Its my first crack for a long time at building a workstation. I've started convservatively, perhaps too much so (& certainly bush-league by thus forum's standards, but I didn't want to fry $10,000 worth of parts with my rusty PC skills), but the process has started with an Asrock X399 Taichi (PCIe 3.0), Threadripper 1950X (likely to be upgraded), & 128GB DDR4, other parts are being selected now. The purpose is for GPU rendering, falling back to CPU if necessary. Windows 10/11 Professional, upgrading to Workstation version if necessary
I've figured out that TLC based SSDs tank in performance after their SLC buffer gets filled, dropping to less than the speed of HDDs. I may seriously need to rely on a fast M.2 SSD to provide a large chunk of virtual memory, so that's not ideal. I'm looking at MLC drives, which seems pretty much extinct, at least at the consumer level as a new purchase.
1. The Samsung 970 or 960 Pro was where I turned next, but Samsung uses proprietary NVMe drivers which seems to raise concerns with Linux, but I'm not clear on the details, but eventually there will be an unsupported OS upgrade (even for Windows) and they will be useless. Also, in the past I remember articles about incompatibility between Samsung SSDs & X399, but after searching I can't seem to find if its been resolved. Does anyone have any recommendations on these issues?
2. So, I am looking for the fastest sustained disk writing and reading for a reasonable price. I assume SLC M.2 SSDs are even more unobtainable, slower, and smaller than MLC. Is an M.2 NVMe MLC SSD the best solution to this need?
3. What alternatives are there for brands & models (of M.2 PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 NVMe MLC SSD), new or used? New or used, just as long as they are obtainable and not unreasonably expensive. I didn't find much on eBay, but that was only using MLC as a keyword.
4. The new M.2 MLC SSDs I see at Newegg are Chinese brands, cheap, & and I doubt these are really 2-bit MLC. Does anyone have any info on these?
5. The stats I did find for quad M.2 full slot adapters didn't seem to be an improvement, birfurcation seems to be problematic, and PCIe slots are at a premium for my purposes. Is a full enterprise dedicated x4 or x16 PCIe SSD card requirred to better M.2, and is it much better? If so, what reasonably-priced recommendations does anyone have?
6. Would a U.2 SSD using an M.2 adapter be a better solution? This is what I could find, most results were adapters going the other direction, are there better adapters available?:
7. I also need one or more HDDs, & all these new, non-disclosed by model, standards such as SMR have me a bit concerned about programs crashing due to an HDD taking some time to do housekeeping and being unresponsive. Or am I misunderstanding the situation and that's unlikely to happen? I know they have caused issues with RAIDs.
8. Backblaze has no current Western Digital drives (if I understand correctly), Toshiba has no direct to consumer support (???), & Hitachi seems to be less reliable above 4TB these days, perhaps on par with Seagate in some ways. Long-term reliability is a primary concern, followed by reasonable price and speed. Does anyone have Model/Brand recommendations of current drives?
9. Is there a good way to plug a SAS drive into a SATA port (to widen the popl of HDD candidates)? I have a vague memory that this works, or vice-versa, but I don't remember the details.
10. Is there an x1 adapter to run SAS drives, and would it work well?
11. Or a multi-drive SAS adapter for an M.2 slot?
12. In terms of a file system, is ReFS a viable option for preventing data corruption over time? This is with non-ECC DDR4. I am aware MS gimped earlier versions of Windows for creation of volumes & Pro for Workstations / Enterprise / Server is now requirred. I really don't get the Windows log system, and under Win10 have to go there for errors, and I can't usually even figure out if I am looking at the correct log. I must need a dummies book.
13. Finally, where can I buy quality cables? I may need some extenders for use in a full tower case. And I was about to buy some Phanteks, based on good Newegg reviews, but then I saw some horror stories on Amazon reviews. I really don't like parts that seem well made & deliver a lot of power and then fail taking other things with them. I suppose cables would also be about the easiest thing ever to counterfeit, if buying directly from the manufacturer isn't possible.
Hopefully, someone will have some feedback for me. I've posted some questions elsewhere and got little response. An ad on TV has introduced me to the term TLDR. Apologies for that, I figure information up front prevents additional questions & delays.
In any case, thank you all for contributing here, over the years I've learned a lot.
I've figured out that TLC based SSDs tank in performance after their SLC buffer gets filled, dropping to less than the speed of HDDs. I may seriously need to rely on a fast M.2 SSD to provide a large chunk of virtual memory, so that's not ideal. I'm looking at MLC drives, which seems pretty much extinct, at least at the consumer level as a new purchase.
1. The Samsung 970 or 960 Pro was where I turned next, but Samsung uses proprietary NVMe drivers which seems to raise concerns with Linux, but I'm not clear on the details, but eventually there will be an unsupported OS upgrade (even for Windows) and they will be useless. Also, in the past I remember articles about incompatibility between Samsung SSDs & X399, but after searching I can't seem to find if its been resolved. Does anyone have any recommendations on these issues?
2. So, I am looking for the fastest sustained disk writing and reading for a reasonable price. I assume SLC M.2 SSDs are even more unobtainable, slower, and smaller than MLC. Is an M.2 NVMe MLC SSD the best solution to this need?
3. What alternatives are there for brands & models (of M.2 PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 NVMe MLC SSD), new or used? New or used, just as long as they are obtainable and not unreasonably expensive. I didn't find much on eBay, but that was only using MLC as a keyword.
4. The new M.2 MLC SSDs I see at Newegg are Chinese brands, cheap, & and I doubt these are really 2-bit MLC. Does anyone have any info on these?
5. The stats I did find for quad M.2 full slot adapters didn't seem to be an improvement, birfurcation seems to be problematic, and PCIe slots are at a premium for my purposes. Is a full enterprise dedicated x4 or x16 PCIe SSD card requirred to better M.2, and is it much better? If so, what reasonably-priced recommendations does anyone have?
6. Would a U.2 SSD using an M.2 adapter be a better solution? This is what I could find, most results were adapters going the other direction, are there better adapters available?:
7. I also need one or more HDDs, & all these new, non-disclosed by model, standards such as SMR have me a bit concerned about programs crashing due to an HDD taking some time to do housekeeping and being unresponsive. Or am I misunderstanding the situation and that's unlikely to happen? I know they have caused issues with RAIDs.
8. Backblaze has no current Western Digital drives (if I understand correctly), Toshiba has no direct to consumer support (???), & Hitachi seems to be less reliable above 4TB these days, perhaps on par with Seagate in some ways. Long-term reliability is a primary concern, followed by reasonable price and speed. Does anyone have Model/Brand recommendations of current drives?
9. Is there a good way to plug a SAS drive into a SATA port (to widen the popl of HDD candidates)? I have a vague memory that this works, or vice-versa, but I don't remember the details.
10. Is there an x1 adapter to run SAS drives, and would it work well?
11. Or a multi-drive SAS adapter for an M.2 slot?
12. In terms of a file system, is ReFS a viable option for preventing data corruption over time? This is with non-ECC DDR4. I am aware MS gimped earlier versions of Windows for creation of volumes & Pro for Workstations / Enterprise / Server is now requirred. I really don't get the Windows log system, and under Win10 have to go there for errors, and I can't usually even figure out if I am looking at the correct log. I must need a dummies book.
13. Finally, where can I buy quality cables? I may need some extenders for use in a full tower case. And I was about to buy some Phanteks, based on good Newegg reviews, but then I saw some horror stories on Amazon reviews. I really don't like parts that seem well made & deliver a lot of power and then fail taking other things with them. I suppose cables would also be about the easiest thing ever to counterfeit, if buying directly from the manufacturer isn't possible.
Hopefully, someone will have some feedback for me. I've posted some questions elsewhere and got little response. An ad on TV has introduced me to the term TLDR. Apologies for that, I figure information up front prevents additional questions & delays.
In any case, thank you all for contributing here, over the years I've learned a lot.