MZee1960 Posted May 19, 2019 Share Posted May 19, 2019 I'm slowly reaching the home stretch speccing out my next build, but now have run into a brick wall wrt SSD's. I plan to install my entire sim (P3DV?) with all addons on a separate dedicated SSD as was advised here by Doug Sawatsky. I was advised to use M.2 SSD with PCI-e (not SATA III) for speed. I was also told by my tech guy that max size available of this type of SSD is currently 2 TB ?. With Orbx's TE regions occupying large amounts of GB's - I feel I will fill up the 2TB's within a year or so. I heard there are other SSD options which provide more space ( 4TB for example ), but these are not as fast ? So how big a factor is drive speed ? I am OK with increased load times when starting the sim, but will a slower but higher capacity SSD also cause stutters in sim as the scenery is being loaded in during a flight ? The stutters during a flight is what I would like to avoid and definitely would be a concern for me. Thank-you, in advance for your expertise. Milan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnkH Posted May 20, 2019 Share Posted May 20, 2019 Personally, I think M.2 SSDs are still to expensive to be widely used as simming storage space. A M.2 SSD is about three to five times faster than a SSD connected via SATA. The biggest difference however you will notice when switching from a HDD to a SSD, this is like day and night regarding loading times. For the final flying, it is not that much of a difference if the sim runs from a SSD via SATA, via M.2 or even a HDD. Terrain loading might be a little bit faster with the SSD, but if the rest of the computer is anyway not top notch, you probably wont realize this anyway. To me, for your rig in your signature, I would definitively go for a SSD via SATA III. You do not have a M.2 slot anyway, and adding it via PCI-E card is also not very sophisticated... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted May 20, 2019 Share Posted May 20, 2019 i can recommend 4TB 860 Evo - what i actually use - 4TB is the new 1TB for flight sim... you may also want to check out the new 860 QVO - saves about 20% $$$s - 3 year rather than 5 year warranty - an Orbx flight sim library collection tends to be read-only/load operation - could save you money... as always, WD Black HDDs offer excellent performance/$ - with large capacities... in actual flight sim performance - real world use - i have found the M.2 SSDs do not actually provide any significant noticeable performance difference over SATA III SSDs - & must say 4TB is a very handy size for what we do in our flight sim pursuits (thinking True Earth+)... frankly, with, say, P3Dv4+ stutters are a fact of life May 2019, depending on your add-ons/settings - an SSD gives you the best available/possible performance in these scenarios... the choice is yours... hope this helps, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MZee1960 Posted May 21, 2019 Author Share Posted May 21, 2019 Thank-you, guys for the input. I will keep your tips in mind. @AnkH, the specs in my signature are from my 2011 system which I will now be replacing. I plan on doing the new build around i9 9900k CPU, Z390 MB, Asus ROG G-Sync 4k 27" monitor, GeForce 2080 Ti 11GB GPU, H150i Pro liquid cooling, and 64GB RAM. The rest I will let my tech guy spec out using his expertise. My only query was regarding the SSD's/HDD's to use as I saw many, many variations here in the forums - from high capacity HDD's, multiple lower capacity SSD's, even sim installs on external drives (as was eluded to by John Venema in a post for portability reasons). My main concern is currently - how do you store the 1000's of GB's of scenery/addon files coming down the pipe (Orbx TE etc.) and still have a good, smooth running sim ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnkH Posted May 21, 2019 Share Posted May 21, 2019 Well, then, I would go for a M.2 SSD but only for the system. Means: Windows and all this stuff installed on the M.2, 256 - 512GB should do it. As such, your computer will fire up in no time and when not flying around, you will have the fastest possible build. Buy a 4TB SSD with SATA connection for your sim, those 4GB will last for some days. The motherboard you want to buy has at least six SATA connectors, means: you can add additional 5 x 4TB SSD SATA disks, I guess this should be enough headroom for the future. One thing: do you really need 64GB of RAM? I know some will not agree, but for the sim, fast RAM in both bandwith (clock) and latency (CL) is also something I would not miss nowadays. If you can afford at least 3200MHz CL14 RAM with the size of 64GB, fair enough, but 32GB should be sufficient for now, no? Furthermore, if you plan to have 64GB with 4x16GB, be aware that still some mainboards do not like fully loaded RAM slots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted May 21, 2019 Share Posted May 21, 2019 3 hours ago, MZee1960 said: I plan on doing the new build around i9 9900k CPU, Z390 MB, Asus ROG G-Sync 4k 27" monitor, GeForce 2080 Ti 11GB GPU, H150i Pro liquid cooling, and 64GB RAM. my opinion only, i use P3Dv4+ & XP11.3+ definitely W10 OS on M.2 - also recommend 512GB+ for OS system drive - very handy spare disk space (what i actually use) - & because of the continuous read/writes i recommend Samsung PRO M.2 version... the upcoming Orbx Central 4 will help you allocate Orbx sceneries across drives - please see following... https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/172560-introducing-orbx-central-easy-installation-for-everyone/?do=findComment&comment=1514719 RE the 2080Ti: 11GB VRAM can be fully allocated these days with our current sims (i got the 2080Ti but wished it had 16GB VRAM)... 64GB System RAM is also very useful now (sounds outrageous, i know) - i have actually blown out my 32GB RAM in heavy add-ons/scenery/heavy settings - heavy stuttering... it is just the new reality - & you will STILL have to adjust sliders for performance tuning - with your projected system... Process Lasso is your friend! again, my opinion only Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MZee1960 Posted May 22, 2019 Author Share Posted May 22, 2019 18 hours ago, AnkH said: Well, then, I would go for a M.2 SSD but only for the system. Means: Windows and all this stuff installed on the M.2, 256 - 512GB should do it. As such, your computer will fire up in no time and when not flying around, you will have the fastest possible build. Buy a 4TB SSD with SATA connection for your sim, those 4GB will last for some days. The motherboard you want to buy has at least six SATA connectors, means: you can add additional 5 x 4TB SSD SATA disks, I guess this should be enough headroom for the future. One thing: do you really need 64GB of RAM? I know some will not agree, but for the sim, fast RAM in both bandwith (clock) and latency (CL) is also something I would not miss nowadays. If you can afford at least 3200MHz CL14 RAM with the size of 64GB, fair enough, but 32GB should be sufficient for now, no? Furthermore, if you plan to have 64GB with 4x16GB, be aware that still some mainboards do not like fully loaded RAM slots. 15 hours ago, craigeaglefire said: my opinion only, i use P3Dv4+ & XP11.3+ definitely W10 OS on M.2 - also recommend 512GB+ for OS system drive - very handy spare disk space (what i actually use) - & because of the continuous read/writes i recommend Samsung PRO M.2 version... the upcoming Orbx Central 4 will help you allocate Orbx sceneries across drives - please see following... https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/172560-introducing-orbx-central-easy-installation-for-everyone/?do=findComment&comment=1514719 RE the 2080Ti: 11GB VRAM can be fully allocated these days with our current sims (i got the 2080Ti but wished it had 16GB VRAM)... 64GB System RAM is also very useful now (sounds outrageous, i know) - i have actually blown out my 32GB RAM in heavy add-ons/scenery/heavy settings - heavy stuttering... it is just the new reality - & you will STILL have to adjust sliders for performance tuning - with your projected system... Process Lasso is your friend! again, my opinion only Thanks, guys. I will make note of this info. The M.2 SSD of about 500 GB makes sense for the OS drive and apps. As far as the sim goes, I think I would feel more comfortable with the 4TB SSD with SATA for future proofing reasons (lots of space here). The 64GB RAM is something I was considering on my tech guy's urging as he figures one can never have enough RAM, especially with today's advancements in games/simulators and addons. I certainly like the idea of having the entire sim on a separate, dedicated drive. I even read somewhere here in the forums that with a dedicated drive for the sim, it's relatively easy to update to larger capacity drive if need be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted May 22, 2019 Share Posted May 22, 2019 9 hours ago, MZee1960 said: Thanks, guys again my opinion, please do not go for super expensive system RAM - about any good quality 64GB matched RAM kit will suit you perfectly... i can assure you that any ‘latency’ in good quality RAM will NOT affect your overall experience - the ‘latency’ actually is inherent in the OS, flight sims & addons - software bound... best regards, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozboater Posted June 10, 2019 Share Posted June 10, 2019 Maybe a bit late for a response, but I'll talk anyway... If you are going for new hardware, the new performance motherboards have 2 x M.2 slots. My 18 month old X370 does, and I use the first slot with fast Samsung 960 Evo 500 Gb as a Win 10 Boot (only 85 Gb used) , and P3D with all planes and scenery and weather etc. is on its own M.2 1 Tb SSD (800 Gb used). This gives very fast data transfer, helpful with the increased detail of the more recent products. Currently, M.2 is the fastst bus. Some of what I saved buying a Ryzen let me buy super fast memory for my AMD. The early gen Ryzens do need low latency - I use DDR4 3200 with low 14-14-14-34 latency. Less relevant to Intel users, but gives a remarkably snappy performance on my R1700. Also, the sim climate has changed with P3Dv4 as far as cpu's go. The older sims were all single thread, and fast GHz with high IPC was crucial for good performance. In those days of FSX, P3D v2 and v3, and even current XP11 Intel cpu's shine, because the sim is single threaded. Now that P3Dv4 multithreads really well, more cores will give you a smoother framerate than fewer cores at high clocks. Now 5 GHz is no longer needed to give great P3Dv4 performance. The more cores/threads you have, the less stutter you get, and the more detail you can run without stutter. Proof - https://imgur.com/a/LuU1ruC This is not with the latest expensive hardware, and is at just 3.4 GHz. The old, oft spouted saying that you need 5 GHz+ is no longer true, if you have plenty of operating threads. 9700K will be killer for 1080p games but not as smooth for multithread simming as it can only run 8 threads in P3Dv4. PS, I did the Imgur pics back in Feb in response to an avid (rabid?) guy trying to force Intel 5+ GHz down a new guy's throat. Today there are alternatives for great sim performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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