What makes a good SSD?

[Jasum]

Expanding on the M.2 thing... What's said here is correct that it's a form factor. Probably more than you need to know, but M.2 slots are effectively miniaturized PCI-e slots which means they're capable of a lot of bandwidth. One thing to note though is that they also make SATA drives that work in M.2 slots. If you want to get the full PCI-e speeds (and it's a noticable difference) you will want an NVME drive. Drives that use NVME are much faster than their SATA counterparts, but also hurt the budget more. NVME is the protocol that the drive uses and doesn't have much to do with what shape the drive is. NVME drives can look like memory sticks with the pins on the end (M.2 form factor), they can look like PCI-e cards (and will plug into a normal 4x/8x/16x PCI-e slot), or they can look like normal small form factor (laptop drive size) drives and use a U.2 connector (slightly more obscure than the other two).

tldr: M.2 does not grantee you're getting better speed than SATA. Make sure your drive and motherboard both support NVME if that's what you're going for.

 

[Sirus7264]

@Shadow Reaper I have SC loaded on an SSD running SATA 3 across USB 3.1 to my laptop. the laptop is currently using 16GB ddr3 RAM and a 2.4 GHz i7. The limits i'm hitting are due to RAM and Processor, still my load time for SC is within 6 second. I only see slideshows when going to the Daymar death zone.

Yeah your chip and board are a bit dated running at 2.7 may not cut it anymore. You could upgrade fairly cheap to the kabylake I7 quadcore with DDR4 2700(3333) if you have the money for it. Also i would increase your memory size to either 32 or 64(if you have money of course 64 its never nice to bottleneck)

Below is what i would go for if i was just doing a standard upgrade. this will last you a long time until you need to do your full upgrade. you could even check things like craigslist or ebay to get the price lower as needed.

https://ark.intel.com/products/97129/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_50-GHz
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($307.39 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI - Z270 SLI ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($113.48 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - Aegis 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($324.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $745.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-05-15 00:11 EDT-0400

 

[AstroSam]

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct250mx500ssd1?cm_mmc=Social-_-Facebook-_-LinkPost-_-mx500promo

Do you look at transfer rate? For a good gaming machine, can you use SSD to replace inadequate DDR ram, or should oyu buy the more expensive (seemingly) fast DDR?

Go for the Samsung Evo series und you will be fine. Every SSD above is just for enthusiasts - and for Samsung, making even MOAR money ^^
RAM is a question which arises when you will buy a new PC. And even then it is a question of primary use (are you a gamer? Or do you frequently render videos? Or do you need it for i.e. Excel tables and only now and then for a game inbetween?) and your gaming rig. A TR needs very specific RAM with specific CL times - and so on.

That being said, I had the greatest performance gain when when I replaced a HDD with an SSD - it felt like 50%. Additional 16 GB RAM brought no performance at all (side note: my rig never used more that 16 GB of the installed 32 GB, even when playing a game while the PC rendered a video; well, with one exception: a memory leak during 3.0 evocati phase), upgrading the RAM from 2666 to 3200 a little bit...but almost nothing. See for yourself:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhhqtBlXPzY


I currently have installed an M.2 Evo 960 for operating system and for SC. This gave me another speed boost - highly recommended!

 

[Shadow Reaper]

RAM is a question which arises when you will buy a new PC. And even then it is a question of primary use (are you a gamer? Or do you frequently render videos? Or do you need it for i.e. Excel tables and only now and then for a game in between?)

I am learning in preparation for buying several machines with different requirements. One of the issues is we want to run COMSOL on a workstation grade laptop, like a Lenovo ThinkPad:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-P51-20HH000LUS-15-6-4k-X-Rite-512GB-NVME-64GB-Xeon-E3-1505/232672496705?epid=2151900781&hash=item362c5c8c41:g:iw8AAOSwu0ZaDiXX:sc:USPSFirstClass!08204!US!-1

COMSOL does not benefit much from high core count, but it wants a fast processor and ram. The ram requirement varies depending upon the size of the model being simulated, so we want the highest ram possible for such a machine, and so far only the Lenovo ThinkPad and Compaq ZBook seem capable of handling 64GB. Everyone else is 32GB. However, the issue often still comes down to the processor speed and whether the ram can keep up with it, and the DDR4 ram seems will run past 3 Ghz. The question then becomes does this ThinkPad actually use DDR4? Lots of the cheaper machines are still using DDR3 and some DDR2. Additionally, DDR4 seems comes standard with 2.4 Ghz but is capable of 3.6 Ghz. This machine has DDR4, but I don't know if it is 2.1Ghz or 3.6Ghz The difference in running a model is more than 50% time savings, and when a model can take hours or days to simulate, this is important.

Its my place to convince my partners that we don't want to save pennies and waste pounds by buying a cheaper machine. Even if we pay an extra $1k for memory upgrades, I want this machine to rock out hard.

Hence my questions. Don't even get me started on the whole gaming machine yet. That is further future, but I am getting there. I haven't researched the current technology in a decade, since my iMac is still the bulletproof stallion that has never crashed since I bought it 11 years ago. How I switched from PC to Mac is a fun tale for another time--I was actually mocking Macs to the head of NASA Ames' supercomputing center, Leon Crevit; when he set me straight. But the day is coming to build a super-station for SC. . .and I'll ask a million questions when that comes.

 

[BUTUZ]

We can help you with the SC super station.

 

[marcsand2]

Additionally, DDR4 seems comes standard with 2.4 Ghz but is capable of 3.6 Ghz. This machine has DDR4, but I don't know if it is 2.1Ghz or 3.6Ghz The difference in running a model is more than 50% time savings, and when a model can take hours or days to simulate, this is important.

Sounds like you benefit more from a gaming rig then a workstation. Worlstations are build for stability, gaming rigs are build with an option to overclock. I'm not an expert, but if I'm not mistaken, the higher speed DDR RAM are used to run stable at higher overclock speeds. Correct me if I'm wrong .

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Good question and I have wondered about the same thing. However, gaming rigs generally have a powerful GPU that COMSOL doesn't really need, and don't usually have 64GB ram, so there is this difference. In a laptop, I don't think we can overclock much. We're kinda stuck with whatever they have but 3Ghz is pretty good and both the Leneovo and Compaq can do that.

If it were a desktop, I would push for overclocked at 5 Ghz. That is possible with liquid cooling. Several machines come that way, which I find amazing. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. . .

 

[wmk]

/.../ The question then becomes does this ThinkPad actually use DDR4? Lots of the cheaper machines are still using DDR3 and some DDR2. Additionally, DDR4 seems comes standard with 2.4 Ghz but is capable of 3.6 Ghz. This machine has DDR4, but I don't know if it is 2.1Ghz or 3.6Ghz /.../

P51 uses 2400MHz DDR4

 

[WaterShield]

In your use case then I would prioritize high speed processor (clock speed for single core) > high speed ram > SSD. Of course if you go for broke in all three categories you'll pull the best performance.

 

[Talonsbane]

We can help you with the SC super station.

Now this is how we TESTify across the Verse. Cheers!