Question Want to upgrade and need advice

[anglerdad]

I do 3D design work that requires heavy crunching, plus I enjoy gaming. 4 years ago I built a computer and now I feel like its slow compared to my gaming laptop. Plus my 2 TB hard drive is 3/4 capacity, in spite of constantly off loading photos and files to my external backup drive.

Here's my build:
Processor: i9-9900K CPU @ 3.6 GHZ
Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus XI Hero Z390 LGA 1151 (Intel 8th-9th Gen )
Ram: 16.GB DDR4
Graphic: MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB GDDR5
Storage: Seagate 2TB Firecuda SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 64 Cache Gaming SSHD
Windows 10 pro 64 bit

I think I made a mistake in recently purchasing a Western Digital 18tb RED Pro hard drive naively thinking I could just clone the 2tb and just add the extra space. I've since been schooled in MBR vs UEFI... and my head hurts from trying to understand how to make this work, which it is not. The RED pro is now sitting in its protective wrapping laughing at me.

My end goal here is to see if I can increase my speed and storage capacity, and what is the biggest bang for my buck with the current system that I have.
Should I upgrade my motherboard? or ? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[tennis2]

I do 3D design work that requires heavy crunching, plus I enjoy gaming. 4 years ago I built a computer and now I feel like its slow compared to my gaming laptop.

Jeez! What laptop do you have!?

Worth verifying that CPU temps are under control. (ie run Prime95 small FFTs with AVX off for 10 minutes and monitor CPU temp)

I think I made a mistake in recently purchasing a Western Digital 18tb RED Pro hard drive naively thinking I could just clone the 2tb and just add the extra space. I've since been schooled in MBR vs UEFI... and my head hurts from trying to understand how to make this work, which it is not. The RED pro is now sitting in its protective wrapping laughing at me.

Not sure what you mean by cloning your 2TB SSD to a mechanical hard drive. Typically you'd use the mechanical drive as a second system drive used for long-term storage/archival while your working files sit on your SSD. Once you've got the WD Red connected and it shows up as a system drive, simply transfer the archive files to it from the SSD via a simple cut/paste. A 100% drive clone is going to put all sorts of OS files, game files, program files, etc etc on the HDD, which you don't want/need.

You can re-target windows explorer folders (ie My Documents, My Photos, My Videos, etc) to the HDD if desired also if you'd like to relocate default directories for a more seamless dual drive setup.

My end goal here is to see if I can increase my speed and storage capacity, and what is the biggest bang for my buck with the current system that I have.
Should I upgrade my motherboard? or ? Any help would be appreciated.

The 9900K is the best CPU supported by your motherboard. The 9900K has 8c/16t also, so certainly not a slouch. Makes me wonder what kind of 3D design work you're doing and/or if GPU acceleration is available/enabled. Have you monitored RAM usage while you're working? Maybe you're running out of RAM in some heavier tasks, causing hiccups?

The hard part about giving recommendations on "3D design, rendering, graphic design, etc, etc" is that everyone's usage is different......by a LOT sometimes.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

Your storage 'Seagate 2TB Firecuda SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 64 Cache Gaming SSHD ' is not a proper SSD. It used a nand cache to speed up but is not optimised properly. Hence the reason SSHDs never became popular - like intel optane.

@tennis2 said some real good points. I dont think there is anything else to add to that.

 

[anglerdad]

Appreciate the replies. The Seagate drive was purchased back in 2017, so I was just going to replace it with the 18tb Red Pro, which is why I originally was trying to clone it (so I didn't have to reinstall everything). But I could not get it to work, and it led me to believe maybe my motherboard is out of date as well with the larger capacity drives. When my computer is put to the test is when I do rendering. The laptop I use is an Asus TUF gaming F16. There's something loose on the hard drive fan so it makes a ton of noise so I don't use the laptop much anymore.

I have 6 fans on the build so my cpu temps are pretty cool.

I was also curious about upgrading to Windows 11 and there is something on my set up that is preventing me from getting clearance from Windows that I am able to upgrade.

 

[anglerdad]

Your storage 'Seagate 2TB Firecuda SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 64 Cache Gaming SSHD ' is not a proper SSD. It used a nand cache to speed up but is not optimised properly. Hence the reason SSHDs never became popular - like intel optane.

@tennis2 said some real good points. I dont think there is anything else to add to that.

That is interesting. Might explain why I'm having some issues with the drive. This brings me back around to my original question, I was trying to upgrade the drive when the problems occured

 

[anglerdad]

Should I consider just getting a new Hard Drive? and if so, what do you suggest?

 

[tennis2]

Your storage 'Seagate 2TB Firecuda SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 64 Cache Gaming SSHD ' is not a proper SSD. It used a nand cache to speed up but is not optimised properly.

Good catch! I completely glossed over this. Explains the cloning statement immensely.

I'd definitely consider getting a proper NVMe SSD.

MSI Spatium M470 2TB = $110 after MIR
If you don't want to mess with MIR over $10 then Western Digital SN770 2TB = $120

 

[geofelt]

Replace your C drive with a larger SSD.
A SSD will be some 40x faster than a hdd in small random I/O and 3-10x faster sequentially.
Most activity will be random.
The main knock against a ssd is the cost per gb.
You could buy a 4tb Samsung 870 QVO for $220:
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-4tb-...6820147783?Item=9SIBKMRJPP7466&quicklink=true
The 8tb version is $495.
If 4tb will serve, I would pick the $260 870 EVO instead:
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-4tb-870-evo-series/p/N82E16820147795?quicklink=true
The QVO drives use mlc nand chips that read quickly but are slower when writing.
As such, the QVO is not as good for workfiles, but good for storage retrieval.
You would be entitled to use the samsung ssd migration app to move your C drive to the ssd.
Instructions and app here:

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Download various software related to your product, including Samsung Magician, designed for use with Samsung's memory products, and find related information.

semiconductor.samsung.com

The app is a C drive logical mover, not a bit for bit clone.

Do not be much swayed by vendor synthetic SSD benchmarks.
They are done with apps that push the SSD to it's maximum using queue lengths of 30 or so.
Most desktop users will do one or two things at a time, so they will see queue lengths of one or two.
What really counts is the response times, particularly for small random I/O.

 

[anglerdad]

Replace your C drive with a larger SSD.
A SSD will be some 40x faster than a hdd in small random I/O and 3-10x faster sequentially.
Most activity will be random.
The main knock against a ssd is the cost per gb.
You could buy a 4tb Samsung 870 QVO for $220:
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-4tb-...6820147783?Item=9SIBKMRJPP7466&quicklink=true
The 8tb version is $495.
If 4tb will serve, I would pick the $260 870 EVO instead:
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-4tb-870-evo-series/p/N82E16820147795?quicklink=true
The QVO drives use mlc nand chips that read quickly but are slower when writing.
As such, the QVO is not as good for workfiles, but good for storage retrieval.
You would be entitled to use the samsung ssd migration app to move your C drive to the ssd.
Instructions and app here:

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Download various software related to your product, including Samsung Magician, designed for use with Samsung's memory products, and find related information.

semiconductor.samsung.com

The app is a C drive logical mover, not a bit for bit clone.

Do not be much swayed by vendor synthetic SSD benchmarks.
They are done with apps that push the SSD to it's maximum using queue lengths of 30 or so.
Most desktop users will do one or two things at a time, so they will see queue lengths of one or two.
What really counts is the response times, particularly for small random I/O.

Thank you for this reply. I was reading on the SSD over HDD and wondered if this might be a faster and more reliable solution for me. This helps

 

[Eximo]

1070Ti is a little dated for things like 4K or 1440p AAA titles, but still a decent 1080p card.

So for your gaming purposes, a new GPU might make a big difference, and 3D software doesn't exactly react poorly to more GPU resources. Really depends on the software you use, but it could certainly be faster.

Your budget determines what sort of GPU you can manage. Also would need to know what PSU you have, and factor that in to the cost if an upgrade is necessary.

You can double your CUDA core count with an RTX 3070, or more than 1.5 times with something like a 4070Ti (12GB). But if you stretch to the RTX 4090 you can have about 5 times the raw compute performance you have now, along with 24GB VRAM.

More system ram might help, but at that point I would just look at a new CPU/Motherboard/RAM rather than buying more DDR4 to be soon retired.

 

[anglerdad]

1070Ti is a little dated for things like 4K or 1440p AAA titles, but still a decent 1080p card.

So for your gaming purposes, a new GPU might make a big difference, and 3D software doesn't exactly react poorly to more GPU resources. Really depends on the software you use, but it could certainly be faster.

Your budget determines what sort of GPU you can manage. Also would need to know what PSU you have, and factor that in to the cost if an upgrade is necessary.

You can double your CUDA core count with an RTX 3070, or more than 1.5 times with something like a 4070Ti (12GB). But if you stretch to the RTX 4090 you can have about 5 times the raw compute performance you have now, along with 24GB VRAM.

More system ram might help, but at that point I would just look at a new CPU/Motherboard/RAM rather than buying more DDR4 to be soon retired.

Thank you for the reply. Tech changes so quickly. When I built this, DDR4 was replacing the old ram, and now its almost obsolete. So, am I to understand VRAM is the new up and coming?

 

[geofelt]

Best not to buy graphics cards on specs.
An approximate estimation of gaming capability can be found in Tom's GPU hierarchy charts:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

VRAM resides in the graphics card and has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, and by the game. There may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
And differences between games.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.

Video Card Performance: 2GB vs 4GB Memory

Similar video cards are often available in versions with more than one memory size. The GeForce GTX 680 is an example, and comes in both 2GB and 4GB variants. With computer components more is often better, but does doubling the memory on a video card like this actually help with game performance...

www.pugetsystems.com

Spoiler... not a significant difference.
A more current set of tests shows the same results:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1114-vram-comparison-test/page5.html

And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.

 

[Eximo]

Thank you for the reply. Tech changes so quickly. When I built this, DDR4 was replacing the old ram, and now its almost obsolete. So, am I to understand VRAM is the new up and coming?

VRAM would be more critical to 3D work at scale, not so much gaming. Being able to load the whole project into VRAM for real time rendering previews and later the actual renders. Though at high resolutions and settings some games are pushing past 12GB regularly. Many high end cards are available with 16GB, 20GB, and 24GB.

Again, looking at GPU stats for gaming isn't the correct method, but that isn't the path I was looking at. Still don't know what software you use for your 3D tasks. If you are CPU rendering, then a CPU upgrade would benefit you a lot. If your software can use CUDA cores for acceleration, than adding more should make those tasks run faster, and Nvidia has increased CUDA core count and performance quite a bit since the 10 series.

GTX1080/1070Ti is roughly equivalent to an RTX3050 in terms of compute and it goes up from there.