M.2 SSD performance with crucial Momentum Cache

[LexThoms]

Hello Linus,  Team, and Community,

 

So I have enjoyed this channel for many years and binge watch LTT videos. Which brings me to my question. A few years ago I used LTT suggestions to build my PC. With that being said I have a Asus Tuf z370 plus gaming motherboard with 2 m.2 slots. I purchased a cheap 500gb Crucial M.2 drive. I noticed random read and write speeds were OK at best; better than ssd drive but obviously not as good as Samsung's 970 EVO. Regardless, yesterday I decided to install Crucial's storage executive software. I decided to try out their settings for "Momentum Cache" which I assume uses DRAM to help with read/write speeds. Performance seemed to increase and my random read/write speeds increased astronomically.  I have not seen an LTT video on this type of technology. Is this technology beneficial and are there any caveats to using it? If there is a video on a similar technology please let me know. If not, then I am curious if LTT could investigate this for me? Here is the link to the M.2 I have I believe https://www.crucial.com/ssd/p2/ct500p2ssd8 .

 

Thank you guys for being so great and providing me with interesting videos to keep me entertained, informed, and challenged.  I'd love to meet the crew and Linus. You guys are literally the only celebrities I'd want to meet. Also, anyone else that reads this, thanks for any input you can provide and always, don't forget to get something from LTTSTORE.COM . 

 

Thanks,

 

Lex Thoms 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id leave the caching off. The big downsite is it can lead to corruption and data loss if there is powerloss as the wrong time. Windows already caches files in ram, so load times are basically the same using the defaults. Its just benchmarks disable the windows drive cahing, but this cache overrides the benchmarks request to disable the ram cache.

[LexThoms]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id leave the caching off. The big downsite is it can lead to corruption and data loss if there is powerloss as the wrong time. Windows already caches files in ram, so load times are basically the same using the defaults. Its just benchmarks disable the windows drive cahing, but this cache overrides the benchmarks request to disable the ram 

Thanks for the info. Is there any benefit to using this tech? I also enabled the ability to use 10% of my m.2 ssd as over-provisioning.  I figured this would be beneficial as I saw a video a while back that explained the problems with SSD capacity differences and the issue with dramless ssds. Also, do you know if LTT did cover this tech in a video in the past? Again, thanks so much for your suggestions.  I basically have been trying to tweak my system so I can play cities skylines a little better.

 

System specs: 

 

Core i7 8700k

M.2 ssd crucial mx500 

32gb ddr4 ram

Asus tuf z370 plus gaming motherboard 

XFX RX580 black edition 8gb

 

(Yes I know cities skylines is a memory hog, but honestly I only ever get like a max of 40 fps at best). 

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

Momentum Cache RUINS all my Game Recording videos for whatever reason.. they get REAL SKIPPY.

Turn Mom-Cache off, reboot, record and its perfect again.

 

MC is Not for me...

(Crucial BX drives)

[LexThoms]

17 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Momentum Cache RUINS all my Game Recording videos for whatever reason.. they get REAL SKIPPY.

Turn Mom-Cache off, reboot, record and its perfect again.

 

MC is Not for me...

(Crucial BX drives)

Hmm I wonder what the overall purpose of this technology is for if it causes problems. I dont record video and my performance does seem to be better but not sure when and how it should be used. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, LexThoms said:

also enabled the ability to use 10% of my m.2 ssd as over-provisioning. 

I don't see a reason to do this, just leave some free space and let trim do it. But endurance really won't matter here

 

2 hours ago, LexThoms said:

Thanks for the info. Is there any benefit to using this tech?

Id stay away from it here.

 

 

[NewMaxx]

On 12/2/2020 at 10:44 PM, LexThoms said:

Hmm I wonder what the overall purpose of this technology is for if it causes problems.

It's extremely niche. In general it should not be used.