Raid 0 with SSD caching?

[mattgco]

Hello, first post here just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for configuring the drives in my gaming setup.

 

The drives in question:

1x WD Black 256gb NvME SSD

2x WD Black 1tb HDD

 

I currently have the entire SSD as boot drive and HDDs set up in raid0 (through mobo and drivers).

The larger storage will be used solely as a games drive and I do not intend on installing any intensive applications on the SSD.

 

My question is, should I just stick with the current configuration and move games to SSD for better performance or use caching/tiering to accelerate game load times?

Current ideas are partitioning the SSD (60gb/120gb?) and using this to accelerate the HDDs.

Alternatively, I could install Windows to the HDDs and use the entire SSD for caching. Would this give more leeway in terms of the number of separate games cached or just slow down boot?

 

Finally, unsure which software to use for this. I am aware of AMDStoreMI (running on AMD platform so RST is out of the question) and Primocache.

 

Thanks for reading and any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Dedayog]

I think you have it pretty good as is.

 

I am not sure how well a caching program will work for games vs the raw speed of moving to an SSD.  Since you have to pay for PrimoCache, I'd invest that money into an SSD.

 

As much as I love being all SSD... if you don't want to spend any money, you're set as you are iMO.  If you have some coin, then get SSDs.

[mattgco]

I didn't consider the price of Primo after the trial period, that is a factor I will have to take into account.

I would prefer not to spend more as I have recently updated the entire rig and already run into unforeseen costs.

 

I think I'll try StoreMI with a partition to see if there is any improvement as I have heard the results are mixed;

I plan on doing a fresh install of Windows soon anyway.

 

Thanks for the advice!