Question on a new build I am doing

[Hammer1-1]

Its not just a few watts, hard drive platters get pretty toasty nowadays. Remove a couple of hard drives, you remove a couple of points of latent heat.and depending on where they are located, you can get better airflow too. Better airflow, lower ambient temps in the case, the less work your cooling fans will have to perform to keep ambient temps down.

[BitMaster]

+ remove LOTS of cables and weight too.

 

 

If you can afford it, why not. The 970 Evo 2TB looks great ;)

[Headwarp]

+ remove LOTS of cables and weight too.

 

 

If you can afford it, why not. The 970 Evo 2TB looks great ;)

 

The reduced cable management is awful appealing, darn you evga/nvidia for taking all of my money while so much hardware is on sale.

[dburne]

The reduced cable management is awful appealing, darn you evga/nvidia for taking all of my money while so much hardware is on sale.

 

Lol I feel the pain...

 

Just waiting on the availability to order on the EVGA Z390 Dark MB. They released the Z390 FTW earlier this week. Rumor has it that the Dark may be more toward end of November. Crossing fingers it might be a little sooner.

 

The parts are coming together.

[Headwarp]

Lol I feel the pain...

 

Just waiting on the availability to order on the EVGA Z390 Dark MB. They released the Z390 FTW earlier this week. Rumor has it that the Dark may be more toward end of November. Crossing fingers it might be a little sooner.

 

The parts are coming together.

 

Hehe I hope your new rig brings you relief from the anticipation and all of the excitement that you expected. Your current rig probably handles VR better than me atm, at least until my 2080 Ti arrives.. although it's going to be hard to fly having traded an arm and a leg for it.

[dburne]

Hehe I hope your new rig brings you relief from the anticipation and all of the excitement that you expected. Your current rig probably handles VR better than me atm, at least until my 2080 Ti arrives.. although it's going to be hard to fly having traded an arm and a leg for it.

 

Yeah actually my current rig does handle VR pretty good, I get a very smooth and stutter free experience in my Rift. I am sure hoping it remains the same on the new rig with maybe little higher PD and graphics.

[dburne]

Hey gang,

Still gathering some parts and looking at something I would like clarification on regarding storage. I really just soon not put a platter drive in this new build.

 

First what I have so far regarding storage:

1TB Samsung 970 Pro m.2 Nvme (will use for Windows, apps, and some games).

1TB Samsung 860 Evo SATA SSD. ( Games, docs, pics).

 

I am strongly considering adding a second m.2 SSD.

Either another 1TB Samsung 970 Pro m.2 Nvme.

Or - a 2TB Samsung Evo m.2. (not Nvme).

I certainly would not mind having the extra data storage space in that 2TB.

 

Now yes, I understand what I will be losing - in the new upcoming EVGA Z390 Dark MB I will be getting - will cost me the PE 3 PCIe slot but that is no biggy to me.

 

My question then, between the two drives above, any difference that would actually be noticeable? This second m.2 drive will be used strictly for game installs. Gotta have lots of breathing room for DCS as it continues to expand. :smilewink:

 

Thanks for any feedback,

Edited October 30, 2018 by dburne

[Headwarp]

Hey gang,

Still gathering some parts and looking at something I would like clarification on regarding storage. I really just soon not put a platter drive in this new build.

 

First what I have so far regarding storage:

1TB Samsung 970 Pro m.2 Nvme (will use for Windows, apps, and some games).

1TB Samsung 860 Evo SATA SSD. ( Games, docs, pics).

 

I am strongly considering adding a second m.2 SSD.

Either another 1TB Samsung 970 Pro m.2 Nvme.

Or - a 2TB Samsung Evo m.2. (not Nvme).

I certainly would not mind having the extra data storage space in that 2TB.

 

Now yes, I understand what I will be losing - in the new upcoming EVGA Z390 Dark MB I will be getting - will cost me the PE 3 PCIe slot but that is no biggy to me.

 

My question then, between the two drives above, any difference that would actually be noticeable? This second m.2 drive will be used strictly for game installs. Gotta have lots of breathing room for DCS as it continues to expand. :smilewink:

 

Thanks for any feedback,

 

nvme drives won't offer much benefit over a sata III SSD in gaming/DCS if at all.

 

Also looking at evga's z370 ftw manual, only the third 32mm m2 slot shares bandwidth with a pci-e x1 slot, where the two 80mm m2 drives share with sata ports, two of which could end up disabled with a 2nd m2 drive, and they share the 24 pci-e lanes from the PCH on the motherboard, which use the 4 lanes on the cpu that aren't devoted to your pci-e slots. I think the 3rd m2 slot is likely for intel Optane which would only really benefit an HDD.

 

I'd expect the z390 to be the same in that regard, but I'd verify that once you can actually download a .pdf of the manual to be certain. Which is what I was looking for but couldn't find when I referenced the z370 FTW manual. PCI_E layout between the z370 and z390 chipset is the same though afaik.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Headwarp

[BitMaster]

nvme drives won't offer much benefit over a sata III SSD in gaming/DCS if at all.

 

Also looking at evga's z370 ftw manual, only the third 32mm m2 slot shares bandwidth with a pci-e x1 slot, where the two 80mm m2 drives share with sata ports, two of which could end up disabled with a 2nd m2 drive, and they share the 24 pci-e lanes from the PCH on the motherboard, which use the 4 lanes on the cpu that aren't devoted to your pci-e slots. I think the 3rd m2 slot is likely for intel Optane which would only really benefit an HDD.

 

I'd expect the z390 to be the same in that regard, but I'd verify that once you can actually download a .pdf of the manual to be certain. Which is what I was looking for but couldn't find when I referenced the z370 FTW manual. PCI_E layout between the z370 and z390 chipset is the same though afaik.

 

 

^This

 

 

Hard to say, NVMe looks cleaner and nicer, but 1TB more is also a good thing.

 

 

I think, with a shabby chipset like ours, might as well take the 1TB more and hide the cables well ;)

[remi]

^This

 

 

Hard to say, NVMe looks cleaner and nicer, but 1TB more is also a good thing.

 

 

I think, with a shabby chipset like ours, might as well take the 1TB more and hide the cables well ;)

 

Whenever higher density Nvme SSDs become available, I'll just clone my current drive to the newer one.

[Headwarp]

should have mentioned in my post that even using nvme as a windows drive at most knocks a few hard to notice seconds off of your boot time, speaking from experience here.

 

With nvme where you'll see the difference is transferring or writing large files, and in that regard you'll still be limited by the device you're transferring to/fro. Transferring to HDD lucky to sustain 150MB/s, transfering to Sata III SSD from SSD or NVME - lucky to maintain 500MB/s, transfering from 970 evo to 970 evo? What is that like 1200-1500 MB/s writes? Think transfering 120-200GB worth of data in mostly 20-60GB file sizes. To HDD would take 20-45 mins. To sata III would be more like 8-15 mins, nvme to nvme would be like 3-10 mins, if you don't run into limitations of the chipset pci lanes. , (Guesstimations, don't quote me, cuz I didn't bother doing my math). Games and loading windows are more about access times for batches of small files.

 

Don't feel too pressured on choice of SSD type for gaming purposes, as long as you have an SSD for booting/gaming. Where HDD's are mostly about inexpensive storage options should you need it. I.E i know my 4k video projects ate a ton of storage space. So I picked up a 4tb HDD for under $100. It doesn't see a lot of use outside of storing my video files.

 

SSD prices overall are kind of awesome lately in my book. 250gb 970 evo under $100.. 500GB 970 evo as low as $150, 500GB sata III ssd's i've seen between $70-90, 1TB sata 3 ssd's like $160? Hard to go wrong.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Headwarp

[dburne]

Many thanks guys, much appreciated!

 

:thumbup:

[imacken]

should have mentioned in my post that even using nvme as a windows drive at most knocks a few hard to notice seconds off of your boot time, speaking from experience here.

 

With nvme where you'll see the difference is transferring or writing large files, and in that regard you'll still be limited by the device you're transferring to/fro. Transferring to HDD lucky to sustain 150MB/s, transfering to Sata III SSD from SSD or NVME - lucky to maintain 500MB/s, transfering from 970 evo to 970 evo? What is that like 1200-1500 MB/s writes? Think transfering 120-200GB worth of data in mostly 20-60GB file sizes. To HDD would take 20-45 mins. To sata III would be more like 8-15 mins, nvme to nvme would be like 3-10 mins, if you don't run into limitations of the chipset pci lanes. , (Guesstimations, don't quote me, cuz I didn't bother doing my math). Games and loading windows are more about access times for batches of small files.

 

Don't feel too pressured on choice of SSD type for gaming purposes, as long as you have an SSD for booting/gaming. Where HDD's are mostly about inexpensive storage options should you need it. I.E i know my 4k video projects ate a ton of storage space. So I picked up a 4tb HDD for under $100. It doesn't see a lot of use outside of storing my video files.

 

SSD prices overall are kind of awesome lately in my book. 250gb 970 evo under $100.. 500GB 970 evo as low as $150, 500GB sata III ssd's i've seen between $70-90, 1TB sata 3 ssd's like $160? Hard to go wrong.

I agree with what you've said here, except that I do feel a huge difference in terms of geneal Windows usage with the nvme 970 compared to the SATA 850. Windows boots up in 2-3 seconds after the POST screen.

See attached for CrystalMark scores for HDD, 850 and 970. To be honest, the 970 write speed is usually higher than shown there. Must have been some other process going on.

[Headwarp]

I agree with what you've said here, except that I do feel a huge difference in terms of geneal Windows usage with the nvme 970 compared to the SATA 850. Windows boots up in 2-3 seconds after the POST screen.

See attached for CrystalMark scores for HDD, 850 and 970. To be honest, the 970 write speed is usually higher than shown there. Must have been some other process going on.

 

I forget which hardware reviewer I watched, but for the SSD's they tested, about 40-60 seconds to boot on an HDD, 11 seconds to boot on a sata III SSD, and 6 seconds to boot on an NVME drive. And I believe they were timing to the point that windows was fully loaded after logging in.

 

My point was simply that either type of SSD is far superior to an HDD in terms of performance and load times, where the gap between sata 3 and nvme for boot speeds isn't quite so large.

[imacken]

I wasn't disagreeing with you as I said. My point is that I feel a big difference in general Windows usage with the 970 nvme and 850 SATA SSDs. I mean, 7 times the speed on the benchmarks? Makes a big difference when other drives are not involved.

[remi]

I forget which hardware reviewer I watched, but for the SSD's they tested, about 40-60 seconds to boot on an HDD, 11 seconds to boot on a sata III SSD, and 6 seconds to boot on an NVME drive. And I believe they were timing to the point that windows was fully loaded after logging in.

 

My point was simply that either type of SSD is far superior to an HDD in terms of performance and load times, where the gap between sata 3 and nvme for boot speeds isn't quite so large.

 

Almost twice faster is still a big difference. Seconds add up. And, if stuttering is a symptom of storage bottleneck, then faster will always be better.

[BitMaster]

Almost twice faster is still a big difference. Seconds add up. And, if stuttering is a symptom of storage bottleneck, then faster will always be better.

 

 

:thumbup:

[Headwarp]

Almost twice faster is still a big difference. Seconds add up. And, if stuttering is a symptom of storage bottleneck, then faster will always be better.

 

 

A big difference maybe, but in my personal experience from switching from a sata III SSD to a 970evo for boot, is that I hardly notice a difference if at all. Sure, my storage benchmarks are through the roof on that particular drive, but in the actual application of boot time from logo to windows, I was still in the same scenario where if I wasn't paying attention I'd look up and find myself happily surprised at how quickly I'd load into windows vs a sata III SSD.

 

Maybe it's just me but I'm not sitting there with a stopwatch timing it every time I restart. Booting from either drive type I hardly have time to glance at my phone before being at the login screen. And really how often am I actually rebooting my system?

 

There could be some truth to the nvme handling page files better, but it all depends on what's contained in the page file. Large files? Yes, batches of small files? Not so much. Even then a better yet answer to paging files is an increase in DRAM.

 

I stand by my statement, it's hard to go wrong when it comes to SSD drives. No sense complicating the process. If you aren't interested in saving a buck, splurge on the nvme drives, if more space for your dollar is your concern, get the sata III ssd. Either will be sufficient purely for the purpose of booting to windows or running DCS imo.

 

If we were talking about "Do I want an HDD or an SSD" I'd probably treat it as a bigger deal but aside from transfering data, once you've eliminated the mechanical action of spinning magnetic discs, small file access times are hardly utilizing the full brunt of even the slowest SSDs.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Headwarp

[dburne]

Hey gang, one last question on the m.2 Nvme drive.

 

I decided to go ahead and get a second one, already have purchased a Samsung 970 Pro 1TB m.2 Nvme.

I am going to add another 1TB m.2 Nvme.

I can get either another Samsung 970 Pro for like 393 bucks, or a Samsung 970 Evo currently on sale at Amazon for 228 bucks.

 

Significant difference in price. I will use this second m.2 Nvme for games only.

Any thoughts on the difference between the two?

[Pilotasso]

you wont notice a difference unless your doing heavy video editing for hours.

[dburne]

you wont notice a difference unless your doing heavy video editing for hours.

 

Thanks much, that answers my question - I will pull the trigger on the 970 Evo.

[imacken]

Hey gang, one last question on the m.2 Nvme drive.

 

I decided to go ahead and get a second one, already have purchased a Samsung 970 Pro 1TB m.2 Nvme.

I am going to add another 1TB m.2 Nvme.

I can get either another Samsung 970 Pro for like 393 bucks, or a Samsung 970 Evo currently on sale at Amazon for 228 bucks.

 

Significant difference in price. I will use this second m.2 Nvme for games only.

Any thoughts on the difference between the two?

 

Don, in my opinion, there is very little difference between the EVOs and the PROs in general whenever I have looked.

I would also say that, for games, you should save your money and get a 860 EVO. I saw no difference, as I think I mentioned in a response above, between running DCS (and other games) on my 970 EVO compared to on my 850 EVO.

Now, system stuff is a separate thing completely, the 970 wins hands down!

[dburne]

Don, in my opinion, there is very little difference between the EVOs and the PROs in general whenever I have looked.

I would also say that, for games, you should save your money and get a 860 EVO. I saw no difference, as I think I mentioned in a response above, between running DCS (and other games) on my 970 EVO compared to on my 850 EVO.

Now, system stuff is a separate thing completely, the 970 wins hands down!

 

Thanks much, I already had pulled the trigger on the 970 Evo.

[dburne]

So now I am looking at Ram.

I game in VR - and I know VR likes both higher speed ram and also low latency ram.

The upcoming EVGA Z390 Dark MB supports:

Memory: 2 DIMM Dual-Channel (up to 32GB) DDR4 4600MHz+

 

So now the question is what to get. Higher speed thus higher latency, or lower speed like 3200 or 3600 with lower latency.

I have been a big fan of Corsair Dominator Platinum ram for many years, I know it is a little pricey but never had had a moments issue with them over several builds. Would kind of like to stay with it. Will be getting 32 GB ( 2x16).

 

Any opinions?

Thanks for any feedback,

[BitMaster]

A fast 3200 CL14 or better/lower CL is maybe the best. A 3600 CL15 is not faster, just more expensive ;)

 

 

You have to do the math to see if a 3866 is really any faster, or even slower, than a lower MHz kit with a much tighter timing. You aim for low latency ( CL ), not bandwidth ( MHz ).

 

 

 

Higher MHz DRAM is not by default faster, it can very well have a higher latency, in fact, it's likely if you dont buy the most expensive ones with the lowest latency at that speed.