Sooo let me start with the fact that i've been impoverished and am really behind the times. Neither of my main PC's even have an SSD, even for Adobe CC, because upgrades kept getting postponed due to unplanned medical and other bills and "it was still working" for my limited use so I didn't worry about it.
I'm finally researching to upgrade in part because Adobe is now consistently complaining about and refusing to even run the latest versions on the hardware I have available. (I had a newer core i7 wacom cintiq with an SSD but that's having problems with a dying fan, so to avoid killing that I have to minimize use of it/saved for when drawing only and so am back on the older hardware) So at least I need a stopgap to last another couple years, and a plan for what to upgrade after that for a higher performing desktop once I finally can pursue that.
So my next desktop needs to have an m2 SSD added to it because i'm sure lacking one is bottlenecking Adobe performance, which has been getting slower and slower with each release. (even browsers seem to be accessing files in a way that expects an SSD now/running slower than they ever did before, and task mangler shows it hitting the HD to touch every file it's ever seen in months or some stupid thing from the Downloads list)
Adobe used to want you to use even three separate drives if you could for the OS/app, your loaded assets, and your scratchfile disk since disks were limited by IO and transfer rate and those were three distinct bottleneck points. I'm not even sure if this advice still applies in the age of m2 speed - like i'm assuming a single m2 drive (which is at least 4x faster than a SATA SSD) would be faster than using three SATA SSD's configured like that, since IOPS is no longer likely the bottleneck.
I'm wondering if using two or three separate m2 drives would be that much faster, or if the bottleneck is likely to go back to the cpu cores, gpu and such by then.
I'm curious whether the enterprise U2 format would have a point - from reading some things here I see it's got better heat management, larger capacity (not a personal concern right now, a few TB is plenty/I dont have huge assets or scratch needs right now), and 10x the lifespan endurance - the last of which might matter.
I'm curious whether an m2 drive is just used like a normal SSD drive/replaces it entirely, or if i'm planning to have SATA SSD's in addition to fast m2 drives for more special speed bottlenecked use.
I've seen the pcie x16 cards that mount 4 m2 drives and i'm not sure if they are combined into one big drive, one fast drive, or treated as four separate drives, or whether any special mobo support is needed for any of that. I would specifically like to put these in an older workstation that doesn't have built in m2 support, and i'm running a workstation instead of a new desktop because huge RAM amounts are more affordable for when I upgrade - thats because After Effects is an absolute monster on system requirements and I might just go to 256gb.
I'm pretty budget constrained but not necessarily in a cheap up front way, if a consumer SSD is just going to burn out in 6 months from overuse i'd rather get the long endurance one to last a few years yet. I mostly edit in 1080p for the time being and wont migrate to 4-6k high bitrate stuff til I have good cameras and all plans for that have been held up by life taking unplanned turns since covid.
In addition to Adobe CC on Windows 10, i'm also trying to start using ProTools, Davinci Resolve v18, some lighter After Effects use soon. I will also be building a hackintosh and using Final Cut Pro X on a separate computer though I doubt that would treat SSD's radically different than Windows. Any suggestions of specific advice or where to educate myself on the options are welcome.
I'm finally researching to upgrade in part because Adobe is now consistently complaining about and refusing to even run the latest versions on the hardware I have available. (I had a newer core i7 wacom cintiq with an SSD but that's having problems with a dying fan, so to avoid killing that I have to minimize use of it/saved for when drawing only and so am back on the older hardware) So at least I need a stopgap to last another couple years, and a plan for what to upgrade after that for a higher performing desktop once I finally can pursue that.
So my next desktop needs to have an m2 SSD added to it because i'm sure lacking one is bottlenecking Adobe performance, which has been getting slower and slower with each release. (even browsers seem to be accessing files in a way that expects an SSD now/running slower than they ever did before, and task mangler shows it hitting the HD to touch every file it's ever seen in months or some stupid thing from the Downloads list)
Adobe used to want you to use even three separate drives if you could for the OS/app, your loaded assets, and your scratchfile disk since disks were limited by IO and transfer rate and those were three distinct bottleneck points. I'm not even sure if this advice still applies in the age of m2 speed - like i'm assuming a single m2 drive (which is at least 4x faster than a SATA SSD) would be faster than using three SATA SSD's configured like that, since IOPS is no longer likely the bottleneck.
I'm wondering if using two or three separate m2 drives would be that much faster, or if the bottleneck is likely to go back to the cpu cores, gpu and such by then.
I'm curious whether the enterprise U2 format would have a point - from reading some things here I see it's got better heat management, larger capacity (not a personal concern right now, a few TB is plenty/I dont have huge assets or scratch needs right now), and 10x the lifespan endurance - the last of which might matter.
I'm curious whether an m2 drive is just used like a normal SSD drive/replaces it entirely, or if i'm planning to have SATA SSD's in addition to fast m2 drives for more special speed bottlenecked use.
I've seen the pcie x16 cards that mount 4 m2 drives and i'm not sure if they are combined into one big drive, one fast drive, or treated as four separate drives, or whether any special mobo support is needed for any of that. I would specifically like to put these in an older workstation that doesn't have built in m2 support, and i'm running a workstation instead of a new desktop because huge RAM amounts are more affordable for when I upgrade - thats because After Effects is an absolute monster on system requirements and I might just go to 256gb.
I'm pretty budget constrained but not necessarily in a cheap up front way, if a consumer SSD is just going to burn out in 6 months from overuse i'd rather get the long endurance one to last a few years yet. I mostly edit in 1080p for the time being and wont migrate to 4-6k high bitrate stuff til I have good cameras and all plans for that have been held up by life taking unplanned turns since covid.
In addition to Adobe CC on Windows 10, i'm also trying to start using ProTools, Davinci Resolve v18, some lighter After Effects use soon. I will also be building a hackintosh and using Final Cut Pro X on a separate computer though I doubt that would treat SSD's radically different than Windows. Any suggestions of specific advice or where to educate myself on the options are welcome.