SSD considerations for a photographer (heavy Lightroom & Photoshop use)

[Iron Chef]

I'm finishing up a Ryzen 5600X + MSI B550 Gaming wifi edge upgrade build. I will have a premium gen4 M.2 SSD as my primary OS drive (something like a new 1 or 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro).  And I'll be formatting my current Samsung 950 Pro (500GB) to put in the second m.2 slot on my new mobo (runs at PCIe 3.0 speeds, which is fine). 

 

The dilemma I'm facing is this - what configuration would perform best for photo processing?

1. Have my photo processing folder (Adobe cache folder, folders with RAW images to read from / write to with Lightroom and Photoshop during editing sessions) be on the 980 Pro (same drive as the OS).
2. Use my 950 Pro drive as my dedicated photo processing folder.

In scenario 1, everything would be on the faster SSD, but would photo-processing disk activities conflict with Windows background app/services disk activities? But I could also do this:

     3. Make two partitions on the 980 Pro, one dedicated for Windows, and the other for photos. 

 

Any thoughts or recommendations?

[joshfrog]

how much ram will you have in your system?

[Iron Chef]

4 minutes ago, joshfrog said:

how much ram will you have in your system?

32GB

[joshfrog]

i would say get a 980 pro in 500gb as ur boot drive install the 2nd 950 pro as a cache drive for windows and adobe and any other software you are using then use the momey you would spend gettin a larger boot drive on a sata 860 ssd 1 or 2tb for mass storage for your photos. 

when working on photos they would be cached in memory or on the 950 pro, you shouldnt need as much speed just to store photos, the other option would be to get 2 sata 1tb drives and put them in raid for greater speed and more space, i have 4 1tb sata ssds in raid 0 for my game storage and photo and video storage.

[joshfrog]

unless you are working with files that wont fit in memory, i no photoshop files at times can be very large i have several that wouldnt fit in 32gb or ram and i have friends who also have photos that wouldnt fit in 32gb but i dont no what photos you are working on

[DailyProcrastinator]

For heavy read/writes use the fastest drive to store those specific files. For loading programs it will not make much of a worthwhile difference at all. Honestly IMO the 980 Pro is not worth it. Personally I would go for a WD Black SN750, basically half the price for a 1TB drive, and it's basically a 970 Pro. I was heavily considering a 2TB NVME drive for my large files, but the performance gains is not significant enough to justify the cost. I ended up just using 2x SATA SSD's in RAID 0. Better off allocating that cost to a 5800x or 5900x, which in many workloads will benefit a lot more significantly. 

 

36 minutes ago, joshfrog said:

i would say get a 980 pro in 500gb as ur boot drive

I would disagree, there will be no distinguishable difference between the 980 Pro and even a Sata SSD for a basic boot drive, the price justification is not there. 

[Iron Chef]

41 minutes ago, joshfrog said:

i would say get a 980 pro in 500gb as ur boot drive install the 2nd 950 pro as a cache drive for windows and adobe and any other software you are using then use the momey you would spend gettin a larger boot drive on a sata 860 ssd 1 or 2tb for mass storage for your photos. 

when working on photos they would be cached in memory or on the 950 pro, you shouldnt need as much speed just to store photos, the other option would be to get 2 sata 1tb drives and put them in raid for greater speed and more space, i have 4 1tb sata ssds in raid 0 for my game storage and photo and video storage.

Oh I already have a 4TB Sata SSD for mass storage / archival stuff. I just need to think about where to put my raw files scratch disk, that's probably the best way to put it. And the disk-related activities I'm concerned about are imports/exports in Lightroom, and saves in Photoshop (need to manually save every so often while working on a project).

 

32GB RAM has been a comfortable ceiling for my projects so far. 

[Iron Chef]

10 minutes ago, DailyProcrastinator said:

For heavy read/writes use the fastest drive to store those specific files. For loading programs it will not make much of a worthwhile difference at all. Honestly IMO the 980 Pro is not worth it. Personally I would go for a WD Black SN750, basically half the price for a 1TB drive, and it's basically a 970 Pro. I was heavily considering a 2TB NVME drive for my large files, but the performance gains is not significant enough to justify the cost. I ended up just using 2x SATA SSD's in RAID 0. Better off allocating that cost to a 5800x or 5900x, which in many workloads will benefit a lot more significantly. 

 

Thanks for that suggestion! Yeah I've read mixed reviews concerning more realistic usage benchmarks regarding gen4 SSD vs gen3 SSDs. So I can agree that 980 Pro is overkill as a boot/OS/applications drive. But its performance might still be worth it for a photo scratch disk? I watched the video, and my take is that for video-rendering, it's bottlenecked by GPU/CPU, which makes sense. But is that also true in mass photo import/export and saves? I'm guessing SSD performance will have a bigger impact there.

 

What do you think of this configuration?

• 1TB 980 Pro in primary m.2 slot as dedicated photo scratch disk.
• 500GB WD Black SN750 in the second m.2 slot, as boot disk (Windows, apps)

 

 

[joshfrog]

Yeah that could work i also have seen different reviews showing its not a huge diference.

I would say if you buy those drives should be more then enough for you just do some testing once you have the drives and make sure it works in that setup, no reason it shouldnt though.

 

 

[DailyProcrastinator]

11 hours ago, Iron Chef said:

 

Thanks for that suggestion! Yeah I've read mixed reviews concerning more realistic usage benchmarks regarding gen4 SSD vs gen3 SSDs. So I can agree that 980 Pro is overkill as a boot/OS/applications drive. But its performance might still be worth it for a photo scratch disk? I watched the video, and my take is that for video-rendering, it's bottlenecked by GPU/CPU, which makes sense. But is that also true in mass photo import/export and saves? I'm guessing SSD performance will have a bigger impact there.

 

What do you think of this configuration?

• 1TB 980 Pro in primary m.2 slot as dedicated photo scratch disk.
• 500GB WD Black SN750 in the second m.2 slot, as boot disk (Windows, apps)

 

 

IF you are still compelled on getting the 980 Pro, I would configure it as you suggested. Personally it is still not worth the price for the 980 Pro, you are literally paying the Samsung Tax for no reason, if you want a faster drive that is better get the WD Black SN850, Gen 4.0 PCIe, it's $10 less and in real world tests it outperforms the 980 Pro. I've used older Gen WD Black NVME drives and the newer SN750, they are fantastic drives and phenomenal value for what you get, with 5 year warranty. 

 

But again, for just a dump drive I would not get either, price does not justify the performance gains. 

I would use the 950 Pro you already have for OS.

And get a 1TB WD SN750 or if you really want PCIe 4.0 get the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus.

 

[Iron Chef]

4 hours ago, DailyProcrastinator said:

IF you are still compelled on getting the 980 Pro, I would configure it as you suggested. Personally it is still not worth the price for the 980 Pro, you are literally paying the Samsung Tax for no reason, if you want a faster drive that is better get the WD Black SN850, Gen 4.0 PCIe, it's $10 less and in real world tests it outperforms the 980 Pro. I've used older Gen WD Black NVME drives and the newer SN750, they are fantastic drives and phenomenal value for what you get, with 5 year warranty. 

 

But again, for just a dump drive I would not get either, price does not justify the performance gains. 

I would use the 950 Pro you already have for OS.

And get a 1TB WD SN750 or if you really want PCIe 4.0 get the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus.

 

 

After doing a bit more research focusing on what you mentioned, I'm changing my plan on the 980 Pro. Apparently LR and PS isn't able to take advantage of NVME-level performance anyway. I think I will go with your suggestion of a 1TB WD black SN750. 

 

You just saved me a ton of $$, but I'm a bit sad that I'm not able to get better real gains from a SSD even if I'm prepared to throw money at it. 

 

As far as CPU, it is a tricky situation. From my search, it's a tough pill to swallow to pay the premium of a 5800X or 5900X. Going by Puget Sound's benchmarks, I'm seeing modest gains over the 5600X. But the price premium isn't even the biggest concern - I'm more concerned about the increased heat and fan noise. I have a great case (Define R5), and I will be getting a Noctua NH-D15S. With a 5600X, I'm confident I will maintain my whisper-quite setup in normal loads. But from I gather, the 5800X or 5900X has about twice the power draw of 5600X, and runs about 15 degC warmer. I've also seen discussions specifically with the 5800X. My room gets pretty hot during the summer months, I have no AC, and I definitely have run into thermal-related crashes on my current build during the summer. 

 

So overall, I think I'm stuck with a 5600X. (And do you know how Iong I've had to play the 5600X lottery to get one? ) 

 

[DailyProcrastinator]

17 minutes ago, Iron Chef said:

After doing a bit more research focusing on what you mentioned, I'm changing my plan on the 980 Pro. Apparently LR and PS isn't able to take advantage of NVME-level performance anyway. I think I will go with your suggestion of a 1TB WD black SN750. 

 

You just saved me a ton of $$, but I'm a bit sad that I'm not able to get better real gains from a SSD even if I'm prepared to throw money at it. 

Good choice!

 

18 minutes ago, Iron Chef said:

As far as CPU, it is a tricky situation. From my search, it's a tough pill to swallow to pay the premium of a 5800X or 5900X. Going by Puget Sound's benchmarks, I'm seeing modest gains over the 5600X. But the price premium isn't even the biggest concern - I'm more concerned about the increased heat and fan noise. I have a great case (Define R5), and I will be getting a Noctua NH-D15S. With a 5600X, I'm confident I will maintain my whisper-quite setup in normal loads. But from I gather, the 5800X or 5900X has about twice the power draw of 5600X, and runs about 15 degC warmer. I've also seen discussions specifically with the 5800X. My room gets pretty hot during the summer months, I have no AC, and I definitely have run into thermal-related crashes on my current build during the summer. 

Yeah good performance gains, but if you are concerned with thermals that is understandable. I would think that despite this with a better airflow case + good fan setup, and maybe under-volting you could easily achieve reasonable temps. 

 

23 minutes ago, Iron Chef said:

So overall, I think I'm stuck with a 5600X. (And do you know how Iong I've had to play the 5600X lottery to get one? ) 

I believe it, here in Canada availability is basically absolutely zero. I am still waiting to get a 5600x and a 3070.