2x500GB or 1x1TB nvme Samsung - 970 Evo

[Luisa]

Hello,

 

So there's this black friday promotion on my country that is selling 500GB Samsung 970 evos for 100€ each.

 

But I really want 1TB at least, and the minimum price I'm seeing is 235€ for one.

 

So should I get 2x500GB or is it worth to spend more 35 € for 1TB? What do you guys recommend?

 

Thanks!

[Altruist]

7 minutes ago, Luisa said:

Hello,

 

So there's this black friday promotion on my country that is selling 500GB Samsung 970 evos for 100€ each.

 

But I really want 1TB at least, and the minimum price I'm seeing is 235€ for one.

 

So should I get 2x500GB or is it worth to spend more 35 € for 1TB? What do you guys recommend?

 

Thanks!

1. less power, but i guess that won't really matter.

2. pcie nvme use pcie lanes off ur cpu or pch. ( the more drives, the more pcie lanes)

3. 1 slot used instead of 2.

4. Maybe running 2 drives in a raid config could improve performance....idk.

 

No problem.

 

[Luisa]

So what should I do? lol

[Windows7ge]

If your important data is going to be kept elsewhere you can RAID0 the two 500GB's. Noticeable performance gain won't be 2x but it'll be pretty quick. If you don't care about that then I'd spend the little extra to get 1 solid TB to work with on your boot drive. Less hassle too.

[Luisa]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

If your important data is going to be kept elsewhere you can RAID0 the two 500GB's. Noticeable performance gain won't be 2x but it'll be pretty quick. If you don't care about that then I'd spend the little extra to get 1 solid TB to work with on your boot drive. Less hassle too.

True, and yes I got a NAS.

[Altruist]

1 minute ago, Luisa said:

So what should I do? lol

1TB drive, imo.

[Luisa]

Just now, Altruist said:

1TB drive, imo.

Yea I guess it's worth the extra 35 thanks!

[DanielNS84]

3 hours ago, Luisa said:

Yea I guess it's worth the extra 35 thanks!

I'll tell you if it's worth it! I'm getting a pair of 1TB and am gonna RAID-0 them to see what sort of improvement I get. I'll post the results here!

[Luisa]

1 minute ago, DanielNS84 said:

I'll tell you if it's worth it! I'm getting a pair of 1TB and am gonna RAID-0 them to see what sort of improvement I get. I'll post the results here!

Thanks

[DanielNS84]

44 minutes ago, Luisa said:

Thanks

You bet! I got the first one in for a baseline (well, technically the 2nd since I boot to one as well)...once the other one and the PCIE card (to bypass that DMI nonsense) arrive I'll start posting RAID results using software RAID and hardware if I can get that working.

 

Single Drive (Data Drive):

Single Drive (OS Drive):

[Luisa]

I still haven't purchased the nvme's, so I can wait!

[DanielNS84]

Quick note for you, this data won't apply to transfers over the "turbo limit" on the 500GB models as the 500GB are roughly the same speed as the others unless this limit is passed then according to Samsung: The sequential write performances after TurboWrite region are: 300 MB/s(250GB), 600 MB/s(500GB), 1,200 MB/s(1TB) and 1,250 MB/s(2TB). So according to the manufacturer Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite buffer size varies based on the capacity of the SSD: 13GB for 250GB model, 22GB for 500GB model, 42GB for 1TB model and 78GB for 2TB model. This means that 2 x 500GB should end up with an identical buffer to the 1TB since it's writing half the data to each...this means that ymmv when transferring huge files since copying a 22GB+ file will cut your speed down to 600MB/s (still fast) whereas the larger ones will remain quick until 42GB and 78GB respectively. Bear in mind the pro SSD's do not have these limits which is why they're so expensive...most people will never hit these limits during normal use which is why the Evo's are such a great value.

[Luisa]

17 hours ago, DanielNS84 said:

Quick note for you, this data won't apply to transfers over the "turbo limit" on the 500GB models as the 500GB are roughly the same speed as the others unless this limit is passed then according to Samsung: The sequential write performances after TurboWrite region are: 300 MB/s(250GB), 600 MB/s(500GB), 1,200 MB/s(1TB) and 1,250 MB/s(2TB). So according to the manufacturer Samsung's Intelligent TurboWrite buffer size varies based on the capacity of the SSD: 13GB for 250GB model, 22GB for 500GB model, 42GB for 1TB model and 78GB for 2TB model. This means that 2 x 500GB should end up with an identical buffer to the 1TB since it's writing half the data to each...this means that ymmv when transferring huge files since copying a 22GB+ file will cut your speed down to 600MB/s (still fast) whereas the larger ones will remain quick until 42GB and 78GB respectively. Bear in mind the pro SSD's do not have these limits which is why they're so expensive...most people will never hit these limits during normal use which is why the Evo's are such a great value.

So what should I do after all?

[DanielNS84]

Results are in!!! Well, some of them...I also got my new motherboard with a PLX chip in it today (WS z390 Pro) but haven't had time to install it as I have a project due. I installed the drives in my old motherboard (MSI z390 MEG Ace) as a test to get software/hardware RAID and motherboard M.2 vs. PCIE add-in card to bypass DMI limits numbers and as I hoped it totally worked! I'm limited to software RAID in this configuration but I hope my new board will support more M.2 lanes but if not it's no big deal as I can just run a software RAID because it's just my games drive and I can always redownload all of them I don't have an installer for on my mechanical RAID.

 

The results:
 

 

I'm especially excited about the last result as there don't appear to be any drop in performance beyond the margin of error in the tiny files and write speed scaled way better than expected even when everything was on the motherboard...it still hit the DMI limit in that case but the 1 x motherboard and 1 x PCIE card results are exactly what I want! I paid like $20 for the card and I also have a U.2 adapter to try with my new motherboard! I'll upload these tests on my new board as soon as I can!

 

Also, I may make a thread specifically about this since there's no good NVMe RAID-0 info online since everyone seems to just accept the DMI limit as the end of the road.

 

Edit: The models for the M.2 (already tested) and U.2 (Testing soon) adapters I used (and will use) to bypass the limit are in my PCPartsPicker URL if anyone needs that info!

Edited November 27, 2018 by DanielNS84
Adding part info...

[DanielNS84]

More Data:
Size increased to 8GB

 

[DanielNS84]

New data just to get it out there...I split the RAID and made them unique drives again and benched the individual drives on the motherboard and PCIE card:

 

[DanielNS84]

Data with the new motherboard, pretty close but with the GPU and others still running at full speed (x16).

 

Edit: Now that I look it is a bit faster on this board...cool! Anyway, I'm gonna start using this RAID is no one wants anymore data, I haven't tried the U.2 connection yet but I expect it to be the same.

Edited November 30, 2018 by DanielNS84

[DanielNS84]

On 11/23/2018 at 9:56 AM, Altruist said:

1TB drive, imo.

Agreed if that's the only drive you'll be getting (unless you get 3 of the 500GB models), if you plan on getting enough to combine a few but still boot to a single drive then that route seems advantageous.

[DanielNS84]

On 11/23/2018 at 9:48 AM, Luisa said:

Hello,

 

So there's this black friday promotion on my country that is selling 500GB Samsung 970 evos for 100€ each.

 

But I really want 1TB at least, and the minimum price I'm seeing is 235€ for one.

 

So should I get 2x500GB or is it worth to spend more 35 € for 1TB? What do you guys recommend?

 

Thanks!

Okay, so I let things settle a bit and have also decided to pick up the other 16GB of memory I had my eyes on recently. Since I knew already that this additional RAM wouldn't do much for my average use I wanted to utilize it as a cache for my other drives. I grabbed PrimoCache and configured it to cache my RAID-0, my RAID-1, and my boot drives to see what it would do. I'm about 2 days in and I can definitely feel a difference in launch/load times for most things...I have 16GB allocated automatically between the 1TB NVMe boot drive, the RAID-0 NVMe game drive, and the RAID-1 7200 RPM NAS drives I use for documents and install executables and ISO's.I'll post the performance numbers below!

 

OS Drive (After Reboots and Other Programs Loading Into Cache):

 

RAID-0 NVMe Drive (Before Reboots and Other Programs Loading Into Cache):

 

RAID-0 NVMe Drive (After Reboots and Other Programs Loading Into Cache):

 

RAID-1 NAS Drive Mirror Drive (After Reboots and Other Programs Loading Into Cache):

 

Let me know if you guys want more numbers! I lowered the test file sizes to test quicker as I have to run to work but I can fun longer ones if anyone wants the info. Thanks guys!

 

 

[DanielNS84]

Meh, I decided I'd just make a video on it. I have terrible Internet and messed up the bitrate so it skips around in a few parts but it gets the idea across.

 

 

Yes I made a clickbait thumbnail, don't judge me.