Which NVMe SSDs to choose for video editing?

Building my first PC for video editing (complete beginner to video editing). I've decided on all my other components and started to buy some of them, but still fine tuning my choices for the appropriate SSDs.

As I understand it, the basic internal SSD configuration for video editing would be 1. OS drive 2. Project files drive 3. Cache drive. I plan to use NVMe's for these and place them on the motherboard. I already have HDDs for storage.

I recently bought a WD SN850X 2TB for the project files drive off a friend for a good price.

I'm now looking at drives for the OS and cache. What specs should I be looking for ideally in a cache drive? Would it be high IOPS and high endurance? Should I avoid DRAM-less for a cache drive?

I can currently find the following list of 1 TB NVMe drives for a decent price (considering the current situation) and all are within $25 of each other:

Sabrent Rocket 4 plus G
Samsung 990 Pro
Sandisk SN7100
WD SN850X
Kingston Fury Renegade

IOPS won't matter too much for video editing because it's 1 big video file vs if you needed a cache drive for a bunch of people for a bunch of office/text/photo files etc - the program will be breaking the video up into chunks/audio chunks etc - so there is some IOPS reliant work going on split between OS drive app is installed on and cache drive - but the IOPS of any modern reputable good drive will be fine for this - if you wanted peak efficiency even if a little overkill match the IOPS of the OS + cache drive

From the pull/storage NVMe drive to the cache drive read speed (of pull/storage drive) and write speed (of cache drive) are gonna be more important - read is always faster than write on drives but if mixing gens or whatever just make sure your read speed of pull doesn't fall below write speed of cache drive and vice versa (like I said write always gonna be slower than read speed gen for gen and like for like so it's gonna be below but just for efficiency match as close to for each as possible - which just means really look for highest write speed)

Should ideally get DRAM on all but yes especially cache drive

kram182 said:

IOPS won't matter too much for video editing because it's 1 big video file vs if you needed a cache drive for a bunch of people for a bunch of office/text/photo files etc - the program will be breaking the video up into chunks/audio chunks etc - so there is some IOPS reliant work going on split between OS drive app is installed on and cache drive - but the IOPS of any modern reputable good drive will be fine for this - if you wanted peak efficiency even if a little overkill match the IOPS of the OS + cache drive

From the pull/storage NVMe drive to the cache drive read speed (of pull/storage drive) and write speed (of cache drive) are gonna be more important - read is always faster than write on drives but if mixing gens or whatever just make sure your read speed of pull doesn't fall below write speed of cache drive and vice versa (like I said write always gonna be slower than read speed gen for gen and like for like so it's gonna be below but just for efficiency match as close to for each as possible - which just means really look for highest write speed)

Should ideally get DRAM on all but yes especially cache drive

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Thanks. I presume you mean sequential read and write speeds?

What type of video editing are you planning to do? 4k, lower res?

What apps are you planning to use?

Curious if you really need a Cache drive at this point if you are just starting out, vs just trying to get max system RAM in general, or a GPU with more ram?

MrGuvernment said:

What type of video editing are you planning to do? 4k, lower res?

What apps are you planning to use?

Curious if you really need a Cache drive at this point if you are just starting out, vs just trying to get max system RAM in general, or a GPU with more ram?

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4K simple videos with not too many effects to start out. DaVinci Resolve.

You're right, I may not need a separate cache drive to begin with. But who knows if SSDs are going to cost even more a year or two from now.

Peat Moss said:

Thanks. I presume you mean sequential read and write speeds?

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Yes that's what matters for your '1 large video file' - random would be better for the pre-described 'bunch of people for a bunch of office/text/photo files etc'

IMO, it's better to get as much RAM as possible to create a RAMDisk, and use that area for your editing and rendering. Saves on writes to your NVMe SSD, and it's blazing fast. I have 128GB DDR4, and use 64GB for a RAMDisk.

The only downside is of you don't save the project before you render, you'll lose all your work if your computer turns off for some reason. I've been doing it this way for years, and have had no issues.

Peat Moss said:

4K simple videos with not too many effects to start out. DaVinci Resolve.

You're right, I may not need a separate cache drive to begin with. But who knows if SSDs are going to cost even more a year or two from now.

Click to expand...

You definitely can edit simple 4k videos with not many effects in resolve with a single drive. A single fast drive is probably all you need even for advanced work. Maybe a secondary drive to store the raw media if that helps with organization, but not necessary to start out. It wasn't that long ago people were still editing on spinning disks, where multiple disks did help. But ssds are so fast, even editing on an os drive is usually completely fine.

mnewxcv said:

You definitely can edit simple 4k videos with not many effects in resolve with a single drive. A single fast drive is probably all you need even for advanced work. Maybe a secondary drive to store the raw media if that helps with organization, but not necessary to start out. It wasn't that long ago people were still editing on spinning disks, where multiple disks did help. But ssds are so fast, even editing on an os drive is usually completely fine.

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If I decide to use a single fast drive, would it be worth getting a gen5 over a gen 4?

Peat Moss said:

If I decide to use a single fast drive, would it be worth getting a gen5 over a gen 4?

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Worth it is debatable, and only if the gen 5 drive actually has read and write speeds faster than the gen 4 drives you are comparing to. With that, there are often other bottlenecks in an editing work flow. I wouldn't think you'd have any issue with a high quality gen4 or 5 drive.

You likely wont notice, while speeds on paper appear faster, the chances of you saturating the top speeds for any extended amount of time is slim to none.

Peat Moss said:

If I decide to use a single fast drive, would it be worth getting a gen5 over a gen 4?

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What kind of files are we editing? ProRes? For fun or work? Movies for home Plex setup? So very large, all the time or not?

If this is just casual/for fun/just learning yeah you're going way overkill go one drive - if for work - you probably don't need the 3 drive setup you were thinking (but when work is paying/it's a write off go for it)

El_Capitan said:

IMO, it's better to get as much RAM as possible to create a RAMDisk, and use that area for your editing and rendering. Saves on writes to your NVMe SSD, and it's blazing fast. I have 128GB DDR4, and use 64GB for a RAMDisk.

The only downside is of you don't save the project before you render, you'll lose all your work if your computer turns off for some reason. I've been doing it this way for years, and have had no issues.

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Back in the day we used "fancy cache" that used large pools of unused RAM and sped up writes considerably. Definitely want a stable system and a UPS though.

cpufrost said:

Back in the day we used "fancy cache" that used large pools of unused RAM and sped up writes considerably. Definitely want a stable system and a UPS though.

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Modern nvme ssds are probably faster read/write than that RAM was

Try a Intel P4800X Optane for a cache drive? Bombproof and low latency.

daglesj said:

Try a Intel P4800X Optane for a cache drive? Bombproof and low latency.

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I've got an Intel 900P and a 905P for my boot drives. They will outlive all of my PC upgrades.

They can also get a P5800X for faster performance, but there is definitely a premium price attached.

arestavo said:

I've got an Intel 900P and a 905P for my boot drives. They will outlive all of my PC upgrades.

They can also get a P5800X for faster performance, but there is definitely a premium price attached.

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Oh yeah I want a P5800X but as you say...if you think standard NVMe costs are high... I'm sticking with my 375GB P4800X, my 750GB P4800X and my diddy 118GB P1600X (which I use exclusively for my pagefile).

https://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/nvme/intel-optane-p5800x-pcie-4-nvme-ssd-review/

Looking forward to the new MS NVMe drivers maybe giving them a boost when they finally arrive.

Claude AI demands up to 140 MB/s (depend on quality) for a single 8k ProRes stream. The main question is now, which resolution and how many streams or users as a single stream means 500GB per hour and how many files must be accessable (how large) storage should be. Most flash based disks lower performance after some time of steady write or are bad on concurrent read/write. Intel Optane is the only exemption.

When resolution, quality and size is known, you can decide which storage is "good enough", may be one ore more Optane (if you still can get them used) or other flash in single disk or software raid mode. For large storage, hybrid pools may be an answer eg a ZFS pool from SAS hd or cheaper flash mirrors with smaller Optane mirrors as special vdev for metadata or a faster filesystem for critical files.

If storage should be for multiple users, SMB Direct with RDMA is the answer as this offers up to 3/10 GB/s at lowest cpu load and latency (25/100G nic), mainly with Windows Server (best 2025, can be a cheap Essentials Edition). The upcoming OpenZFS on Windows may be a future option too as a better alternative to Storage Spaces.