Why am I getting such choppy playback?

Long time reader, first time poster, I'll make this short and sweet. Here are my specs:
Imac 27"
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
24 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB
1TB internal Fusion drive SSD
I am working in a fairly big (1TB footage) 4k mixed with 2k project. It's a 3 simultaneous camera shoot, so I need to multi-cam. I have two external WD Caviar Black 7200rpm drives. I also have a Lacie 1TB Thunderbolt drive available.
Because the final output will be 1080, but possibly 2k in the future, I decided to import all the RED footage natively (as opposed to transcoding to prores 1080). All my sequences are 1920x1080, with multi-cam nesting in 1080 as well. Ram is allocated to 20GB Premiere, 4GB other.
No matter what I've tried, I always get choppy playback in the project...especially with multi-cam activated, even at setting my resolution to 1/4. What I've tried:
All Media on WD 01 drive...Project, Cache, Preview, Scatch on WD 02 drive...Internal SSD for OS and Apps: Terrible performance
All media split between WD 01 and WD 02...Cache, OS and Apps on Internal SSD...project, preview, scratch on WD 01. I also tried the same thing but with the project, preview, and scratch on my Lacie 1TB Thunderbolt and internal SSD: Slightly better than all media on 01 drive.
At this point I feel like I've tried every variation of where the MEDIA, Cache, project, and Scratch/preview files go but nothing seems to give me smooth playback consistently. I'll have brief periods where it's very smooth, but then choppy soon after. I'd understand if I were trying to edit in 2k or 4k, but all my timelines and nests are 1080. Even if I pre-render the sequence, it barely helps. Is it possible I need more RAM, a better GFX card, better external drives? Help?!
EDIT: Premiere 2014 updated to latest version. No big apps running aside from Premiere. All my drives have at least or close to 50% space available.

Recommend you take a look for disc layout & such over at the Tweaker's Page ...
Tweaker's Page ...
http://ppbm7.com/index.php/tweakers-page
Basically they recommend just the program file on the system/OS disc ... and then putting things on other drives as per the needs of the "asset" ... some need very fast connects, a couple only mostly fast connections.
Footage is mostly a one-way read-only operation, and export out is mostly a read operation, so those can at need be on somewhat slower connections as long as they aren't on the SAME drive over a slower connection. Such as say one of the PNY 128Gb high-speed USB3 flash-drives into a USG3.0 external port on your computer. I've adapted this from one of the other users, and it works fairly well for my 1080p footage. I export to one of several drives I've got in external boxes connected via USB. It's adequate, though not blazing.
Everything else ... project files, database, previews, cache ... there's a TON of read/write work going on constantly during playback with these. So 7200 or faster "standard" drives or SSD drives, connected internally via SATA-II or better, or external via eSATA-II and Thunderbolt connections are needed. None of the Firewire nor USB2/3 connections available have near adequate sustained read/write speeds to work in the massive testing they've done at the above mentioned site. The "burst" speeds claimed by manufacturers are achieved on the absolute most ideal set-up with the um ... right size? ... of data packets to get the best numbers. They aren't usable numbers for heavy and constant read/write demands like the Adobe DVA's through at the machine.
Remember ... during playback ... PrPro "reads" the source footage including when to jump in & out of every clip, throws in all your instructions for editing, color changes, transistions, effects, EVERYTHING ... and on-the-fly builds the image you see in the playback monitor. It doesn't make something for it to just 'read' from disc, it does this on the fly. Even when you make previews for a section of a timeline, any change you make ... those previews are outdated.
Which is why we all need machines that both have pretty solid hardware off the mobo, AND plenty of high-speed disc connections. Best case is say a 4/5 disc array of 2Tb discs in RAID 0 or 5 for the project files, d-base, cache, & previews ... and that can maybe even have media (original footage) on it.
Neil

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