NVMe SSD for Lightroom/Photoshop

Just wondering if anybody has any experience with the new line of Samsung drives (950 Pro) that connect direct to PCIe via an M.2 port? I just ordered some new parts for a new editing computer and got a motherboard with an M.2 port that will allow for connectivity of said drives. I didn't buy a M.2 drive yet, decided to stick with a more traditional SSD for the time being. I'm guessing that overall I wouldn't see much benefit with just photo editing. But, if I ever got into video editing it might be worthwhile?

Rumor is that Samsung will introduce a 1TB drive sometime this winter which might bring down the 512GB drive to sub-$300. It's a bit expensive right now at $330, but promises some pretty extreme transfer speeds (2.5GBs / 1.5GBps read/write respectively).

Anybody have any experience?

no experience but like most new tech it pays to wait till version two to allow the standards to gell and then of course it gets cheaper. I am building a new box and went with standard ssd but 2tb and will also use my old hard drive for back up along with an online service. Transfer speeds are getting crazy fast usb 3.1 and the new nvme the tech just keeps rolling on it is hard to keep up.

dashotgun wrote in post #17842559
the tech just keeps rolling on it is hard to keep up.

I hadn't built my own computer in 6-7 years before this year so I had a lot of catching up to do! The M.2 interface seemed so foreign to me when I first saw it, but its really intriguing. Before this foray I hadn't realized that SSD technology had completely soaked the SATA interface and that was the real limitation. I knew you could get expansion cards for $$$ to have a storage drive use a PCIe slot on the motherboard but that never really interested me much. I'm hoping that the M.2 interface matures a bit over the next year and more options start popping up for it.

I'm pretty sure that a standard SSD isn't a bottleneck for photographers. It's a better interface, but you can't easily plug it into any random computer if something goes wrong with the main one, so make sure to have good backups.

'Fast' is always as slow as the slowest bottleneck. For instance, a M.2 form factor drive designed with SATA legacy mode will be restricted to that 600MB/s speed. While the M.2 form factor drive might be compatible with PCI-Express up to 4 lanes (x4) but if the computer only uses a two lanes (x2), this would result in maximum speeds of just 2.0GB/s. So to get the most speed possible, you will need to check both what the drive and also the computer motherboard supports.

Getting data from the camera into the computer will still be limited by the serial interface USB 3.0 card reader (SD card), even if the write speed of M.2 form factor SSD runs at PCI Express (x4) rates is supported by the motherboard.

Wilt wrote in post #17842942
'Fast' is always as slow as the slowest bottleneck. For instance, a M.2 form factor drive designed with SATA legacy mode will be restricted to that 600MB/s speed. While the M.2 form factor drive might be compatible with PCI-Express up to 4 lanes (x4) but if the computer only uses a two lanes (x2), this would result in maximum speeds of just 2.0GB/s. So to get the most speed possible, you will need to check both what the drive and also the computer motherboard supports.

Getting data from the camera into the computer will still be limited by the serial interface USB 3.0 card reader (SD card), even if the write speed of M.2 form factor SSD runs at PCI Express (x4) rates is supported by the motherboard.

Yeah, the motherboard I went with connects the M.2 with 4 lanes of PCIe and Samsung's new line of drives also utilize 4 lanes. However, I think you're right, nothing in photo editing would require such speeds. The SD cards I use have a theoretical 95MB/s transfer rate, I'm sure real transfer rates will be somewhere below that by a good bit. That's easily met with a regular SSD. Editing the photo in LR won't tax an SSD and I'm assuming that the bottleneck for JPEG exports will likely be the CPU rather than write speed of an SSD...

My new PC will be using a Gigabyte Z170X SOC Force motherboard, it has three PCIe x4 M.2 slots capable of RAID. I will be using the Samsung 950 Pro for a couple reasons. 1) Much faster, 2) If the same size 850 Pro is not on sale price difference is minimal, and 3) makes for a much tidier build(requires no cables). Haven't decided if I will start off with a single 512GB or two 256GB's and play around with a RAID 0 for fun. Data loss from a RAID failure doesn't concern me. I always have multiple PC's up and running and nothing of importance ever exsists only on a RAID.

Currently have the motherboard running in a test system with a 6700k and 32GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 using a Kingston HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe 240GB drive I pulled from my laptop to test with. The PC boots consistently between 1 and 2 seconds faster than when I had a Samsung 850 Pro 256GB installed. For everyday tasks there isn't any meaningful difference. Games do load a little faster but it's not earth shattering.

If you can get a good deal on a regular SSD like the 850 Pro the cost difference may not be worth it to you. If the price difference is 10% or less I would take the 950 Pro everytime.

usb 3.1 gen 2 will transfer at 10 gbs. so when those readers arrive the bottleneck will be the sd or cf flash card on and on it goes as everything gets improved

It does make a difference in Lightroom. I am using the 512GB 950 Pro in and M.2 slot with 4 PCIe lanes. I tested with Crystal Diskmark and I am getting the full 2500 Mb/s read, 1500 Mb/s write. I moved everything related to Lightroom (catalog, previews, camera raw cache, images currently being worked on) to the 950 Pro and have seen a significant improvement in performance.

Before the 950 Pro I had the catalog and previews on one SATA III SSD, and the cache and images on another. Each raw image would take 3-5 seconds to "render", now it takes 1-2. Also, the rendering would only be remembered for 3 images, so if I went back to previous image, it would often have to re-render. Now Lightroom remembers unlimited number of rendered images and they are displayed instantly after the first time.

Make sure you install the Samsung NVME driver; the default Microsoft driver does not work.

Once I have edited a session I offload it to my network storage to make room for the next batch of pictures. I have one huge catalog (currently > 150,000 images), which is backed up to the network at the same time I move the edited pictures.

The other specs for my computer are MSI X99 motherboard, i7 5280K OCed to 4Ghz turbo boost, 32 GB 2400 RAM, Windows 10 and lightroom program on a SATA III SSD.

danielwsc wrote in post #17861008
It does make a difference in Lightroom. I am using the 512GB 950 Pro in and M.2 slot with 4 PCIe lanes. I tested with Crystal Diskmark and I am getting the full 2500 Mb/s read, 1500 Mb/s write. I moved everything related to Lightroom (catalog, previews, camera raw cache, images currently being worked on) to the 950 Pro and have seen a significant improvement in performance.

Before the 950 Pro I had the catalog and previews on one SATA III SSD, and the cache and images on another. Each raw image would take 3-5 seconds to "render", now it takes 1-2. Also, the rendering would only be remembered for 3 images, so if I went back to previous image, it would often have to re-render. Now Lightroom remembers unlimited number of rendered images and they are displayed instantly after the first time.

Make sure you install the Samsung NVME driver; the default Microsoft driver does not work.

Once I have edited a session I offload it to my network storage to make room for the next batch of pictures. I have one huge catalog (currently > 150,000 images), which is backed up to the network at the same time I move the edited pictures.

The other specs for my computer are MSI X99 motherboard, i7 5280K OCed to 4Ghz turbo boost, 32 GB 2400 RAM, Windows 10 and lightroom program on a SATA III SSD.

Thanks for this, great info! I think I'll spring for the 950 Pro sometime later this year. Hopefully once the 1TB drive is released the 512GB drive will drop in price.