Optane, the poor man's SSD

I ordered an Optane module for my XPS 8900 Dell computer online for about $25 total. They only work with i3, 5, and 7 and only 7th gen Kaby lake processors. They are tied into the drive with the OS on it only and you can't easily change that drive without upsetting the integrity of those two. It's kind of like a memory, drive, accelerator combo and comes in 16 or 32gb. The 32gb one isn't needed unless you do a lot of heavy duty multi function video editing etc computing. You need to upgrade the bios, slip into the M.2 slot, and download the driver for it from Intel. It only helps spinning drives. I will let you know how I like it in a week +-.

Optane, sounds like something sold at Dream Market not New Egg. [feeble attempt at humor]

Smoke n mirrors, so for another ~$30 more and you can have a real ssd @120Gb for your OS and them some, depending on what you do and what your needs are.

First, I cannot believe they still offer these with spinners only @ the least expensive model and I'm not going to knock it (the XPS), however the Optane in my not so humble opinion is a waste of money and resources. Maybe raid them (the spinners x3) out into a Raid 0 (stripe) x 2 and 1 for data.

Isn't this all about resources, having enough properly configured ones too. I hope it works out for you, no gadget I can think of or know about will replace good hardware that is configured properly for the job needed to be done.

Maybe this Optane goodness:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16820167440

Bit more than $25.00, plenty of sub $50.00 64gb ssd's and 120gb for $50.00-$75.00 range.

As I already stated, the wheels are turning....., like a Hybrid Drive, Jumbo Shrimp, Biggie Smalls and Iggy Pop and Donald Trump, don't you know he invented Optane while on a bus in California grabbing the P-thingy.

I'm ranting, I just researched this to death and wish to thank you for this tidbit of hardware news, never heard of it till your thread.

Live and Learn, -Great buy for those whose workflow is dependent on compiling and data processing, otherwise jury is still out.

Intel has been pushing this drive caching technology in various forms since the first SSDs. I don't know if they have a ton of patents or licensing deals but it's always been strange to me why they market it so hard yet I never hear of anyone actually deploying it on a wide scale.

python134r said:

Optane, sounds like something sold at Dream Market not New Egg. [feeble attempt at humor]

Smoke n mirrors, so for another ~$30 more and you can have a real ssd @120Gb for your OS and them some, depending on what you do and what your needs are.

First, I cannot believe they still offer these with spinners only @ the least expensive model and I'm not going to knock it (the XPS), however the Optane in my not so humble opinion is a waste of money and resources. Maybe raid them (the spinners x3) out into a Raid 0 (stripe) x 2 and 1 for data.

Isn't this all about resources, having enough properly configured ones too. I hope it works out for you, no gadget I can think of or know about will replace good hardware that is configured properly for the job needed to be done.

Maybe this Optane goodness:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16820167440

Bit more than $25.00, plenty of sub $50.00 64gb ssd's and 120gb for $50.00-$75.00 range.

As I already stated, the wheels are turning....., like a Hybrid Drive, Jumbo Shrimp, Biggie Smalls and Iggy Pop and Donald Trump, don't you know he invented Optane while on a bus in California grabbing the P-thingy.

I'm ranting, I just researched this to death and wish to thank you for this tidbit of hardware news, never heard of it till your thread.

Live and Learn, -Great buy for those whose workflow is dependent on compiling and data processing, otherwise jury is still out.

It only works on the drive with the OS on it. My new Dell is pretty fast already so maybe it will be all I need.

PolarNettles said:

Intel has been pushing this drive caching technology in various forms since the first SSDs. I don't know if they have a ton of patents or licensing deals but it's always been strange to me why they market it so hard yet I never hear of anyone actually deploying it on a wide scale.

Probably why they are found so cheap on Ebay. I will give an assessment of it when I get it.

Hi,

Intel's Optane modules will accelerate any type of drive, not just HDDs although that is of course the more obvious deployment.
They've also released full Optane SSD drives which are pretty expensive but faster than even the fastest NVMe drives currently on the market.
Those can of course be used in any machine with a free Gen 3.x 4lanes PCIe slot.

Buy a Optane 32GB module and you can even install W10 on it too.

Cheers,

Hi,

Those Corsair drives are rebranded Patriot Hellfire drives. I have one of those and I am not impressed at all with that controller.
It suffers badly from thermal throttling and to top it off it also generates controller errors.
I had one replaced under warranty, the replacement was no different.
Discussing the issue with an incompetent technician at the seller's didn't help either so I gave up.

I can assure you that overall the Optane modules and PCIe drives are much, much faster for daily computing use.
Faster even than Samsung's 960 Pro's flagship and guess what Samsung is going to put out drives using similar tech as Intel/Micron's.

Cheers,

Hi,

You're most welcome. If you or anyone else for that matter should have any further questions just ask.

Cheers,