KVR Audio

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:24 pm

Hi,

I'm looking into getting an extra SSD drive. My current one's for my OS and I've my samples on a hard disk. Both are SATA III to motherboard (ASUS M5A99X EVO R2). (The OS disk isn't big enough to load the sample data onto, so using that's not an option.)

I'm after about 500Gb - it doesn't need to be bigger (400Gb would do, so long as I don't buy as many more libraries)... 250Gb is too small.

I was thinking about a PCIe SSD -- but they appear to want PCIe 3.0 and the ASUS is PCIe 2.0. Does that rule them out?

If I'm stuck with SATA III, is there anything I need to be aware of particularly?

(And right now I don't want to upgrade the motherboard and CPU... it's still too shiny and new...)

Thanks in advance!

-- Peter

Kaine · Post by **Kaine** » Wed Apr 20, 2016 8:45 am

Everything I've read suggests that the AIC *should* work, although with a slightly reduced throughput. Anecdotal evidence is that I've run a 750 AIC on an old Asus P6X58with PCIe 2.0 slots on it, although it has to be noted it would only run as storage as the lack of a UEFI bios prohibited it from being accessible as a boot device.

Your board appears to have a UEFI bios, so you should be fine in those regards, but its an educated guess I'm afraid rather than solid experience in this instance as to how well the setup will ultimately work.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Wed Apr 20, 2016 6:23 pm

Thanks -- I thought 3.0 and 2.0 were pretty similar bar the speeds. I'd expect the lifetime of the drive to be enough to last to my next motherboard (and I'm really hoping not to fill it before then...). I might take the chance then. I think I've a x4 slot and it might even be empty...

(I see from the Asus site that they quote the rather unexciting OCZSSDPX 1RVDX0160 as known to work...

)

EDIT: .... and ordered

Astralv · Post by **Astralv** » Fri Apr 22, 2016 12:54 am

What is wrong with SATA 6GB/sec ports?

PapaLazarou · Post by **PapaLazarou** » Fri Apr 22, 2016 3:40 am

PCIe offers higher speed. Simple as that really. A PCIe 2.0 X4 SSD can potentially give 3x the throughput of SATA III. The faster SSD's can run a lot faster than SATA III allows. Whether for most uses it's worth it is another question. I suspect the biggest real world gains with SSD's is probably from the massively faster access times, compared to a mechanical drive, rather than raw throughput. But anyway, if you want the fastest SSD's currently available, PCIe is the way to go.

chroma · Post by **chroma** » Fri Apr 22, 2016 4:22 am

gen3 pcie devices are supposed to be backwards-compatible to gen2 devices (they negotiate for speed) - never a guarantee due to potential bugs etc. but in general if it works for gen3, it should even work in an old gen1 x1 link.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 9:24 pm

Right, here's the results. The Intel site was actually quite clear that the device would work in PCIe x4 slots, just recommended PCIe 3 for speed.

Old load time for 60 drum kits - over 15 minutes. (I've added a few extras since I timed it, so "over" means it was 15 last time but I've added a few; more likely ~17 mins.)
- This was on a Seagate ST1000DM 003-1CH162 SATA Disk Device

New load time for 60 drum kits - just under 8 minutes.
- This was on an Intel NVMe SSDPEDMW40

RAM used: 31.2Gb with them loaded; 2.1Gb with them unloaded; so 29.1Gb loaded in 8 minutes -> 62MB/s.

I notice "committed RAM" is over the 32Gb that I have installed... (it was 32.1, IIRC). I'm now worried I'm slowing my system down due to swapping. Also, of course, some of the load time is getting Kontakt to interpret the sample maps.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 12:49 am

That is faster than any drummer can set up 60 kits including all those mikes. And you just need one single kit, which needs like 15 secs.

Still I expected more gain than that from switching to ssd.

Heartfeltdawn · Post by **Heartfeltdawn** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 1:04 pm

BertKoor wrote:That is faster than any drummer can set up 60 kits including all those mikes. And you just need one single kit, which needs like 15 secs.

Still I expected more gain than that from switching to ssd.

What's a drummer?

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 6:00 pm

Me.

I play them -- not all, I could cut down... but you know how it is... and well, they might be exactly the right kit one day.

(I have decided to stop buying new kits, at least

.)

When jamming live, sometimes the mood changes so much I need to switch kits - I don't want to be hanging around whilst they load, so I have all the hanging around done in advance.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 4:23 pm

Minor update. I just ran the load again and both Reaper and MuLab loaded the same set in under 5 minutes. All I can put the improvement down to is having done less since system boot.

EDIT: With Task Manager performance tab open, it's also easy to see what's going on. For unprotected WAV data, read speed exceeds 500MB/s (not for long, the load time is too fast!). Then there's a pause whilst Kontakt "does stuff". Then the next kit loads. For protected data, read speed is peaks around 250MB/s - presumably because the read requests aren't coming as fast, so less data is being transferred per second.

Well, getting from over 15 minutes to under 5 minutes is a good enough return on investment for me. Upgrading to get faster CPU processing wouldn't be cost effective, I don't think (I could mildly overclock, I guess).

PCIe 2.0 motherboard SSD recommendations