PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Anyone experienced in m.2 ssd and pcie ?

Steve...v nice pics..thanks.

Yep i like samsung ssd’s. Got several here.
Fyi…i’m kinda torn tween a brand new high end desktop stuffed with 3 ssd’s /loads of ram and pcie 4 or 5…OR a refurb beast stuffed with 3 ssd’s/loads of ram..but pcie 3.
Ive had real good luck with refurbs over the years. Not a problem ever...or a failure.

Frankly i only need max 512 gb ssd’s…cos my trick is…once ive done a song project i offload the song project to multiple offsite back ups, as mentioned before/up thread.
Thus freeing space up on the internal pc tracking ssd. This way i keep ssd costs down.
..but of course now looking at big orch libs i’ll prolly need added big capacity ssd.

Happiness.
om

Matt.
you are correct sir..thats why i'm looking at m.2 .
i will migrate my current older ssd's into a dock for added back ups.
heres an idea cos i'm not sure matt...youll have to check but in your older pc possibly you might be able via a add in pci add in card say add m.2 ssd's ??
a pc tech i'm sure will know.

happiness.
om

Yes, thanks, I know I could add a PCIe card and try an M2 drive, but I found there are too many potential hazards to get the right parts to match when doing it by mail order. I'm OK as is, until I get an entire new PC.

Well, I got floating around in geek heaven and ended up ordering the 2 SSDs I listed above. I took some performance stats of my current SSD hard drive for the OS and will take tests again on the new setup. I'll plan on the new drive as a clean Win 11 OS drive after I back stuff up.

One thing somewhat related that might help someone, since Samsung was mentioned: Pro is better than Evo which is better than QVO.

Try 3–6x.

A SATA III (2.5”) SSD is rated 500–560 R/W, about the same in a USB 3 external. There is no way to get these faster other than pairs in a RAID 0 or 10 array.

A ‘slow’ m.2 blade like a Crucial P2 is rated 2000 internal, 1550 in an external USB 3.2 enclosure due to the 2 lane limit.

A ‘fast’ m.2 blade like the 970 EVO is rated 2800 in a Thunderbolt 3 external enclosure, 1550 over USB 3.2 and 3600 internal on a PCI 4 lane bus. Multiple blades will increase capacity if configured RAID 0 but the 4 lane limit will reduce speed (4 blades will each use 1 lane).

NVMe 4 x4 will not be faster in a PCI 3 bus — doesn’t work that way.

PCI 4 and 5 are faster only if using m.2 blades designed for these bus standards. Google is your friend.

Over at Apple

The new M1 Mac Studios with single blades (512GB, 1TB) are rated 5600 as the M1 Mini. Those with twin blades (8TB onboard) are rated 8000. No one has torn down the 2TB and 4TB Studio to see if those SSDs are single or twin blades—the Mini is single only. This applies to the M1 MBPro and MBAir. Older Intel TB3 Macs like the iMac Pro (all twin blade) are rated 7000 while the Mini (all single SSD blades) is rated 3600.


Unfortunately, the internet is full of armchair experts who haven’t a clue as to how any of this works.

Fortunately, if doing audio, you don’t need a very fast computer. I’m not saying that having one isn’t very nice—but I do a lot of AV where a faster computer can shave hours or even days off a project. I never want to work on something slower than my 18 core iMac Pro. At the moment, the 4TB onboard storage is at the limit and the continued offloading and onboarding of files is time consuming. I can either upgrade to 8TB for $2,800 (plus labor) or apply that money to a new Mac Studio. Since an 8TB Studio the way I want it is about $6k and I should be able to get around $5k for my iMP, upgrading the storage on the machine I own doesn’t make any sense.

True on both counts. Here's another quote, "This stuff isn't for the timid or non-technical PC users". I was VERY fortunate that my Dell Precision Workstation already had a Dell Ultra-Speed Duo M2 PCIE-3 card in it. Apparently, they are hard to get a hold of.

Also, this wasn't a simple plug and play to work. I had to follow a few steps:

1) Disable BIOS setting for Intel VMD (Volume Management Device) Technology (Got lucky and found a YouTube vid that showed this. I had NO idea this was related to allowing the M2 disks to activate).
2) Showed up as individual disks in Disk Management on boot to Windows.
3) Opened Control Panel-->System & Security-->Storage Spaces-->Create a Storage Pool
---This is done to combine them to make it a single disk. Basically RAID disk settings.


PERFORMANCE WRITE TESTING VIA UserBenchmark utility:
C:\ SanDisk Ultra II 960GB - MY INTERNAL STANDARD SSD DRIVE
SusWrite @10s intervals: 374 246 246 211 209 225 MB/s

F:\ Microsoft Storage Space Device 4TB - THE NEW M2 DISKS
SusWrite @10s intervals: 1955 1959 1963 1953 1921 1958 MB/s

M2 appears to operate about 10x faster than standard SSD drive.


My next challenge on this is I want the new M2 drive to become my Windows OS drive since it operates so fast. I'll update as I get this done if it's allowed to boot.

Thanks Mike and Steve, great info. I should have clarified that the 2x improvement was what I was led to expect if the rest of my aging equipment was unchanged. On a new PC, I agree with you, it's well worth doing!

Mike.
Thanks for the stats…much appreciated.
Yep i want to go m.2/nvme this go around.

Steve...lovely pics.
Yes i’m gonna be interested to see how speedy win runs on m.2.and cold boot times.
Right now i’m looking closely at the new i3 12300 processor stats.
Its rather an interesting new intel processor and is cheap.
The single thread score passmark looks good also..over 3000 ?
It would certainly blow away anything i got currently.
Tell me your opinion of the i3 12300 .
Right now i’m thinking , as i dont need huge trak // plug in counts to do my crazy songs that …the i3 12300 or a i5 11400 or ryzen 5 with 32gb ram and 3 m.2’s (one for win) will do the job for me.

Happiness to all.
Om

All.
For those that might be unaware…and looking to buy a new pc for daw work..
Ive found this invaluable…

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

It includes cpu pricing so one sees cost/benefit.

By clicking on a processor youll get further performance metrics…including stats like integer math etc etc. floating point math etc etc…
Ive realised this time around i probably need a single thread score over 3000, and passmark
Over 17000 for my new desktop.

In addition ive been doing deep dives into new laptops just in case i can find one that will support multiple internal m.2 very high speed ssd’s. In my case 3…cos i want one for win, one for tracking , and one for sample libs etc.
But i’ll tell you its a deuce of a job trying to find deep info often on new laptops m.2 features./support. Most only have one m.2 sadly.
Finally after doing tons of googling i DID find , yep there are laptops that will support 2 or even 3 m.2…BUT often expensive. Thus at the prices i saw , i feel at these pricing levels its prolly better to buy a laptop from a dedicated custom builder of laptops for recording studios.

One of the big problems obviously for starting a project daw studio, is often the new persons true needs are not matched by the proper computer config. So problems ensue.
This issue can be seen on various recording forums. Or as my granny used to say “eyes (needs) being bigger than ones belly (budget).”..

Due to the difficulty of finding budget powerful laptops with multiple m.2 support internally…
This confirms even more to go desktop for my new daw. More flexibility.

Happiness.
om

Good site, I've used that one before. My PC is still listed on multicore CPUs - Xeon Platinum 8153

I purchased a tank of a laptop several years ago, a Dell Precision M6700. It makes a great mobile recording studio with my Focusrite 18i20 and a bag of microphones/cables.

Some of you maybe interested in having a laptop that you can upgrade or repair. Take a look at +++ Framework +++ laptops.

Jim.

this is VERY interesting. kudos !
great concept , needed for ages.

Steve.

as you know i like refurbs like you.
perhaps you can answer this, cos i cant find details doing deep google searches.

i'm assuming one cant install multiple m.2's into an older hpz or lenovo or dell high end off lease refurb workstation due to bios ? and pci aspects ? or are there any tricks ?..lol.
it would be grrreat to put win on a m.2 in an older refurb.

reason i'm asking is i saw a refurb beast recently for peanuts. if i could stuff it with m.2's i would be a v happy cockney lad.

best
om

The simplest way to accomplish this would be to get a NVME PCIE3 adapter card that holds 1,2, or 4 M.2 sticks. You can find them on Amazon. The cards are usually in the $50 or less range.

Steve.

Wow that would be great if i could do that…>>>> pci card add in.
I guess i didnt understand, cos in my research it suggested i couldnt do that due to lack of support in the bios of older pc’s for nvme//m.2. ??
So i dont have to worry bout any bios or other complications ?

In addition i looked on amazon a bunch of adaptor cards and had probs seeing which would support 4 ssd’s/nvme etc. the specs are not often clear...mind you i’m a bit vision impaired…so if you know a specific adaptor i would love to know…cos that means i’m golden.

in particular win should run ultra fast on the new tech m.2 tech.
It means also i could do same in a new pc also with pcie4/5 support instead of older pcie3.
Either way i would be in daw heaven..lol.
ie an older beast stuffed with nvme OR a new pc stuffed with same with a i3 12300 cpu or a i5 11400.

let me ask you...what would be your best choice ?

Respect//Cheers mate
om

This depends on your needs. What I've found is that it's only an issue if you want to combine more than one M2 to be your boot drive (C:\). The BIOS needs to have RAID capability to allow multiple M2s to combine to be the boot drive. If you're happy with just one M2 to be the boot drive and another to be a separate drive, no issues. I've found out all this recently in my own searching and will post when I have it working.


Here's a couple of duals and quads I found.....

$12.87 - Dual M.2 PCIe Adapter Card for NVMe/SATA SSD - Support PCIe 3.0 x16 x8 x4 for 2280 2260 2242 2230 SSD, Compatible with Windows 7 8.1 10 and MacOS

$17.99 - Dual M.2 PCIE Adapter for SATA or PCIE NVMe SSD with Advanced Heat Sink Solution,M.2 SSD NVME (m Key) and SATA (b Key) 22110 2280 2260 2242 2230 to PCI-e x 4 Host Controller Expansion Card

$38.43 - Quad M.2 NVME SSD to PCI-E 4.0 X16 Adapter, High Speed 4x32Gbps Soft Raid Card with Individual LED Indicator Support 2230 2242 2260 2280 (ph44)

$45.99 - Quad NVMe PCIe Adapter, RIITOP 4 Ports M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIe 4.0/3.0 x16 Card with Fan Support 2280/2260/2242/2230 NVMe SSD (PCI-e Bifurcation Required)


As referenced before, buy what you can afford. Although you can use M2 on PCI3, it will be a little faster on newer MOBOs that have M2 capability built in or using PCI4 specific hardware. For music applications I don't believe it matters which way you go. The key here is that M2 provides so much a read/write speed boost regardless of which route you take.

Steve.

Thank you soooo much mate. Your a prince.
I wont be using raid. Just 3 separate ssd//m.2//nvme.
One m.2 for win and program exe’s.., one for daw recording/playback , and one for sample libs.
I’m not gonna go crazy on sample orch libs.

Yes that would be great if you keep me updated on your progress on this topic.

Thanks again for the adapter links. I’m truly excited ..cos whether i go with a refurb or a new pc..
I reckon either will be ‘kick a”..lol.

Thanks again for your kindness and info.

happiness.
om

Holy crap! I FINALLY GOT THIS TO WORK AS I WANTED!!! It's late and I'm takin' my booty to bed! Here's the notes I took.......

GOAL: To have both M2 disks in the PCI card to be a single bootable C:\ drive on my Dell Precision Workstation 7920.

This would have been quick and simple if I didn't want them to be OS drives. It also would have been much simpler if I had just used one of the M2s as an OS drive. But by golly I was gonna make this work!!!! One week later....

1) Installing Win11 directly to the drives: Tried to use Windows Storage options to create a single virtual drive (Control Panel-->Storage Spaces). That worked so I started the Win install. After the initial file copy of Win11 and the first reboot, it never came back, didn't see the disks on boot.

2) Cloning the C:\ drive to the M2 virtual drive: I had just installed a base Win11 install on a small old SSD drive as the source disk. Everything appeared to clone OK to the M2s using EaseUS Disk Copy. On first boot after, it didn't see the disk(s). "No boot disk found".

So at this point I saw that in BIOS it always shows the M2s as separate disks and there's nothing Windows can do to change that. I found instructions on how I can RAID 0 the drives from BIOS.

3) Raid configuration: I started walking through the steps of using RAID in BIOS and I see the two M2s in RAID configuration but I cannot create the RAID array as the VROC (Virtual RAID on CPU) settings say "Bypassed". So that sent me down yet another rabbit hole. Turns out Intel has this money laundering racket on their motherboards for allowing people to use RAID. You cannot use RAID unless you have a $100 dongle plugged in to your mobo. Just a stinkin' piece of plastic. So I assume they just want to make their money for people that depend on RAID in a server environment.

3 days later.......

4) Intel dongle showed up. I was able to follow the instructions below and set up a new array from BIOS once that dongle was plugged in.

How to Configure RAID on a Dell Personal Computer
I followed step 3 & 4 - Follow "Newer Systems sold with Windows 8 / 10 installed on UEFI"

So I tried to install Win11 again directly to the disks again on boot. I get the message, "We couldn't find any drives. To get a storage driver, click Load Driver." So it obviously could not see the RAID array on preboot again. Arrggghhhh!!!!

5) Cloning Part Deux - Ran through and booted that old SSD drive like I did on 2) above. It did see the RAID array intact in Disk Management on drive D:\ (good sign). I ran Disk Copy again and crossed my fingers as I shut the machine down. Took out the SSD drive and turned on the machine. FREAKING EUREKA!!!! The damn thing booted straight to Windows. I finally got my way and have a 4TB C:\ drive. I also ran my write test again and it's even a little better than the last test I did:


C:\ Intel Raid 0 Volume 4TB
SusWrite @10s intervals: 2407 2357 2238 2130 1845 1974 MB/s

Ah folks,
read between the lines - confirmation of, & support for, bias is what is being sought.
All the great advice doesn't do that & will come to nought.
Some very good minds, awareness and problem solving displayed and, if nothing else, I've learnt a bunch of stuff which will probably be redundant by the time I get a new PC.

Steve.
My goodness, heck yeah !
Your a better tech than i am. Very impressive how you hung in there till you got it the way you wanted. I dont have that patience…lol.

This week the guy i like to deal with in the refurb company is back…so gonna phone him. see if a deal can be done. they also build new desktops...never put me wrong yet.

Out of interest (and i rather like win 11..) a friend with W11 has a boot time into desktop of just a few secs from cold…if you get time possibly post some stats…???
eg how long to mixdown a biab song to stereo...how long to gen rt's and rd's.

one reason i'm looking at a new system is to see if i can save genning time in both biab and realband....and of course have cpu reserves for more resource intensive plug ins in reaps//bb/rb. i reckon the types of set ups weve discussed will last me ages. its unfortunate that moores law bout power doubling every couple of years is broken.
courtesy of the laws of physics. what bugs me is the plateauing of cpu power. so they went to multi cores...
cos of the laws of physics. so we are stuck tween 3 to 5 ghz if we are lucky...sigh.

once more , kudos to you and thanks for the interesting info.

happiness.
om

Windows boot doesn't really take much less time for me as thing is pretty much a server at this point and it's now also initializing the RAID array on boot too. It's about a minute.

If you come up with a step-by-step scenario using specific RTs/RDs for throwing something together, I'll repeat on my side then we can compare.