Which M.2 Drive is best for content creators?
lazarus102
Posts: 47
I have been told by someone that knows a good bit about this stuff that the Samsung 970 pro is the drive to go for, but I looked into it just a bit, and it looks like the read/write on that for small files is pretty terrible. Ideally I'd like to get a drive that has equivalent performance with both big and small files. I think I'd rather have a drive that can read/write small or large files at 1500 MB/s, than to have a drive that can read/write large files at 2000-2200 MB/s, but then dips down to 600-700 MB/s on small files.
I'm not a pro in this game yet, and that's why I'm asking for advice, but it just seems to me from a logical perspective that if the drive can do 2-3X the speed of traditional SSD with small or large files; that would make everything flow well, more cosistently.
For what it's worth, I use my PC for content creation only. I have an Xbox one with over 300 games on it, so I don't see any sense in wasting precious render time on my PC just to game on it.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
That's simply impossible. You can optimize for sequential writes and reads (big files) or you can optimize for random access (small files) but not both.
Depending on what you create you likely shouldn't be writing content to an m.2 anyway. They're very expensive per Gb and are usually reserved for the OS and programs yiou want to launch quickly. If you do video you might want very fast storage but a video editing rig is all about big files (which is why the 970 pro is the way it is).
I only use SSD for my C Drive as its the boot drive and where all the programs are installed on.
Actual content is saved to and kept on a 4TB HDD
I use an M.2 for the OS and DS program install, but keep all content on a separate SSD, with another 4 SSDs for other content, backup, etc. My reasoning is that SSDs are pretty cheap, and it's better to buy a couple (1 in use, 1 for backup), than shove everything onto a more expensive M.2 and risk a drive failure of the entire machine.
As for HDDs... I was glad to finally get rid of them altogether. I was using 10,000 rpm Velociraptors, but SSDs still beat them hollow in terms of speed.
I should have been more specific. I primarily use Maya/Blender and Daz. I do a little video editing, but mostly just to edit my renders. The primary concern would be to upgrade render speeds (I don't have a lot of money, otherwise I'd upgrade mobo/CPU). But ya, you may have missunderstood me. I specifically said around 1500 MB/s for both. That is to say, I would like one that is balanced. Not geared towards small or big files. According to the video that I watched, the Samsung Evo does 2200 MB/S on large files. That would be optimized for large files. But 600-700 on small files (bout the same as regular SSD). So like, bring the speed on small files up while reducing speed for large files. Maybe don't optimize for either? Or does every company that makes M.2's optimize for one or the other so they can boast about higher speeds?
M.2 drives are not exactly expensive these days for the difference in speed. If I had a board that'd take more than one, and a full time job, I'd get more than one. I mean, I've seen a few on sale as cheap as 160 for a 1TB. When you consider how expensive it was for SSD's that size just a few years back, that's practically nothing.
Yes, I know, but at the time I built my pc, there was more of a difference in price. And the extra cost of a mobo which took more than 1 M.2 was another factor.
Next time around, I imagine I'll go with nothing but M.2s... or something newer?
You are much better off with installing Daz Studio, Windows and all the essential programs on a good, reliable M.2
For content, I would use a good 2 or 4TB 7200rpm hard drive. Trust me, even though SSD's are much, much faster, you wouldn't get that much better performance for the money you are spending. + HDD's are waaay more reliable and can store much data. I'd get 2 of those big HDD's and set up RAID0 for backups
You don't say how much RAM you have now or what your current CPU/MB combo can handle in RAM upgrades. RAM is the 1st thing that needs addressed before upgrading magnetic drives to SSD drives. A 2TB SSD drive is $200+. 1x16GB DDR4 modules can be had for $50 - $75. A brand new MB AMD with wifi can be had for $85. A AMD Ryzen 7 8 core 16 thread CPU had for $166.
So even though the $200 SSD is the most expensive part of an average total computer upgrade since you can use it before or after the other components you don't have to wait till after your upgrade the rest of the PC. It's easily the most expensive part of the upgrade though and if you are using DDR4 RAM already then RAM is probably the better thing to upgrade first.
If you have DAZ Content or create content don't waste time on anything less than a 2TB SSD as your system disk or 32GB system RAM. Increasing higher resolution PBR materials changes things. You need more RAM and more storage.
Anyway, the things they have you worried about with regards to large files & small files make little sense to worry about since you can't edit those DAZ Studio files nearly as fast as the CPU, GPU, bus or the M.2 NVMe SSD card operate anyway. Maybe if you had a retail database full of realtime customer transactions that was getting huge volume all day long you'd worry about such things.
I find that the biggest hassle is when I open or save a file the OS has to wake my Seagate SSHD Hybrid disk because the power saving features have put it to sleep. For that reason, you should buy an SSD disk at least 2TB (2TB is large as you can go before you have to start paying a size premium punishment fee but there are 4TB M.2 NMVe SSD cards) and use it as the system disk and keep your DAZ Studio Content Library on the system disk but keep the DIM Install Files, YouTube video, Music Library, Picture Library, and all those other files you only access very sparingly on an external SSD or SSHD drive; unless those don't amount to too much space then it makes sense to keep all on the system drive.
a) Once the files are read into DAZ Studio that you will be editing you are not going to personally be working editing those files faster than what your computer is going to working as it syncs what's in RAM with the edits you're doing in the CPU / GPU. It's not going to happen. Those edits won't be written to disk until you do a manual save unless you have so little RAM that the OS uses a page RAM on disk, and that save process will involve more time to cleanup and prep for save in the CPU by DAZ Studio than it will the OS taking what's in RAM and writing it to hard disk, which will be queued and not immediate anyway. It will written soon enough though, it's doesn't stay in an hour long queue at Disney World like people do.
i) So to avoid a virtual RAM page file that will being wrote to all the time on slow permanent storage to make up for lack of physical RAM you want 32GB, 48GB, 64GB, 128GB and as much RAM as your computer CPU/motherboard combination will support that you can afford. You want more than you need, much more than you need. I'd get at least double the RAM required to render the largest scene you've ever rendered or tried to render in DAZ Studio. For me that means my 16GB DAZ render needs 32GB system RAM.
Personally, I'm buying the 2TB Intel 660p M.2 NVMe PCIe3 x4 that's going for about $220 now at online retailers and will be using it as my system disk. It's not as fast as the Samsung brand you cited but it's certainly not significantly enough slower that'd I'd ever notice the difference. No need to pay an extra $100 because the Samsung EVO disk might have the opportunity a few times a year to save me about 0.25ths of a second writing some huge file over the Intel 660p..
Then use another 2TB SSD or a 2TB SSHD Hybrid drive to create weekly image of your system disk (which won't be near 2TB unless your disk is almost full) as backup. You can use a 4TB SSD or SSHD hybrid disk if you want to be sure to save more than one image at a time without overwriting old backups.
The 4TB SSDs disk are going for $650+ currently so too expensive for most people to consider although doesn't a 4TB SSD system disk and a 4TB SSD daily system image backup disk sound really nice? Guess it's just as well PCIe 4.0 slots will be standard commonplace on motherboards before 4TB SSDs are going for the same $100 4TB USB HDs are going for.
Drive speed has nearly no effect on render times. In iRay the whole scene is read into RAM and then passed to the GPU at the start of the render. In 3DL it appears that the scene is simply just read into RAM (I guess if the scene is too big for your RAM there would be some disk swapping but that isn't a reason to get a faster drive but more RAM).
And the controllers really only come optimized for sequential or random access. I've never seen or heard of a "balanced" one.
I can just re-download content, I could even keep a backup of content on an HDD.. I'm not that afraid of losing it. Rendering deals with a lot of files, so having those on an M.2 should speed things up more than just having the whole 1.2 gigabyte that is the DS folder on there. And why on earth would I bother with a 7200 RPM drive, those are kinda obsolete with the 10k RPM HDD's
"A 2TB SSD drive is $200+. 1x16GB DDR4 modules can be had for $50 - $75. A brand new MB AMD with wifi can be had for $85. A AMD Ryzen 7 8 core 16 thread CPU had for $166. "
Uhh.. or get a 1TB M.2 for 160.. Don't need 2TB. Need speed more than space. Storage is what HDD is for. Sides, people keep talkin bout reliability of HDD's.. I've had way more shit go missing due to CRC errors and other such random shit on HDD's than I have on my SDD since I got it several years ago. Plus, when you pack an SSD to the tits, it don't get all laggy on ya, Also don't require constant defragging (IIRC defragging SSD's isn't a good thing). And 16GB for 50$? You getting your ram outta the bargain bin at some noname PC store? I learned a long time ago not to piss with cheap noname ram. That stuff was the cause of most of my early PC problems (flaky ram that'd cause all kinds of problems that appeared software related). But then I'm guessing maybe those are american prices. If that's the case then that stretches the difference in storage cost significantly. 160 for americans is like, 90, or something.. But also raises the cost of that mobo/CPU by near double. And ya, 4-500$ wortha upgrades is a bit outta my range right now. I already got 16gb of ram. Oh, also taxes, we got like 13% tax here. I live in one of the highest taxed places in the country.. I paid an extra 100$ in taxes when I got my RTX.. stupid government..
Rendering does not deal with a lot of files on drives after the initial startup. You're seeking something that will not help you.
Well, certainly being able to near instantly load a complex scene, and switch between scenes, could be a bonus.
You can't do that either. There's a lot of processing going on not justreading the files.
Open Task Manager an select the drive your assets are on. Open a scene in DS and then check how much drive activity there was during the loading sequence.
As said you are wasting money and time getting into too much technical details of SSD card speeds.
To speed up your computer, but not render times so much you need to in this order:
a) To max file throughput generally:
1) Max out amount of system RAM
2) Get the biggest, but not necessarily the fastest SSDs you can afford
b) To max out compute throughput generally:
1) Max out the CPU ops your motherboard can support with best CPU
2) Max out the GPU ops your motherboard can support with best GPU
If you render or do other 3D heavy activities reverse 1 & 2 on b).
Well, I've got an alright sized cheque coming up due to working a few extra hours, so I may be able to combine that with what I have in order to upgrade mobo and cpu. Since I'm using an i5 processor that's 4-5 years old now, I would likely gain some speeds from upgrading that. As for ram, I have 16 gb, but it's some older (I think 3200... maybe..) DDR3. But I'd worry about upgrading that later once I got mobo/CPU upgraded. I know I need more/better ram though, I have seen my ram hit 100% quite a few times.
Yes, I know what you mean. I have an 7 year old laptop and I'm in month 1 of a 4 month plan to build a new AMD desktop that's going to set me back about $1000 when it's done. As I have 16GB and run out on some DAZ scenes already the new desktop will have 32GB starting but eventually 64GB RAM and I bought a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD and Ryzen 5 3600 CPU and presto all of the sudden $1000 gone! At least it's still much cheaper than had I tried to buy such a machine already built from HP, ASUS, Acer, or whoever.
If it is DDR3 then it isn't 3200 and you'll need new RAM for any new CPU and motherboard.
An i5 of that vintage is 4c/4t with somewhere around 4.5Ghz boost clock. Going to a new CPU will get you a performance boost simply because of the IPC boosts of the CPU's since yours was made. You'll also get more cores and threads, unless you buy Intel which you definitely should not, That won't directly help in DS, unless you render in 3DL, but it will help in many other pieces of software, blender, photoshop etc.
If you've got the money to spend you can also go to the Ryzen 3000 series of CPU's and an X570 motherboard which would support PCIE gen 4 m.2 drives which are faster at every sort of read/write operation than existing gen 3 drives. But X570 is expensive and so are the new generation m.2's.
The benchmark below is very detailed about the 970 pro. As far as I read it read/write of small files is ok (and just check the IOPS values - a total dream compared to what was possible not to far ago - but that is true for mostly any M.2 brand of SSDs).
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/samsung_970_pro_m_2_512gb_nvme_ssd_review,1.html
You're better off investing your money in a used nVidia GPU.
I just bought an EVGA 2070 super.. Short of buying another one to run in SLI, that would be pointless.. not to mention, running all that on my old cpu and mobo.. and my PS is only a 750 I think, I'd likely need more power to efficiently run two of those gpu's.
https://www.newegg.ca/p/N82E16813144262
Just bought that, and this to go with it.
https://www.newegg.ca/amd-ryzen-7-2700x/p/N82E16819113499?Item=N82E16819113499
Current ram is,
https://www.amazon.com/G-SKILL-Ripjaws-2400MHZ-Desktop-F3-2400C11D-8GXM/dp/B00COGLBPQ
And
https://www.newegg.com/patriot-8gb-240-pin-ddr3-sdram/p/N82E16820220535
According to the the website the board I got deff supports 2400, but is unclear about 2000. It states that it supports 2133 and 1866, but not 2k, which doesn't make much sense.. But if it actually don't support 2k, then it looks like I'll be down by half on my ram.. Sigh..
Just lucky that you didn't need to buy a new video card.. That's where all the money goes on new computers.. I've already spent over a grand, and that's without upgrading my old ram, or getting an M.2 drive..
Ah a fellow moose rider. I feel your pain on the prices up here, blew like 1600 on a 2080 super this sept lol @.@
You got gyped.. You coulda gotten a Titan from that amount of cash.. You coulda easily scorred a 2080 super for closer to 800.. Unless you mean a TI, but even then you coulda waited on a sale and deff got it for at least 2-300$ cheaper. I'm not one for waitin on sales when I want somethin and got the cash now, but if that something, costs over a grand, I'll wait for a sale, lol..
Titan RTX are 3,551.39 + taxes
Regular SSDs don't do 600-700 on small files. Not even close. 4kb random reads at queue depth 1 will bring the speed of any drive down to a crawl. But if you have money to burn and you absolutely have to have large read speeds on random small files, an Intel Optane 900p or 905p is many times faster than all the fastest M.2 SSDs at random 4k reads with queue depth 1.
You've got a real problem. Your RAM is DDR3. All Ryzen chips support DDR4 only. You may want the X570 for future upgrades but with the 2700X in it it wion't support PCIE gen 4 which is pretty much the only major feature of those over X470.
I'm actually building a desktop now and I decided to wait for the Summer of 2020 to buy a new GPU as I expect (OK - hope fore) 4K or FHD real time ray tracing with 16GB GPUs next summer. On the desktop I'm building now I bought an AMD Radeon RX 570 8GB MK2 OC so not exactly slouchy but useless for DAZ Studio (or Octane) but quite useful to too many other things to name. I got it for $132 so it was a great deal for an 8GB RAM GPU than can do openGL 4.5 and openCL 2.1 (or maybe it was openCL 2.0). Only thing I have left to buy is the Ryzen 5 3600 CPU.
Most expensive component of my desktop is the 2TB Intel 660p M.2 NVMe SSD if you don't count 4 sticks of 1x16GB 2666 RAM as one component (the 4 sticks comes in at about $200 too).
So al told about $1000 and $400 of that is storage. Storage is actually massively overpriced for the amount of research and resources that go into it compared to, say, a new GPU or new CPU, which wind up looking like total bargains in comparison.
If the Ampere GPU 3080ti increases VRAM it will likely be only a little cheaper than the 2080ti.
Well a Zoltac RTX 2070 Mini with 8GB is $399 now so I'm hoping for something like a RTX 3070 with 16GB for $499. More than $499 and it's really unlikely I'll buy before the RTX 4070s, RTX 5070s, and whatever come out.
Since I've have DAZ Studio scenes that exceed 16GB really I want GPUs with 32GB or even better with 4 RAM banks for GDR5 or HB2 (or whatever that RAM is called) that can go up to on daughter card of up to 256GB RAM.
There is no way that a 16Gb 3070 is happening. The 3080ti might bo up to 16 or something but the lower tier cards, the ones now at 8Gb, will not go past 12Gb. GDDR6 modules are expensive.
OK, that's the RAM I was trying to think of, GDDR6. Overpriced but whatever. If AMD does realtime ray tracing that can do 4K at 30FPS or higher on their cards with 16GB or more that's what i'm buying. nVidia is nearly out of the GPU compute power lead. They can't rest on their laurels indefinitely.
Just FYI, FHD isn't good. It's got a fancy name "full high deffenition" But it's far from full, it's 1/4th of 4k. So don't waste your time on FHD.