M.2 and Optane

[dberryco]

I have a ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming LGA1151 (Intel 8th Gen) motherboard with 2 M.2 slots. I bought one Optane drive and one NVME Samsung drive. Does it matter which goes into witch M.2 slot?

 

[USAFRet]

I have a ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming LGA1151 (Intel 8th Gen) motherboard with 2 M.2 slots. I bought one Optane drive and one NVME Samsung drive. Does it matter which goes into witch M.2 slot?

Optane as a cache for an NVMe drive is a waste of money and an m.2 port. You will see no increased performance with the Optane cache drive.

 

[Peter Martin]

i thought they had an optane ssd now

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/gaming-enthusiast-ssds/optane-900p-series.html

also in m.2 form

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Optane-800P-118GB-XPoint/dp/B078ZK1ZLL

 

[USAFRet]

i thought they had an optane ssd now

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/gaming-enthusiast-ssds/optane-900p-series.html

also in m.2 form

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Optane-800P-118GB-XPoint/dp/B078ZK1ZLL

Yes they do.
Stupidly expensive, though.

dberryco...Which specific Optane do you have?

 

[Peter Martin]

still that 3d xpoint tech is incredible. someday it will most likely replace ram

 

[dberryco]

I have a ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming LGA1151 (Intel 8th Gen) motherboard with 2 M.2 slots. I bought one Optane drive and one NVME Samsung drive. Does it matter which goes into witch M.2 slot?

Optane as a cache for an NVMe drive is a waste of money and an m.2 port. You will see no increased performance with the Optane cache drive.

I was going to use the optane on a regular 10 TB hard drive.

 

[USAFRet]

I was going to use the optane on a regular 10 TB hard drive.

Ah, OK.

If your motherboard manual does not specify, it probably doesn't matter.
(But I still probably wouldn't have wasted an m.2 port on an Optane cache.)

 

[stdragon]

Linus did a review in which they tested PrimoCache. If I recall, it was an application that leveraged RAM for caching that beat both Intel's and AMD's caching solution. Basically, just buy more RAM instead of Optane.

I'm not sure if it builds a pre-fetch file to be used on the next reboot. But if not, you lose all caching performance until you relaunch all your apps again. So if you only reboot your PC once or twice a month like me (for Window Updates), then I think PrimoCache would be the better route to go. If you're having to shutdown and/or reboot often, than Optane would be the best choice I think.

As for Optane being a waste of money. Well, it kinda is. On paper, the specs report Optane having better IOP performance over NAND flash, but by the "how does it feel" metric, I'm not sure you would notice. So instead of Optane, just save the money or put it towards more RAM anyways, a better CPU or GPU. Just my 2 cents.

https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/

 

[Peter Martin]

I own a license for PrimoCache and it works great. Is completely configurable and yes you can build the file and have it when you boot

Optane is in its infancy. It has the potential to replace ram and it’s non-volatile. However right now this is how the choose to sell it and it’s not super useful yet

 

[Peter Martin]

Think about running a program and just shutting the PC off turning it on and it instantly starts up where it left off that is the promise of optane in the future

 

[USAFRet]

Think about running a program and just shutting the PC off turning it on and it instantly starts up where it left off that is the promise of optane in the future

Key words..."in the future"

We're already near there, in that leaving a PC ON does not really consume that much power anymore.
OS and applications on a couple of regular SSD's...it takes longer for the monitors to wake up than to start up a couple of applications.

 

[stdragon]

I definitely need to try PrimoCache. I don't need write-back caching, and if I did, the system is on a UPS anyways. But read-caching would be a nice bonus

Optane as super fast NVRAM harkens back to the days of old "core memory" where RAM and storage was one-in-the-same. I see it being more beneficial for phones, tablets laptops. I don't see it being used for gaming PC or Workstation based load however.