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Maximus XI Extreme, Storage, and Adobe Premiere recommendations help?

vcjester
Level 7
I've been planning a build for some gaming, and Adobe premiere work, revolving around the 9900K/RTX 2080 ti combo, and I really have taking a liking to the Maximus XI Extreme mobo, but reading up on the M.2/Dimm.2/PCIe lane limitations, I'm not sure of what would be the optimal storage setup for the Premiere scratch disk.

In my naivety, I at first thought I could just set up two m.2 sticks in raid 0 for the OS and programs, another pair of m.2 in raid 0 for scratch disk, and a pair of HDD in raid 0 for storage, but I guess this won't work..

I know the scratch disk is pretty important, because my laptop has the O.S. on an m.2, and a HDD storage drive. I had a sizable improvement in performance, when I switched the scratch drive from my storage HDD, to my m.2 that held my OS and programs.

I would like to have the OS/programs on a separate drive from my scratch disk, so does anyone have any suggestions for a combination/setup/slots used, that will be optimized for efficient use of the m.2 slots, that will work good with Premiere, but doesn't gimp a 2080 TI?

Thanks

Intended build

Budget: Not a tight budget, but I don't want to go crazy insane.
Main uses of intended build: Gaming, Premiere Pro CC, daily use.
Parts required: Storage devices
Monitor resolution: 4k
Storage requirements: O.S., Programs, scratch disk, and long term storage.
Will you be overclocking: yes
Any motherboard requirements: Will be using Maximus XI Extreme
Extra information about desired system: Will be using 64GB of G.Skill, Ripjaw 3200 CAS 14 DDR4 ram (because it was on sale), 9900K CPU, some iteration of the RTX 2080TI, and be dual loop liquid cooled, because I've always wanted to build one. LOL
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HiVizMan
Level 40
You could set up multiple RAID arrays as far as I am aware. You will however sacrifice x16 on the VGA and of course also loose a SATA port.

I will have a play with my Extreme board again. I have 4 M.2 drives that I can experiment with.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

HiVizMan wrote:
You could set up multiple RAID arrays as far as I am aware. You will however sacrifice x16 on the VGA and of course also loose a SATA port.

I will have a play with my Extreme board again. I have 4 M.2 drives that I can experiment with.


Well, here is why the whole topic of how to set the storage up became a concern for me. I originally had my scratch and cache on the storage HDD of my laptop, but doing a color correction, motion de-interlacing and upscaling, using Premiere, After Effects and Red Giant plugins, it was taking 8 hrs to render 15 mins of video, using my gamer laptop. (Which insists on using integrated graphics and refuses to use cuda acceleration, which is a different subject altogether, and nobody has figured out how to fix it.) I had a noticeable increase in performance, when I moved the scratch and cache onto my ssd drive with the OS an program files. (I even have 32GB of memory on that laptop, so you'd think that a scratch disk wouldn't really be needed)

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-4-Storage-Optimization-854/

While reading through the owner's manual for the XI Extreme, it finally sunk in that only the M_1 and M_2 slots support Optane, which correct me if I'm wrong, is what makes an nvme so stupid fast. Those two slots cannot be set up in a raid either. So, I'm probably going to have to just bite the bullet and accept that I'm going to lose 8 lanes of PCIe, and not have a raid 0 on nvme storage, but how much of a difference does this make? I found this by Gamer's Nexus, but they weren't using a powerhouse like the RTX 2080 ti in the test...

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2488-pci-e-3-x8-vs-x16-performance-impact-on-gpus

That amount of loss in FPS, I can handle, but the card he used wasn't anything near an RTX 2080 ti... soooooo, maybe this comparison would be closer to reality for me? 16x vs 4x?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu2G9MaXe3c

HiVizMan wrote:
You could set up multiple RAID arrays as far as I am aware. You will however sacrifice x16 on the VGA and of course also loose a SATA port.

I will have a play with my Extreme board again. I have 4 M.2 drives that I can experiment with.


First off, you'll have to forgive me, the last time I built a pc, sata was just becoming mainstream, so there is a lot for me to catch up on. I just learned about Optane, and it would only help with certain aspects, and if I wanted enough storage space so I could set it and forget it, we are dipping into the crazy insane budget. So I came up with a new idea...

2 fast ssd drives in raid 0, for the OS and programs, a regular nvme drive for scratch and cache (for adobe products), along with hdd in raid 0 for long term storage.

If I'm not currently using the nvme memory with adobe, does that allow the full 16 lanes to be used by the video card, avoiding the bottleneck? I'm also watching another discussion that you are commenting on, relating to m.2..

HiVizMan
Level 40
Work on between 2% and 4% frame lose with the 2080Ti - and I say this again I doubt anyone will even be able to notice the difference between 16x and 8x in the real world.

Could you expand on the Optane comment please. Optane is an Intel product and works slightly differently from NVMe based drives. Samsung drives are still speed leaders as far as I am aware in a purely read write kind of benchmark. Both are so quick that I doubt it matters which type of M.2 device you went for.

The Intel Optane SSD 905P bucks the SSD trend by using Intel’s own 3D XPoint technology, which reads and writes data in a different way to 3D V-NAND, which is used by Samsung and virtually every SSD manufacturer.


Certainly there is a case that the Optane is aimed at the graphic user. But either I am reading your post wrong, which is likely, or there is some confusion as to what Optane is.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

HiVizMan wrote:
Work on between 2% and 4% frame lose with the 2080Ti - and I say this again I doubt anyone will even be able to notice the difference between 16x and 8x in the real world.

Could you expand on the Optane comment please. Optane is an Intel product and works slightly differently from NVMe based drives. Samsung drives are still speed leaders as far as I am aware in a purely read write kind of benchmark. Both are so quick that I doubt it matters which type of M.2 device you went for.



Certainly there is a case that the Optane is aimed at the graphic user. But either I am reading your post wrong, which is likely, or there is some confusion as to what Optane is.


I think the main problem here is that I'm asking questions about things, before I'm educated enough to ask the right question. I didn't understand Optane enough, to understand the benefits it actually gives. I thought it would magically increase all storage speed, but I now realize it gets most of it's speed by caching regularly used files. If I wanted a large enough module to hold OS and program files, it would be crazy expensive, and I really don't want to go through the headache of telling windows to store OS on this drive, programs on another, etc etc. So, I've given up on that idea, because nvme is pretty fast to begin with.

I also just read that the m.2 slots at the bottom use the Express lanes of a chipset, so they won't interfere with the gpu. Yeah, they are bottlenecked a bit, but it probably would go unnoticed by me, until I ran them through a test, and saw the raw numbers, then my OCD would kick in, so I won't test them. LOL

I'm watching to see if the 2 slots at the bottom can be setup in a raid 0. If so, now I'm thinking OS and programs on the m.2 nvme raid, cache and scratch on a pair of ssd, and storage on HDD. (Which may be the optimal setup for adobe and gaming)

HiVizMan
Level 40
We posted at the same time. LOL

Yeah mate you are spot on a Samsung 970 or any of their speedy M.2 drives will make great scratch and cache locations.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

HiVizMan
Level 40
Yes they can mate. I tested for someone else a few weekends back.

Don't even start on OCD kicking in mate. I get locked into fine tuning **** that is tuned to the nth degree already. LOL

Mate just ask questions, don't feel you have to hold back. There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers by arseholes who have forgotten that they once did not know stuff.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

vcjester
Level 7
Thank you for the support