Is an SSD worth it?

[CloDel_Studios]

I have two ssd’s in raid 0 on this that I’m using with UE4, and let me tell you, I will nvr go go back. I’m slowing swaping for sdd’s in my servers now, but yeah the 1tb ones are def not cheap, however, 250 ish gb sdd’s, def affordable now a days.

[anonymous_user_0e7d575f]

In my ~20 years of owning gaming rigs I’ve only had 1 HD failure and it was an SSD after about 9 months of owning it. Simply put they’re less stable. So they’re great as long as you don’t put anything of value on it or keep it backed up. They really do make a huge performance difference though.

[Jamendxman3]

@DanglinBob;325777

In my ~20 years of owning gaming rigs I’ve only had 1 HD failure and it was an SSD after about 9 months of owning it. Simply put they’re less stable. So they’re great as long as you don’t put anything of value on it or keep it backed up. They really do make a huge performance difference though.

Well, that eases my mind a bit, but after the replies on this thread, I will definitely be getting an SSD

[anonymous_user_7674bf62]

I decided to go for 500gb SSD Samsung EVO to swap my current old HDD out, it vibrates and make noises like a *****. By the way, for backup functionality purposes I’m using Google 100gb storage, only 2 bucks a month, it’s getting synced with your HDD or SSD.

[anonymous_user_43dc9734]

ssd still better if we buy from some high rated company and for backup propose google drive best.

[Naveed]

I have two 850 Pro’s 1TB in Raid0 for OS and software. Superfast loading but being SSD and Raid0 I don’t like to put any important data on it as the risk of failure is huge. When I do I try to make sure backups are happening often.
At first, I was concerned by the life span of SSD’s but I believe this is getting better and better and as such isn’t an today, unless you’re writing 100s of GB to it everyday.
I would argue that good quality RAM is important if you are creating content for your games. DCC software can chew through RAM at an alarming rate. SSD working together with good RAM makes for an excellent dev experience.

[anonymous_user_8f31cd64]

@;324602

well my has 2xSSD’s in RAID 0 and takes about 5 seconds from pressing the power button to being fully loaded and ready to go, it would be quicker but it takes like 2 seconds to input the password. programs also load a lot faster(most load instantly), UE4 only takes a few seconds to load the launcher and the engine.

that’s true but not for long, although most people only use 1 or 2TB so I don’t think it really matters that much.

the only really noticeable difference would be how fast the editor and the assets load so it wont really effect how well UE4 runs.

yep, using 2 SSD’s in RAID 0 is awesome.

Hi, I wanted to know that whether having SSD improves compile time or intellisense reload time?
I was thinking of upgrading my hdd to have better Unreal performance.

[anonymous_user_8f31cd64]

@;324636

From my experience with this, an SSD is one of the best upgrades you can get. The only thing that will speed up the editor more is a better GPU, or a CPU if you have a really old one, but upgrading from a good to a great CPU will give you less of a speed boost compared to moving from an HDD to an SSD.

Up until recently I used my SSD (250gb) for windows and all programs, and HDD for my projects, but I got a second SSD (500gb) and moved all my programs & Windows over to it using the automatic drive clone tool that comes with Samsung SSD’s, and use the 250gb for my projects. That also increased my load times / shader compile / visual studio compile times, and speeds up the editor even more.

If you haven’t re-installed windows for a long time, that too can give you a performance increase (especially with Windows 7, ver 8.1 seems to manage itself better). So re-installing is actually a good thing, I do it every 6 months to keep things fresh.

Highly recommend an SSD

Does SSD mark an increase in Intellisense reload time?

[HavocX]

It should affect both. Probably more for intellisense.

An SSD will also make your computer more responsive over all. Just buy one!

[Syedhs (Syed)]

For me, SSD is more like requirement not just a nice-to-have. UE4 C++ compilation pre-SSD time takes close to a minute to start anything… it is ridiculuusly slow and you often wonder why is it taking so long??
However if you are into 100% BP, SSD may fall into nice to have stuff.

[Darman_117]

Yes an SSD is worth the money.

[jfmoser (Jeff)]

Are NVMe PCIe SSDs worth it compared to regular SATA SSDs?

I can get a Samsung 850 Evo 500GB for 150 Euros where I live compared to 220 Euros for a 960 Evo with the same capacity. The 960 is undoubtedly faster on paper/in benchmarks but I’m wondering whether I could see any difference when working with Unreal.

I’ve just set up an Unreal dev PC with the engine source code on a 2TB HDD. It takes over 9 mins for UE4Editor.exe to be up and running when launched from VS after a reboot (cold run). Subsequent runs are slightly faster (3 mins…) but this is still too long (Note: this is using a customized version of the engine)

[VictorBurgos]

Bringing this back up because I just actually grabbed a 960 Pro M.2 for CyberWeek. I already have a 850 EVO as my Main Drive and an MX300 for my Unreal Engine Versions (separate drive because Win10/VS kept giving me admin errors when I was definitely the admin…) And another MX300 750GB for my actualy UE4 game projects.

Anyway, Now trying to figure out if I should reinstall Win10 on my 960 Pro and have my UE4 engines on the 850 EVO, or should I just do the 960 Pro on my UE4 Versions? Trying to see about build times, project launch/loading and all that jazz.

So many decisions.

[darthviper107]

I’d put the 960 as the main drive, it’s more than twice as fast as the 850

[HavocX]

Having an SSD for Windows and your most used software is very important. It is not just program start load times but a huge reduction in the short lock ups you get when something small suddenly has to fetched from disk. It makes the system more enjoyable to work with.

[jfmoser (Jeff)]

I ended up buying a 500GB 960 Evo for UE development and even though I could not find a proper benchmark I went with ‘the best one on paper should be the best one with UE’ approach.

I’ve been keeping on eye on the Task Manager’s ‘performance’ tab while working with UE. The only times I’m getting crazy high read speeds is when running a ‘Reconcile Offline Work’ in P4V (450MB/s+ read speed). Getting 60MB+ bursts when loading the editor, something a normal SSD could easily handle. Interestingly enough running ‘find all’ blueprint searches does not tax the 960 a lot (if at all), as it seems most BPs are pre-loaded in memory (using 32 GB) Also nice to see these high-speed write bursts when UE libs are compiled. Overall UEEditor start times were cut from 9 mins (HDD) to a more manageable 2 mins on the new 960.

I guess the best thing with PCIe SSDs is that response times are super low and that mixed read/write performance is superior to regular SATA SSDs. That should make a more comfortable UE development environment.

I also re-installed Windows on a separate, old 250 GB 850 Evo SSD I had lying around in order not to waste too much space on that precious, pricey 960. Most programs are pre-fetched into memory at boot time anyway so there is no need for a crazy fast system drive. I did however moved the page file to the 960 for better performance (32GB is barely enough to hold our project’s assets, but DRAM prices are insane at the moment, so paging is needed to compensate)

[motorsep]

I’d say for UE4 specifically SSD is not worth it. I got i7-7700 / 32Gb of DDR4 RAM and 7200rpm HDD… Engine source code build would take ~4+ hrs (maybe even 6 hrs). Just got 970 Pro 1Tb NVMe (PCie x4) and it’s been 2+hrs into building source. I am not even close to be done. So it does feel like money wasted.

[Jamendxman3]

@motorsep

I’d say for UE4 specifically SSD is not worth it. I got i7-7700 / 32Gb of DDR4 RAM and 7200rpm HDD… Engine source code build would take ~4+ hrs (maybe even 6 hrs). Just got 970 Pro 1Tb NVMe (PCie x4) and it’s been 2+hrs into building source. I am not even close to be done. So it does feel like money wasted.

I can say that after having one for several years (About since the time I initially made this post), working in the engine and using Visual Studio with engine code without an SSD feels painfully slow.

[Waves]

@motorsep

I’d say for UE4 specifically SSD is not worth it. I got i7-7700 / 32Gb of DDR4 RAM and 7200rpm HDD… Engine source code build would take ~4+ hrs (maybe even 6 hrs). Just got 970 Pro 1Tb NVMe (PCie x4) and it’s been 2+hrs into building source. I am not even close to be done. So it does feel like money wasted.

That does not sound right at all. I have the same specs i7-7700 / 32GB ram with external usb connect SSD it takes about 45mins to compile the engine from source. Do you have the OS, visual studio and engine source on the same drive? try separating them.

[motorsep]

@Waves

That does not sound right at all. I have the same specs i7-7700 / 32GB ram with external usb connect SSD it takes about 45mins to compile the engine from source. Do you have the OS, visual studio and engine source on the same drive? try separating them.

No, I have OS on HDD (and I am not moving it to SSD) and MSVC on HDD… Source is on SSD.

Btw, I am compiling source from Oculus fork and now I have suspicion they do something evil to the source code. I am gonna have to build official source from Epic to see the difference.