconds
SSD = 15.6 seconds

Open 8 MB AutoCAD file:
7200 rpm HD = 39.8 seconds
7200 rpm SSHD = 39.8 seconds
SSD = 39.8 seconds

Load MMO to point here I can move toon:
7200 rpm HD =45.2 seconds
7200 rpm SSHD = 45.2 seconds
SSD = 45.2 seconds

We had 5 multiple users at this machine and we blind tested them switching the boot order w/o telling anyone.... no one noticed any difference between SSD and SSHD , 1 of the 5 noticed the slow boot load to windows on the HD

So yes, I can create things that prove how much faster they can be....but the reality is, we just don't do those things often. I run daily backups, but a) they are incremental, almost always lasting less than a minute and b) it happens when I'm sleeping or in the background.

We also have twin laptops, well had ... one had SSD + 7200 rpm 1TB HD and one had 1 TB SSHD. They were assigned ramdomly to field personnel for AutoCAD use and taken "out of town" where folks would use to play games off hours. No one ever noticed any difference between the two lappies.

I see a lot of peeps posting concerned about bottlenecks but the only bottleneck I have ever observed impacting the performance of my box is me . Video editing, get that scratch SSD of course ,, rendering ? get several .... but I have been in a MMO for about 5 hours trekking (on follow...if i hear fighting, I tab out to game), on THG for more than that and my CPU idle time is now 190:35:15 (each second that goes by results in 8 seconds of time added, due to 8 threads available...

the game has used 4:07:31 and Firefox 0:19:51. My av program had done 6 times as many reads than any of the 9 active programs open and running.

So it's not that I think SSDs don't provide of much higher speeds, it's just that with a human involved, can almost never take advantage of them such that our lives or PC experience is changed in any significant way outside a very small number of applications