Rambling post about a new pc build...basically what mobo?

Soaptrail said:

philmar said:

So sad to read the site is going down soon. Tragic news.

One last question about SSD configuration as I've read conflicting information.

I have an old Samsung SATA SSD that I will import to me new rig and I'll also have two new NVMes on the M.2 slots.

Is it best to have your OS and apps on the fastest NVMe, or is it best to have the image files on which you are currently working on the fsatest NVMe? or is the LR catalogue best to be on the fasted NVMe?

Click to expand...

I still use a HDD for my photos but a few years ago I added a second NvMe drive to my system, the first NvMe drive has my OS and was only 256GB so too small to use for photos. This second NvMe drive is 1Tb and the only thing I use it for is photo developing. So my new work flow is photos to be processed go on NvMe and then get moved to the HDD. I noticed this added speed to developing photos considering RAW files are 30MB or more these days and NvMe or any SSD drive is so much quicker than a HDD. But comparing my NvMe to an SSD may not show any differences.

Click to expand...

That is what I plan to do....I currently have a 2.5" Samsung SATA dedicated to LR catalogue and scratch disk that I will port over to me new build. I will have 2 new NVMe drives also on the new build - one for OS/programs and the smaller one for recent photo files I am working on. At some point I'll move the LR Catalogue from the 2.5" SATA drive to the faster NVMe drive to see if that speeds anything up.

At some point the files on my photo file NVMe drive will be moved on to the high capacity HHD (and backed up on an external drive).

I picked all of my build's components except for the large terrabyte HDD. I'd like something between 16-20 TBs. There seem to be a dearth of consumer HDDs nowadays.

I see sales on NAS drives and Enterprise drives. It seems like they can be used on a home PC. Some people discourage them because they seem to be always on, are noisier and consume more power. Others suggest they are better quality than the consumer HDDs. I will be only writing to them maybe once a month...though I may access them to work on a photo I'd taken previously. This probably might happen ten times a month when people purchase prints from me.

I'm wondering if the slower 5400 rpm drives are better for my usage - they are quieter I assume and hopefully cheaper.

Conversely I wonder if the NAS/Enterprise drives will be a waste of energy consumption if they never idle down - do they never idle down?

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Phil M. - Toronto, Canada
Time to kill? Then have a look at a few of my photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/phil_marion/albums
You will NOT be disappointed.

philmar said:

I'm wondering if the slower 5400 rpm drives are better for my usage - they are quieter I assume and hopefully cheaper.

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Philmar, I am just a photography hobbyis (although a pretty serious one) and you are clearly in a different league to me. However, I like mechanical SATAIII HDDs for backup (as well as SDD etc. etc.)

I have a 1tb 7200 HDD and a 2tb 5400 HDD. Both are perfect and cost me very little. I do not notice a difference in noise level. I prefer the performance of the 7200 drive.

You seem to be looking for some very large drives but I've noticed new 8tb drives going on UK Ebay for what, for us in the UK, are reasonable prices. See:


Maybe 8tb is not enough for you though.

philmar said:

philmar said:

(snip)

Click to expand...

I'm wondering if the slower 5400 rpm drives are better for my usage - they are quieter I assume and hopefully cheaper.

Conversely I wonder if the NAS/Enterprise drives will be a waste of energy consumption if they never idle down - do they never idle down?

Click to expand...

I find most of the noise from HDD drives to be due to head seeks. (Plus a little when they spin up.) Are there really significant noise differences between 5400 and 7200 RPM drives? (The bare HDDs I've bought are all 7200 RPM. I don't find them too noisy.)

The most recent HDDs I've purchased are Seagate Ironwolf Pro drives. They act like "regular" HDDs. When not active, they spin down.

I'm not sure about drive availabilities in Canada. There seem to be no issues getting largish HDDs from stock in the US at the moment. (I just bought a 16TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro from BHPhotovideo. $250US.)

David Lal said:

Maybe 8tb is not enough for you though.

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thanks for the kind words...yeah 8 TB is not enough for me, I am embarrassingly terrible at culling my files mainly because LR is not too snappy in the Library mode on my current Gen.3 i7 3770K build. Hopefully I'll find time to cull my library much easier with my new system.

BobKnDP said:

philmar said:

BobKnDP said:

(snip)

Click to expand...

I'm wondering if the slower 5400 rpm drives are better for my usage - they are quieter I assume and hopefully cheaper.

Conversely I wonder if the NAS/Enterprise drives will be a waste of energy consumption if they never idle down - do they never idle down?

Click to expand...

I find most of the noise from HDD drives to be due to head seeks. (Plus a little when they spin up.) Are there really significant noise differences between 5400 and 7200 RPM drives? (The bare HDDs I've bought are all 7200 RPM. I don't find them too noisy.)

The most recent HDDs I've purchased are Seagate Ironwolf Pro drives. They act like "regular" HDDs. When not active, they spin down.

I'm not sure about drive availabilities in Canada. There seem to be no issues getting largish HDDs from stock in the US at the moment. (I just bought a 16TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro from BHPhotovideo. $250US.)

Click to expand...

Thanks as always for you help! Not sure where I'll get such wonderful help from you and others when I build a new rig in 10 years.

Looks like there is a large capacity NAS drive in my immediate future. Because I am ignorant of these things I was worried /assumed that drives for enterprises or NAS might be noisier or be running FT and create noise/heat. I was also hopeful there was a large capacity 5400 rpm that would be cheaper and serve my needs (I am looking to find value not just top performance).

This HDD is the final piece of the puzzle.

No....the OS and porting all my preferences and personal files is. The end is nigh.

I just took a quick look at what's available at Newegg.

All of the drives 12TB and larger were 7200 RPM.

There were 8 and 10TB drives at 5400 to 5900 RPM. The price differences from the 7200TB drives seems to be small, though. I admit I didn't really study them.

The larger drives also appear to mostly be NAS drives.

One advertised feature of NAS drives: they are designed to be used in close physical proximity to other drives, so they are supposed to be more tolerant to vibration than regular desktop drives.

newegg (Canada) has a $60 off promo for the 20 TB WD Red Pro which puts it slightly more expensive than the Seagate version. I bought that. Have been faithful to WD since I lost an old Maxtor HDD 25 years ago....and when Seagate purchased maxtor I irrationally avoided them as well.

BobKnDP said:

One advertised feature of NAS drives: they are designed to be used in close physical proximity to other drives, so they are supposed to be more tolerant to vibration than regular desktop drives.

Click to expand...

Good! Now I can use my pc as an acoustic instrument when I'm playing cds

Not sure how long the sale will be on for but newegg has a variety of Samsung 8TB 2.5" SSDs on sale for around $500