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Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't see any use for Optane in a modern desktop. You can use that slot for a decent m.2 drive. Perhaps this could be good for a server that has a bunch of spinner drives, but gen4 and gen5 drives have faster read & write speeds than this and don't need an additional cache.
Edit: I love all the thumbs downs in this thread. I'm asking an honest question about this product. I doubt I'm the only person who would have this question, but most people who don't know what optane is just aren't clicking on this deal. Instead of giving me a thumbs down, correct my assertions.
Last edited by Sysop December 1, 2023 at 12:07 PM.
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Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't see any use for Optane in a modern desktop. You can use that slot for a decent m.2 drive. Perhaps this could be good for a server that has a bunch of spinner drives, but gen4 and gen5 drives have faster read & write speeds than this and don't need an additional cache.
Optane SSD's like this have significantly higher write endurance than normal SSD's. For instance this model has 1292 TBW, for a 118GB drive that is quite a lot. This would be beneficial in write intensive tasks that could wear out normal nand flash.
The latency is also much lower than normal SSD's, so accessing random non sequential data from the drive is generally quicker.
I have one of these in a system as a write target for Nvidia shadow play which constantly records a specified amount of time of previous gameplay.
I use a different model 280gb optane SSD in a NAS as a write cache, that model has roughly 5 petabytes written of endurance which normal SSD's don't even come close to.
These types of drives definitely have a place for certain use cases, if you know you need high write endurance then these are for you, if not then there isn't a significant benefit to using them.
Optane SSD's like this have significantly higher write endurance than normal SSD's. For instance this model has 1292 TBW, for a 118GB drive that is quite a lot. This would be beneficial in write intensive tasks that could wear out normal nand flash.
The latency is also much lower than normal SSD's, so accessing random non sequential data from the drive is generally quicker.
I have one of these in a system as a write target for Nvidia shadow play which constantly records a specified amount of time of previous gameplay.
I use a different model 280gb optane SSD in a NAS as a write cache, that model has roughly 5 petabytes written of endurance which normal SSD's don't even come close to.
These types of drives definitely have a place for certain use cases, if you know you need high write endurance then these are for you, if not then there isn't a significant benefit to using them.
Thank you. I hadn't considered shadow play. I was intentionally focusing on modern desktops since it does still make sense to have optane in a server or NAS (though I consider a NAS a server).
I am missing something regarding the latency. I'm not too sure I understand the difference between latency and read speed. Is the total time to get the data to the CPU latency + read speed, or is latency a portion of the read speed?
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Quote
from Sysop
:
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't see any use for Optane in a modern desktop. You can use that slot for a decent m.2 drive. Perhaps this could be good for a server that has a bunch of spinner drives, but gen4 and gen5 drives have faster read & write speeds than this and don't need an additional cache.
Just to throw a couple more ideas:
It's not as fast as DRAM, but it's faster than NVME for random access, so page file or scratch disk.
Store excessively large Lightroom catalogue, thumbnail caches, etc. on this to speed up navigation and previews.
Write cache for a NAS or similar to speed up network transfers before offloading to spinning rust.
Thank you. I hadn't considered shadow play. I was intentionally focusing on modern desktops since it does still make sense to have optane in a server or NAS (though I consider a NAS a server).
I am missing something regarding the latency. I'm not too sure I understand the difference between latency and read speed. Is the total time to get the data to the CPU latency + read speed, or is latency a portion of the read speed?
So as far as I understand it, the lower the latency the quicker it can process the input/output operations on the drive. If the data being accesed isn't sequential but random this would mean it can feed these input/output operations to the CPU more often/ quicker. This would allow the CPU to potentially process the operations quicker too. If the a slower latency drive provides data to the CPU after a clock cycle has finished the CPU won't begin to process it until the next cycle in a simplified way of viewing it. If a drive can dump these operations to the CPU at a higher frequency it has a better chance of getting it to the CPU to potentially utilize more clock cycles.
I'm not sure this explains it thoughly as it's a pretty in depth subject to understand and I'm definitely not an expert in the field. This is just how I understand it to be, but if anyone else out there that actually is an expert sees this feel free to correct this if I'm wrong.
Thank you. I hadn't considered shadow play. I was intentionally focusing on modern desktops since it does still make sense to have optane in a server or NAS (though I consider a NAS a server).
I am missing something regarding the latency. I'm not too sure I understand the difference between latency and read speed. Is the total time to get the data to the CPU latency + read speed, or is latency a portion of the read speed?
So as far as I understand it, the lower the latency the quicker it can process the input/output operations on the drive. If the data being accesed isn't sequential but random this would mean it can feed these input/output operations to the CPU more often/ quicker. This would allow the CPU to potentially process the operations quicker too. If the a slower latency drive provides data to the CPU after a clock cycle has finished the CPU won't begin to process it until the next cycle in a simplified way of viewing it. If a drive can dump these operations to the CPU at a higher frequency it has a better chance of getting it to the CPU to potentially utilize more clock cycles.
I'm not sure this explains it thoughly as it's a pretty in depth subject to understand and I'm definitely not an expert in the field. This is just how I understand it to be, but if anyone else out there that actually is an expert sees this feel free to correct this if I'm wrong.
I asked ChatGPT 3.5:
Latency is more about the time it takes to access the data, including the time to position the read/write heads and the rotational delay. Read and write speeds focus on the rate at which data can be transferred once access is achieved.
But my question was about modern desktop systems. When are you accessing random data on a modern desktop system? That would be more of a server case, or simple benchmarking.
These were getting more love last year but now that nand nvme has fallen so much in price, optane's a tougher buy. Not an apples-to-apples scenario but sometimes if an orange is cheap enough then it'll do.
But my question was about modern desktop systems. When are you accessing random data on a modern desktop system? That would be more of a server case, or simple benchmarking.
Yes, and the two most typical non-sequential data requests are when 1) you have multiple users accessing the same system, like when it hosts a website or some other server situation, and 2) when you are running benchmark tests.
Happy to see this post. To answer people saying this is server oriented and not useful for desktops- if that is what you think as of now, then your use cases are probably such that it is probably true. However, if you know where to use it and have such use cases, there is no substitute. However I admit all my uses are in servers, but then again I would never be on a machine that doesn't at least qualify as a server on paper lol. Well except my cellphone here but maybe I'll get some Optane on it too one day 👍
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Yes, and the two most typical non-sequential data requests are when 1) you have multiple users accessing the same system, like when it hosts a website or some other server situation, and 2) when you are running benchmark tests.
You may not be multitasking but your computer, if it is modern, probably is. Do yourself a favor and open a utility such as Diskmon on the sysinternals site (I assume you are on Windows) and check how sequentially your disk access actually is. Having a series of sequential reads is about as likely as having no clockwise nor counterclockwise rotation when you flush. It can happen- just not very often.
Last edited by sd_ca December 1, 2023 at 11:55 AM.
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Edit: I love all the thumbs downs in this thread. I'm asking an honest question about this product. I doubt I'm the only person who would have this question, but most people who don't know what optane is just aren't clicking on this deal. Instead of giving me a thumbs down, correct my assertions.
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank
The latency is also much lower than normal SSD's, so accessing random non sequential data from the drive is generally quicker.
I have one of these in a system as a write target for Nvidia shadow play which constantly records a specified amount of time of previous gameplay.
I use a different model 280gb optane SSD in a NAS as a write cache, that model has roughly 5 petabytes written of endurance which normal SSD's don't even come close to.
These types of drives definitely have a place for certain use cases, if you know you need high write endurance then these are for you, if not then there isn't a significant benefit to using them.
The latency is also much lower than normal SSD's, so accessing random non sequential data from the drive is generally quicker.
I have one of these in a system as a write target for Nvidia shadow play which constantly records a specified amount of time of previous gameplay.
I use a different model 280gb optane SSD in a NAS as a write cache, that model has roughly 5 petabytes written of endurance which normal SSD's don't even come close to.
These types of drives definitely have a place for certain use cases, if you know you need high write endurance then these are for you, if not then there isn't a significant benefit to using them.
I am missing something regarding the latency. I'm not too sure I understand the difference between latency and read speed. Is the total time to get the data to the CPU latency + read speed, or is latency a portion of the read speed?
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank
It's not as fast as DRAM, but it's faster than NVME for random access, so page file or scratch disk.
Store excessively large Lightroom catalogue, thumbnail caches, etc. on this to speed up navigation and previews.
Write cache for a NAS or similar to speed up network transfers before offloading to spinning rust.
I am missing something regarding the latency. I'm not too sure I understand the difference between latency and read speed. Is the total time to get the data to the CPU latency + read speed, or is latency a portion of the read speed?
I'm not sure this explains it thoughly as it's a pretty in depth subject to understand and I'm definitely not an expert in the field. This is just how I understand it to be, but if anyone else out there that actually is an expert sees this feel free to correct this if I'm wrong.
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank
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I am missing something regarding the latency. I'm not too sure I understand the difference between latency and read speed. Is the total time to get the data to the CPU latency + read speed, or is latency a portion of the read speed?
I'm not sure this explains it thoughly as it's a pretty in depth subject to understand and I'm definitely not an expert in the field. This is just how I understand it to be, but if anyone else out there that actually is an expert sees this feel free to correct this if I'm wrong.
Latency is more about the time it takes to access the data, including the time to position the read/write heads and the rotational delay. Read and write speeds focus on the rate at which data can be transferred once access is achieved.
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Join The Conversation
Share your experience with the Slickdeals community
Share information with the community. Please follow our Community Guidelines and be kind!