# Latest SSD recommendations



## peksi (Jan 22, 2016)

A while ago I spent quite a lot of time getting to know options for my daw SSD and I think Intel's PCI SSD that was the best.

Now after my Windows told me my SSD is faulty I took another look and there seems to be a lot of new options. Did someone do the research here? Do you have any clear candidates for a DAW SSD drive? I was thinking of going for the full set of mobo, cpu, memory, ssd, OS.

Don't even want to think about my plugin installation work yet..


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## acicero (Jan 22, 2016)

I have the Intel PCIe and it is super fast, expensive though. I think the next best option would be to get an M2 nvme if your hardware supports it. Otherwise, you're left with SATA III I think. If budget is a big factor, I'm sure any SATA SSD should do if you're looking to run samples off of it.


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## Silence-is-Golden (Jan 22, 2016)

The Angelbird SSD's are recomended by VSL and as I am a user of both.

So have a look at them if you wish. Its a company in Austria, Europe.


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## Vin (Jan 22, 2016)

I'm more than satisfied with my Samsung SSDs. Good price, fast, reliable.


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## benatural (Jan 22, 2016)

If money is no object, SAS 12 Gb/s SSD's in RAID will give you exceptional performance. Has to be hardware RAID though.


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## rgames (Jan 23, 2016)

Have you guys noticed a significant difference in streaming performance with higher read speeds?

i.e. do you find that number of voices scales with read speed?

I've found that max sequential read speed mattered up until a few years ago, then IOPS mattered until a year ago or so. But now I think everything is so fast that we've reached the point where 500 MB/s and 90,000 IOPS is where the benefits end. The newer drives probably matter for video but I'm not sure if we'll see much benefit in the sampling world.

For example, I was setting up my laptop as a slave this morning and found that the only way I could max out the drive read speeds was to bump the buffer all the way up to 512. At a buffer of 128 (my normal orchestral template buffer) ASIO was the limitation, not read speed. So even with a faster drive on that machine it would perform the same.

However, that was on a laptop. Not sure how a fast PCIe connection on a desktop does.

rgames


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## benatural (Jan 23, 2016)

Not sure about read speeds, but definitely load time.


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## rgames (Jan 23, 2016)

benatural said:


> Not sure about read speeds, but definitely load time.


Yeah - seems like it might also make a difference if you're running purged in Kontakt or really low pre-loads in VSL.

But other than that, I'm not sure how much difference it makes these days. The big performance gains came when SSDs first came out. Since then, though, meh...

rgames


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## geoffreyvernon (Jan 23, 2016)

First, if you're going SSD and have the option to do so, I'd recommend Thunderbolt if at all possible! PCI and PCI/e bottleneck you at a certain point, and to me it's pointless to use SSD and be bottlenecked. Secondly some of the best SSD drives I've used are the Intel SSD drives. I have 4 of them in RAID connected via Thunderbolt on my Sample Farm with Vienna Ensemble Pro for all of my samples. I also have 2 of them in RAID connected via Thunderbolt to my main machine for DAW projects and project backups. Extremely fast loading times.


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## synthpunk (Jan 23, 2016)

I like to follow this site. He keeps up on top of things for practical applications.

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/best-sdd-solid-state-drive-december-2015/


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## rgames (Jan 23, 2016)

geoffreyvernon said:


> First, if you're going SSD and have the option to do so, I'd recommend Thunderbolt if at all possible! PCI and PCI/e bottleneck you at a certain point,


How can that be? Thunderbolt is connected via PCIe. So if PCIe is a bottleneck, how can Thunderbolt be better than PCIe?

I've never seen a benchmark where an external connection (USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt, whatever) outperforms a PCIe connection.

At best it might be possible to equal the performance. Think about it: if one interface is placed on top of another the it can't be better than the one to which it interfaces. And logic dictates that it would be worse because it's adding transmission overhead. That's what I've always seen: external connecations perform worse than internal connections on any benchmark you choose.

So I don't see how Thunderbolt can be better than an internal PCIe connection. Sure seems like it would be worse.

Can you point me to some benchmarks?


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## benatural (Jan 23, 2016)

The following seems to have some good info on the Thunderbolt and PCIe question, and confirms that Thunderbolt essentially uses a single 4x PCIe 2.0 bus which saturates at about 1 GB/s. 

http://www.tested.com/tech/457440-theoretical-vs-actual-bandwidth-pci-express-and-thunderbolt/

Theoretically, a single 16x PCIe 3.0 bus saturates at over 15 GB/s. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions


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## EvilDragon (Jan 24, 2016)

rgames said:


> For example, I was setting up my laptop as a slave this morning and found that the only way I could max out the drive read speeds was to bump the buffer all the way up to 512. At a buffer of 128 (my normal orchestral template buffer) ASIO was the limitation, not read speed. So even with a faster drive on that machine it would perform the same.



Actually, it's not ASIO which was the limitation directly (it was indirectly), but your CPU is. SSDs these days can supply a metric shitton of data extremely fast, but you still have to depend on the CPU to process it all. So when your CPU works too hard to process a lot of streamed voices in a single ASIO buffer, that's where you get dropouts, even though technically SSD didn't even break a sweat. So yeah... we're back to the CPU being the bottleneck!


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## rgames (Jan 24, 2016)

EvilDragon said:


> we're back to the CPU being the bottleneck!


My experience has been different. You can prove it to yourself:

Pick a library. I'll use VSL as an example (streaming from a slave over ethernet). I can get about 1500 voices max on an i5 2500k at a buffer of 128 with one buffer for VE Pro. On my i7 4930k, I can still get only about 1500 voices max at a buffer of 128 with one buffer for VE Pro.

The two machines have vastly different CPU power, and the 4930k does run at lower CPU usage, but both produce the same number of voices. So it's clear that CPU is not the bottleneck.

If you're running into 100% CPU usage when streaming samples then you have problems elsewhere - bad drivers, perhaps.

rgames


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## bjderganc (Jan 24, 2016)

I use a Samsung 950 Pro m.2 as a primary drive. It's definitely fast, but since it only has room for my applications, in everyday use its speed doesn't really impact me more than a typical Samsung SSD. If I'm unpacking something, or transferring a ton of files, then it will zoom through that process extremely quickly. 

One thing to keep in mind about m.2 SSDs is that they do not all have faster performance than SATA SSDs. You need to go by the individual benchmarks, especially if you only have one m.2 slot.


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## Hat_Tricky (Jan 24, 2016)

Can anyone advise between the Samsung 850 Evo SSD, and the Samsung 850 Evo PRO SSD? Looks like a ton more money for like what, 10-15% real world performance increase? Am I really going to be unhappy if i don't get the EVO PRO? Getting the 1TB version no matter what (currently have a 480 Intel SSD and its chock full...)


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## EvilDragon (Jan 25, 2016)

There's no Evo PRO. There's Evo, and there's PRO. For sample libraries, you don't really need all the benefits of PRO - they have the same read/write statistics, the difference is in 10 years warranty for PRO and it's a SLC drive as opposed to MLC (IIRC), so that's naturally why it's more expensive - SLC allows for much more write/delete cycles than MLC. Again, this is not really important for sample libs - that's more relevant for servers etc.

Evos are perfectly alright.


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## Hat_Tricky (Jan 25, 2016)

EvilDragon said:


> There's no Evo PRO. There's Evo, and there's PRO. For sample libraries, you don't really need all the benefits of PRO - they have the same read/write statistics, the difference is in 10 years warranty for PRO and it's a SLC drive as opposed to MLC (IIRC), so that's naturally why it's more expensive - SLC allows for much more write/delete cycles than MLC. Again, this is not really important for sample libs - that's more relevant for servers etc.
> 
> Evos are perfectly alright.



Thanks! Gonna go with the EVO, the price is right for that 1TB


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## dimtsak (Jan 26, 2016)

Is the writing speed really important for sample libraries?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jan 26, 2016)

dimtsak said:


> Is the writing speed really important for sample libraries?


I think yes but I believe the IOPS can also have a big impact on performance.


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## jononotbono (Jan 26, 2016)

Hat_Tricky said:


> Thanks! Gonna go with the EVO, the price is right for that 1TB



I use a Samsung 850 Evo. The thing flies. I will definitely just add more of them when I need them. I just can't bring myself to spend anymore on an SSD. Way beyond good enough for Streaming Samples!


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## Ollie (Jan 26, 2016)

I am looking to get an SSD for loading samples and it seems far cheaper to go for a sata drive than dedicated usb 3 drive.
When using an SSD like the EVO what sort of enclosure are you using?
Are there any benefits from one enclosure to another or does this make no difference? Would a thunderbolt enclosure be better? 

Thanks 

Ollie


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## EvilDragon (Jan 26, 2016)

Yes, go (e)SATA. TB would be better than USB3, and better than SATA.


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## Hat_Tricky (Jan 26, 2016)

For speed, its pretty much Thunderbolt >>> (e)SATA >> Usb 3.0 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>USB 2.0? Is this about right?


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## chimuelo (Jan 27, 2016)

Yeah but M.2 NVMe devices are as fast as TBOLT III in a RAID 0 Array.
If you're going to use X99 or Z170 check out ASRock and their M.2 PCI-e 4x speeds.
My single M.2 device is fast as 4 x SATA III SSDs in RAID 0.

I thought they were overkill for Kontakt but then seeing how they make PLAY run like Gigastudio showed me it was money wisely spent.


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## synthpunk (Mar 26, 2016)

A couple new 960G SSD's in at under $220usd. The ADATA has a very fast read speed.

*http://tinyurl.com/z2j25jc*

*http://tinyurl.com/gssudj7*


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## Udo (Mar 26, 2016)

Re USB 3.0 interface speed:

Don't have time to elaborate now, but check out USB 3.1 gen2 specs/implementations and related type C connector.

Also, the interface chip (manufacturer) can make a substantial difference.

Etc, etc.

You'll find near doubling of the speed.


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## peksi (Apr 8, 2016)

I was lost before. Now I am totally lost


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## chimuelo (Apr 9, 2016)

FWIW.
These numbers are great but 80MBps is my Raptor 2500 speed.
At a factor of 10 is PCI-e 2x speed.
I see no difference between 800 & 2400MBps.
It's the transaction time and random IOPS that we need.
If you go by benchmarks get a Phison controller with ,+100k random IOps.
You don't need NVMe but any drive capable of NVMe is a great boost if you have several instruments streaming.
I have a live performance rig with PLAY Prominy and lots of VSTi and 4 or 5 instruments at a time sails through just fine every night.
84k random IOps Vertex 4s that are 5 years old.

Hope this helps.


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## JohnG (Apr 9, 2016)

I think it's important to keep distinguishing between internal and external. It may be wrong, but I was told that in general computers are slower _by definition_ on USB connections because they have a routine that looks at them less constantly than internal connections. Consequently, the USB connections are not as "always on" as an internal drive.

PCIe-connected or NVMe seem like the best by far.


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