Question Intel Optane memory

[itismedestin]

So, I have a few questions maybe y'all can help me with.

1. Will Intel optane memory 16gb / 32gb version work with Gigabyte z370n mother board, its a mini ITX with 2 m.2 slots but since Intel optane memory is a Sata m.2 I'm not sure it works. I don't want to buy it then find out it doesn't work. I purchased a 4 TB western digital HDD for a pretty good price but I want a little more speed out of it because I will be installing games on this drive.

2. Since I have a 4TB hard drive is there other solutions to speeding up this drive? ( I know of ram drives but I don't have much ram since I only have 2 slots on this motherboard) Also I have an ITX case so I'm trying to keep the space usage to a minimum.

3. Is it possible to use a regular m.2 pcie drive like this one ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6FJS7V/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_VWILCbV09VB5Y ) with some sort of software to allow this to be a cache drive or something hopefully you get what I'm saying.

(side note I already know of the silverstone hddboost thing but I'm not really interested in that thing)

I really appreciate any help I can get!!! Thank you!

 

[Lutfij]

I'd just leave the 4TB drive as is, and rely on either a large SSD to have all games/apps and OS on. Optane is meant to be paired with mechanical drives and the only benefit you'll see is with frequently used apps/games. Not for retrieving media.

That being said, we don't know the specs to your build. List them like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:

 

[itismedestin]

I'd just leave the 4TB drive as is, and rely on either a large SSD to have all games/apps and OS on. Optane is meant to be paired with mechanical drives and the only benefit you'll see is with frequently used apps/games. Not for retrieving media.

That being said, we don't know the specs to your build. List them like so:
CPU: Intel i7 8700k
Motherboard: Gigabyte z370n mini itx
Ram: 16gb corsair vengeance lpx ddr4 3200mhz
SSD/HDD: 250gb western digital black m.2 nvme and a 1TB western digital blue
GPU: gtx 1080
PSU: corsair rm series 750 watt or something
Chassis: ThermalTake core v1
OS: windows 10

I have a large steam library, and I would delete and re download games however I have a download cap per month my provider limits me to 350gb a month, so I'd rather keep all my games on a large storage drive and allow it to be sped up some way.

 

[USAFRet]

The small Optane modules are simply a cache for the data that lives on the HDD.
Being 16GB or 32GB, obviously it cannot speed up 'everything' that lives on a 4TB drive.

It only helps read speed for that data which lives in the cache. Write speed to that HDD is as normal for an HDD.
And in the context of games, it only helps with level load times, for that data that lives in the cache at that particular time.


Oh, and the Optane modules are not SATA, but rather NVMe/PCIe.

 

[itismedestin]

The small Optane modules are simply a cache for the data that lives on the HDD.
Being 16GB or 32GB, obviously it cannot speed up 'everything' that lives on a 4TB drive.

It only helps read speed for that data which lives in the cache. Write speed to that HDD is as normal for an HDD.
And in the context of games, it only helps with level load times, for that data that lives in the cache at that particular time.


Oh, and the Optane modules are not SATA, but rather NVMe/PCIe.

Ohh okay that makes sense, this is just for theoretical purpose, would it be possible to use say a 128gb pcie nvme drive as a cache drive for a large hard drive? I'm sure in common applications there would be a noticeable speedup right?

And I think I'm gonna go with what Lutfij was saying and get a larger SSD it'll be expensive but It seems easier to do than try to set up a hard drive with a turbo per say.

 

[USAFRet]

In theory, you can use an SSD as a cache for an HDD. But the largest cache space I've seen in that type of thing is 64GB.

If you're buying a 128GB NVMe, just install the whole game or whatever on it.
But...if you're buying an NVMe drive, why only 128GB? Prices are falling hard.
1TB NVMe for not much more than $100. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167462

 

[cryoburner]

I have a large steam library, and I would delete and re download games however I have a download cap per month my provider limits me to 350gb a month, so I'd rather keep all my games on a large storage drive and allow it to be sped up some way.

You can still use the hard drive to store your less-played games on. Steam lets you set up game folders on multiple drives, and you can transfer games from one drive to another within the client. So rather than uninstall a game that won't fit on your 500GB-1TB SSD, just send it to the hard drive instead. If you want to start playing it again, and want the improved load times, you can always transfer it back over. The transfer itself will take some time, but should typically be a lot faster than re-downloading the files.