[SOLVED] Using optane instead of ram - Build a budget pc cheap with high ram + pagefile usage

Apr 12, 2018
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Hello,

IMPORTANT NOTE -
To begin with - ( If anyone doesnt want to read my long thread of questions, then please only give me advice on this) -
IF ANYONE KNOWS of a better solution for such usage as mine (heavy browsing with chrome, with pagefile going over 32gb and 45gb +) (- even when currently have 16gb ram), so that the system doesn't become slow, please share with me. ANY HELP regarding this matter. Other than buying too much of the insanely priced rams.

- - -

Sorry for my long thread but I really need help on this.
I am looking to build a budget system which has much memory usage. More than 32gb to 45gb plus usage, as I multitask and do heavy browsing - many chrome tabs. I wont game on this new system.

But price of 32gb plus ram is too much. Recently I have come to know about optane products which from some of the reviews and information I have seen, works very well if used as a page file (I will not use the optane for caching hdd - only for paging). Optane is not very recommended to be used instead of ram for say gaming, but for normal desktop use, optane is said to be OK for pagefile instead of much ram.

I would like to mention here what google search 1st result says for - "OPTANE" -
Intel® Optane™ technology is a new breakthrough in non-volatile memory technology enabling memory-like performance at storage-like capacity and cost.

As such, for using optane instead of ram, please help me in getting a cheap but very fast and responsive system, for my usage, mainly heavy browsing. I use chrome. My current system pagefile keeps going above 32gb to 45gb plus, and the system becomes very slow. At present I have 16gb ram.

So I need a solution for this, and would like to be on safer side for my usage, to buy 64gb optane over 32gb optane (so either a 58gb optane ssd or 2 pieces of 32gb optane memory/1 piece of M10 64gb memory).

I know optane is not as fast as ram, but I Just cant spend for the insane price of 32gb-45gb+ ram.


- - -


I have some really important questions for using optane. Please help me with answers to all of these questions - (If some of you know only about some only of the questions, then too please answer only with those) -

1. For the system, I need advice on the fastest optane product for paging (except 900p and 905p optane ssd) and any compatible budget mobo. Rest of the parts like cpu etc., would be amd ryzen or intel 8thgen i3/i5. Also I wont OC.

2. I want to know which is the fastest optane product to use as pagefile for my use. But please dont say optane ssd 900p or 905p, which are out of my budget.

3. Is optane "MEMORY" (32gb or M10 64gb) faster than optane 800p ssd for using as pagefile ?

4. Also, I would like to know if optane ssd 800p can be used in amd system. I know, optane 16gb and 32gb memory cant be used with amd, but people on amazon.com reviews have stated using optane 800p ssd with amd mobos,

5. For the new system, I would like to go with amd ryzen with optane ssd - if optane MEMORY would be only same fast as optane SSD. But if optane ssd cant be used with amd ryzen system, then only I would buy intel.
So although I would prefer amd system, I can still go for intel - but my main problem needs to be resolved really - that is, to get best, fastest system with 32gb plus paging file. And that at without buying that much ram. I would buy like 8gb-16gb ram.

6. Also I would like to know if optane ssd 800p would fit and work absolutely fine on this AM4 mobo - Gigabyte A320M-S2H ? I am getting this mobo very cheap and also its sufficient for me as I wont OC. It would run fine till I upgrade next year. Cost difference between this A320M mobo and a decent b350 AM4 mobo is quite much.

7. If optane memory is much faster than optane ssd then as I would have to go for intel system, please suggest me a budget intel mobo to use. If optane memory is to be used on it then are there any budget or reasonable intel mobos which can fit 2 optane memory.

8. Would a optane product - be it optane memory or optane ssd, would really be the sufficient and a workable solution for me, in building a heavy browsing system with much paging in low budget ? What is your idea or thought on this ?

9. Also if anyone can advice on - can optane be put in raid to increase speed more. That would make the system more responsive and fast when much paging is there ie. pagefile size is a bit big.

10. REALLY need to know the fastest optane product for pagefile - Between optane memory and optane ssd, which would be faster to be used as pagefile.


Again, sorry for my long post, but if you have any answers then help me on these please.
Thanks.
 
Solution
Optane Memory M10 64 GB is way overpriced compared to Optane 800p 58 GB & Optane 800p offers more capacity at the same price when you go for the 118 GB version. Performance is the same for the 64 GB optane memory version as the 118 version. Don't waste your money on the 64GB version of optane memory.

If you are actually running memory constrained applications you want the largest version of optane 800p. All memory contents are duplicated in page file so if you are memory constrained you need as much space as you can afford for your page file so it can fit all memory + what ever doesn't fit into memory that is being actively used.

Optane 800p I believe actually has slightly lower latency than 900p or 905p however 900p & 905p have...
The size of the pagefile is not as important as the hard fault rate.

If you now have 16gb of ram, go ahead and exercise your workload and monitor the hard fault page rate.
A hard fault stops a task until it can be resolved.
That is quite quick on a ssd. On optane, it will be even quicker. But whatever you need to read back in had to have been written out to the page file and write performance on optane is similar to a ssd.

If your hard fault page rate is over one or two per second, then the only real solution is to multitask less or get more ram.

 

germanium

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Jul 8, 2006
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Optane Memory M10 64 GB is way overpriced compared to Optane 800p 58 GB & Optane 800p offers more capacity at the same price when you go for the 118 GB version. Performance is the same for the 64 GB optane memory version as the 118 version. Don't waste your money on the 64GB version of optane memory.

If you are actually running memory constrained applications you want the largest version of optane 800p. All memory contents are duplicated in page file so if you are memory constrained you need as much space as you can afford for your page file so it can fit all memory + what ever doesn't fit into memory that is being actively used.

Optane 800p I believe actually has slightly lower latency than 900p or 905p however 900p & 905p have better performance when it comes to higher que depths & sequential performance due to 800p's simpler 2 channel controller compared to 900p & 905p's 7 channel controller as well as 2x as opposed to 4x PCI-E for the 900 series Optane SSD's

Smaller optane memory modules are really not practical for use in memory constrained applications for 2 reasons.

1. DDR4 2133 is pretty cheap & some can be overclocked at least to 2400 without loss of latency or increase in voltage & would offer much better performance than optane memory.

2. You can fit an extra 16 GB of memory for not much more than 32 GB of optane memory & get significantly better performance in most situations. At this point you have exhausted Optane Memory's ability to help but the 800p 118GB version will continue to provide extra page file performance over what an HHD or SATA SSD or even a flash based NVME drive can provide.

You still do well to provide as much memory as possible to get the best overall performance.

Optane memory can be used with AMD based systems through Store MI. Performance is similar but that doesn't look like what you really want as this is still a HHD assistance application.

You would also have to be using very memory intensive programs in order to need large page files. Simply having lots of browser windows open doesn't necessarily stress memory that much. I have had as many as 50 browser pages open & still did not exhaust my 32 GB of memory in my computer. At this point computer slowed not due to memory but due to excessive cpu usage because each open page had active components that continued to run in background exhausting all cpu resources. I was running with no page file at the time. Computer crashed with out of memory warning when I reached over 100 open pages with no page file!!! It is possible to run with no page file if you have much more memory than you need as was my case. This would not work with memory constrained apps though. All open browser pages in my test were of the same web page with active components on them so memory duplicates were probably not stored but active component that were different were.
 
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