SSD setup for home recording PC

I

ilwoody

New member
Hello,

I'm about to get a custom pc for my home recording studio. What's the best setup for SSD? Is it clever to have an SSD for the system and libraries and a large HD for the rest?

Or better two SSDs? What is recommended to save in each of those (if multiple disks are, as I believe and always heard, necessary for better performance)? Also which brands do you prefer?

My whole budget for the entire PC is around $1800.

Thank you!
 
Hi,
The multiple disk thing is much less important with SSDs, because read/write speeds are much higher and there's no issue with seek time.
With mechanical disks you had to worry about the physical arm jumping back and forth all the time, so having sessions on the system disk wasn't a great idea.

I'd have no problem with the setup you describe - System and libraries/sessions on an SSD, and long term storage on a large spinning disk.

I've had faultless experience with Samsung 840 pro/evo but I've nothing really to compare to, and I expect they've been replaced with newer models now anyway.

Be sure your new computer has SataIII ports available for your SSD.
I guess pretty much any machine will these days, but worth mentioning; SataII would limit you to, at best, half of the drive's capability.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Hi,
The multiple disk thing is much less important with SSDs, because read/write speeds are much higher and there's no issue with seek time.
With mechanical disks you had to worry about the physical arm jumping back and forth all the time, so having sessions on the system disk wasn't a great idea.

I'd have no problem with the setup you describe - System and libraries/sessions on an SSD, and long term storage on a large spinning disk.

I've had faultless experience with Samsung 840 pro/evo but I've nothing really to compare to, and I expect they've been replaced with newer models now anyway.

Be sure your new computer has SataIII ports available for your SSD.
I guess pretty much any machine will these days, but worth mentioning; SataII would limit you to, at best, half of the drive's capability.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your feedback Steenamaroo! I have been given this setup for my new pc combo, so I guess I won't have ant problem.

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE S BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.35GHz/20MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
Gigabyte X470 AORUS Ultra Gaming: ATX, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
PNY QUADRO P400 - 2GB GDDR5, 256 CUDA Cores - 3 x mDP
1st Hard Disk
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3400MB/R, 1500MB/W)
 
Buy an external backup drive for everything and run backups periodically, but not continuously. (See another thread, now slightly derailed, on external drives.)

That m.2 stuff is great. A friend that builds a new PC every few years put it in his last one and can't stop talking about it. Not a doable upgrade for me, but my next computer (targeting 2020 :)), will have it. Maybe it'll be more affordable by then, too!
 
Yeah, you may need more space for your samples. A second SSD for them would be cool if you need it. Though a spinner is fine because if it fails, you can always download them again.

And I agree, back that recorded stuff up often to an external drive. You can grab it when your house catches fire. lol!

Not wishing bad on you, but shit happens...
 
Samsung's NVMe M.2 drives are awesome.

One suggestion: you can find some pretty good deals on the 960 Pro and EVO stuff now that the 970 stuff is out (if you're patient). The difference is marginal and the 960 still freaking rocks and can save you some money.

And a question: any particular reason for the Quadro GPU instead of a GTX? I see some GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti that have way more CUDA cores than the P400 in the $150-ish range. Might be worth a look. If you're doing video rendering, I *think* that the GTX can do H264 encoding. The Quadro definitely can pitch in when rendering to H.264, but it'd be worth a little research to see if the GTX can do the same thing, so you can get more horsepower for the same money.

And good choice on the Ryzen 7 2700. That's an awesome chip. My 1700 has been kicking butt for over a year on audio/video editing/rendering.
 
My concerns with an entirely SSD-based build would be:
1) space - SSD just costs a lot more per byte.
2) Drive failure - Frequent writes and deletes eventually induce failure in SSDs, which could prove to be an issue with recording where you are likely to write and delete large wav files pretty frequently. This would be especially relevant if your OS and software are on the same disk as your data.

I recommend a 2+ solution for almost any computer build: one for software, one for data. That way, the data is easily transferable to a new system, and upgrading the storage doesn't require rebuilding your OS.
Personally, I use SSD for the software drive and HDD for the data, but I could see SSD for both if you have a good backup/archive system in place.
 
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