optane Optane for new build?

ADedL33Sp00n · May 17, 2018

I am working on parting out a new mini ITX build for myself using the H370 chipset from intel (Im not much of an overclocker so at the moment i cant justify spending the extra money for Z370), and I have recently been looking into the intel optane caching drives. I plan on getting a 500GB 970 Evo for my main drive and a 2TB HDD for my slave, after doing some reading I was left with a few questions that someone with experience might hopefully be able to help with. Its worth noting that my system will be 100% for Gaming and casual use, but i am doing my best to have a more silent running system, and hope that maybe this type of setup will decrese drive activity by a bit.

1. Intel Reported that the H370 chipset has compatibility for optane, but it also reports only having 20 PCI express lanes, If the video card takes 16,and the 970 Evo takes 4, Will the optane module also take 4 in order to cache for the system? If so, will 20 PCIE lanes be enough, or I be choking the system by trying to use all of these items at once? (Picture posted below)

2. According to the techquickie video on how to set up optane, Linus said that it would be a better caching alternative to having a hybrid drive like the Seagate FireCuda, but in my case i already have a 2TB SSHD that is left over from my current build, should I be worried about any interference or incompatibility issues if I use both? or would it be better to just sell the hybrid and replace it with a standard HDD?

3. Lastly, would the optane by chance speed up the 970 Evo for things like start up times as well, or is that even possible?

Hopefully someone areound here has had the budget and the time to play around with some of this stuff to a little more of an extent than i can find on forums and youtube, it will help me decite whether or not to throw out the extra 30 bucks for the optane module! thanks for the help!

LienusLateTips · May 17, 2018

There's no point in Optane.

There's not even a point of a NVME drive unless you are doing 4K+ video editing.

Just get a single normal SSD.

r2724r16 · May 18, 2018

Don't buy an Intel optane drive, it's basically a waste of money. Just buy a SSD of a bigger capacity instead.

Taf the Ghost · May 18, 2018

11 minutes ago, JDE said:

There's no point in Optane.

There's not even a point of a NVME drive unless you are doing 4K+ video editing.

Just get a single normal SSD.

They did find a use for Optane. On AMD using StoreMI. HAHA

@ADedL33Sp00n Main thing is less the PCIe lanes than M.2 slots. Most ITX boards are probably going to be limited to 1 slot, and you've already talking about a NVMe drives. Thus, you'd need to run at least one of them on a riser. But JDE is correct, you probably don't have a real need for NVMe. It's not going to hurt you, but it's not really going to offer much over an 860 Evo. (Though the prices for 500 gb isn't terrible, but the 250 gb is actually quite reasonable.)