FCPX - Fusion vs SSD

Hello,

if i have two external 3TB Thunderbolt Drives what is the advantage of having a 256GB SSD instead of a 3TB Fusion drive?

Thanks for your reply

You're not putting Libraries or media on the internal system drive, those will live on your external T'bolt drives.

As for the size of your system drive, all depends on how much space you need. Some folks have 256 GB and have plenty of empty space. Me, I really need a 2TB system drive, but limp along with my 1TB since upgrading a MP system drive costs almost as much as the MP did in the first place. Personal needs, that's all.

I haven't seen anyone report better perforce of one over the other, since the OS is only accessing data on the SSD side of the fusion, and the spinning disk side is just idle storage.

because i already have 2 TB-drives, I think i will go with 512 SSD (heard AE would love it). But now I would like to try to up the RAM outside of APple. Do you know any difference between Hynix, Samsung or Corsial 32GB Kits in the iMac 5k late 2015?

Other World Computing (dot com) has reliable RAM. I'd not trust RAM from anyone but them.

I don't know why AE would love a system drive type any different form any other application. They all work the same.

I second what Ben said about OWC ram. I have it in My 2015 iMac and on my mid 2012 MacBook Pro. OWC stands behind every purchase. I find that the prices at OWC can't be beat for quality.

Dave

BenB wrote: ...I haven't seen anyone report better perforce of one over the other, since the OS is only accessing data on the SSD side of the fusion, and the spinning disk side is just idle storage.

This is correct. For a long time I had on my desk a 2013 iMac 27 with 3TB Fusion Drive and 2015 iMac 27 with 1TB SSD, and there is little performance difference attributable to I/O in FCPX.

The 2015 1TB SSD certainly produces faster benchmark numbers -- 1,500 MB/sec write, 1860 MB/sec read vs 300 MB/sec write, 570 MB/sec read for the Fusion Drive. However this does not translate into generally faster overall FCPX performance if the media is on an external Thunderbolt array. In most cases apps don't even load appreciably faster because 570 MB/sec is still pretty quick and I/O is only one component of app initialization.

Although the 1TB SSD has enough performance to put a project and media on the system drive, there's not enough space. The 3TB Fusion Drive has enough space for a project & media, but not often not enough performance for that plus system I/O. So in either case you're better off putting media on external storage.

That said I've seen many people put media on slow external storage such as a bus-powered USB external HDD. That can be even slower than just putting all items on a 3TB Fusion Drive. In my tests you need an external HDD with at least 150-200 MB/sec to make it worthwhile moving media off the 3TB Fusion Drive. Even 7200 rpm bus-powered USB drives like the HGST Touro S are not fast enough to edit H264 4k from, IMO.

I've tested the 4TB Seagate Backup Plus Fast, one of the fastest USB bus-powered drives. It is internally RAID-0 so can sustain about 200-250 MB/sec. You can edit H264 4K off that, but my preference is always using a Thunderbolt array.

Hi Berg
You may be interested in this comparison test done by BareFeats. It really shows when the "Fusion" drives really lag.

barefeats.com/imac5k1.html

YMMV depending on how you use your computer and for what.
In truth, even with the slower transfer speeds, this is in all likelihood more than fast enough for most video editing. You may get a small amount of delay as the hdd portion is seeking the info. RAM will play a bigger role for most of your edits.
Flash storage is much faster than a spinning drive no matter if linked to a "Fusion" drive or separate.
The "Flash" storage inside modern Macs are now PCIe based blades, and have faster speeds than SATA ssds. (Actual bottlenecks/speed varies based on system)
I have recently taken to moving my media onto external ssds while editing a project, then erasing the drives for the next one. Long term file storage and back-ups on hdd. Course it also depends on the amount/size of footage files you are working with.
Both USB3 or ThunderBolt ports are fast enough to handle single or multiple ssd transfer speeds for external storage.

Hope this helps, Greg

All things considered, a SSD will be faster than a Fusion. But even if you only plan to store application files on your boot drive, one thing that has come up to bite me with a smaller SSD is in something like Dropbox, where it requires you to use your boot drive as the location of your Dropbox folder. If you want to have many folders or large folders active with Dropbox, you need a fairly hefty boot drive to accommodate this. Does anyone know if any of the other cloud services allow you to put your cloud folder on an external drive?

I'm looking for a new 1TB SSD,
can anyone help me to find the best one?