[KAL_]

Assuming top of the line Gen4 M.2 SSD like the WD SN850X is used, do you get any benefit while recording high quality gameplay using OBS to a separate M.2 SSD from the one I have my OS and game on?

I couldn't find any tests online about this unfortunately.

 

[Paradigm Shifter]

High bitrate 1440p video is going to eat storage. I'd record to a non-OS drive simply so I don't forget and fill my C drive up (with all of the attendant issues that causes Windows)...

 

[KAL_]

High bitrate 1440p video is going to eat storage. I'd record to a non-OS drive simply so I don't forget and fill my C drive up (with all of the attendant issues that causes Windows)...

Apart from the convenience of having two M.2s and not having to worry about filling up your drive, is there a technical benefit for having two M.2s like more FPS or less stuttering?

 

[Arni90]

Loading times might improve slightly from less I/O contention...

 

[Paradigm Shifter]

Loading times might improve slightly from less I/O contention...

True, but with a decent PCI-E Gen.4 SSD, I don't think it would be noticeable outside synthetic benchmarks...

 

[KAL_]

Either way I don't really care that much about an increase in loading times, an increase in FPS or a smoother stutter free gameplay is all I care about.

 

[Blameless]

What's the bit rate of the video? If it's using a modern compression algorithm (e.g. h.265 or AV1), even 1440p60 CQP 15 video isn't going to be more than about 100 Mbps, which is trivial for most SSDs.

 

[KAL_]

What's the bit rate of the video? If it's using a modern compression algorithm (e.g. h.265 or AV1), even 1440p60 CQP 15 video isn't going to be more than about 100 Mbps, which is trivial for most SSDs.

Definitely AV1, I might try recording at 120 FPS if there is a platform to share 120 FPS content in.

 

[Ichirou]

There won't be any effect unless the desired resolution, frame rate, and bitrate exceed the write speed capacity of the target drive.
FWIW, I never noticed any significant issues with jitters/lag/slowdowns unless I was writing directly onto an HDD. But onto a typical SATA SSD, no issue whatsoever.
This is with 4K 60 FPS.

As for the potential effects of writing directly onto your C drive, I haven't noticed any issues either. No noticeable lag.
But in terms of whether there may be potential issues, I would say that it does put some load on the OS drive, which could potentially introduce microstuttering.
And it does wear out the C drive faster.

 

[NattyKathy]

As others have said, "regular" recording bitrates are pocket change for a good NVMe SSD. I don't think that would be an issue unless you're doing something wacky like recording uncompressed footage.

I'd be more concerned with the performance impact of OBS running in the background and the perf hit of the actual recording. I've helped a number of streamers try and optimize gaming performance with single-PC setups, with mixed success. I ended up switching to a dual-PC recording/streaming setup myself for performance reasons.

 

[raclimja]

Either way I don't really care that much about an increase in loading times, an increase in FPS or a smoother stutter free gameplay is all I care about.

You will not gain any benefit from recording in 1440P on another drive, unless you are recording in lossless.

You will get a much better recording performance if you offload the recording to an iGPU (Intel 11th gen or newer) or a dedicated dGPU.

 

[spin5000]

[delete]

 

[spin5000]

You will not gain any benefit from recording in 1440P on another drive, unless you are recording in lossless.

You will get a much better recording performance if you offload the recording to an iGPU (Intel 11th gen or newer) or a dedicated dGPU.

Is that also the case with high-end hardware? I'm skeptical that it would be better to record with a 12900KS's iGPU than with a 4090.

 

[Blameless]

The NVENC overhead is quite low in my experience, as long as one isn't overloading the encoder and CUDA P2 state is disabled.