Intel Optane as L2 Cache?

[Timboman]

So, here's a little background on what I'm trying to do.

I recently (about 4 months ago) built a brand new gaming computer.
All near top of the line stuff (for what I could get in my price range), here's my PC Part Picker Listing: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8B3Zd6

Several weeks ago the new "Intel Optane" non-volatile cache memory module came my attention, primarily since my new computer fit right into the narrow requirements that were needed to utilize it (z270e motherboard and 7th Gen processor).
However after looking into things further I was disappointed to find that intel's official software only supports caching a computers primary drive. Which, since I already have an SSD as my boot drive, was largely useless to me. What I really wanted to do was to have a cache support my secondary storage drive where most of my PC games are installed.

In my research I realized that my ASUS motherboard came with it's own caching software (un-creatively named "Ramcache II") that I had otherwise overlooked up to that point, so I installed it and immediately noticed a improvement on the relaunch speed of my most frequently used games.

I however could not get the Intel Optane memory out of my head, so I started looking into other ways of either accomplishing something similar or making it work on a secondary drive.
Thus I stumbled upon PrimoCache.

Now after some testing with the trial version I have established that PrimoCache seems to be A LOT more effective than Asus's RamCache II (Here's my Benchmarking results http://imgur.com/7sAEKhK) so I'm pretty damn sure I'm gonna end up purchasing a license and using it instead. I've also already ordered 16 more Gigs of ram that I plan on keeping set as a dedicated RamCache for this very purpose.

Back on track tho, my main question is this:
Since the Intel Optane Memory is simply recognized as a normal 16 or 32 gig NVMe SSD without it's accompanying official software (one with even better read/write speeds than any other SSD on the market) would it be in any way beneficial to me (With my current setup) to get one to use as an L2 cache with PrimoCache?

Thanks in advance for any insights that can be provided!

[InquiringMind]

Welcome to the forums Timboman,

PrimoCache's L2 caching was designed to use an SSD to speed up an HDD (where typically, the SSD can offer a factor of 10 improvement particularly with smaller files). Using an NVMe to cache a SATA SSD (which I presume you are planning to do) may provide some benefit but likely far less and only if the L2 cache is significantly larger than the L1 RAM cache.

In your case, since you mention getting another 16GB RAM for use as L1, I suspect that you'd see no significant benefit in using NVMe as L2 but there's no harm in trying. Given its relatively small size, you might want to consider allocating the pagefile and temp file folders to your NVMe drive instead. On the other hand, with the amount of RAM you have on hand, you might want to experiment with placing these on a ramdisk also (Primo Ramdisk will work with Primo Cache).

[Timboman]

Ya, as I've been mulling it over I've come to the same conclusion that the Optane is too small to make a difference.
What I think I'm gonna do instead is grab a 960 EVO 250GB NVMe drive and use that as my L2 cache instead.

I'm mostly doing this to increase the speed of my games stored on my HDD, not my SSD, so if anything, when I make the final iteration of the cache I'll likely exclude the SSD from it (My OS boot-times and normal operation are already very good on the 850 EVO I have it on). The way I see it is that with a 250GB NVMe L2 cache my most recently used 2-4 games will launch and load as if they were effectively stored on that drive (if not better with the L1 cache taken into consideration) then as my games of choice shift over time, files for them will be organically flushed out of the caches and be replaced by my new games of choice based upon my usage frequency.

Sadly the extra 16GB of RAM I ordered to expand my L1 cache was defective, so I'm still waiting on replacements to finish that lead of the project. Once I have that online I'll make my final decision on how I wanna handle my L2.

[InquiringMind]

Rather than spending the money on a larger NVMe drive, it might make more sense to get a larger (SATA) SSD or add a couple of similar sized ones to your existing one to form a RAID array, allowing you to migrate all your games from HDD to SSD (assuming your motherboard provides a RAID option). Given the frequency others have reported of L2 cache rebuilds (typically following a system crash) plus the time taken to repopulate the cache afterwards, I suspect that might materially reduce the benefits you'd get from it.

[Timboman]

Well my PC is almost never turned off, except when I have to do any physical maintenance and modification to it or a software update requires a restart, so I don't really think cache rebuilds are gonna be much of an issue for me.
Also I'm doing this with future scalability in mind. I have (at least on my older systems) been prone to storage sprawl, wherein I just buy more HDDs when I run out of space. Since I tend to start small and expand as I go this means that a RAID 0 array is not really possible unless I establish it from the get go, which due to my price limitations I really can't.

Are you saying that this cache solution wouldn't be viable in that scenario? Cause nearly everything I've read seems to say that it would. I'd rather put down about $130 on one NVMe drive that will boost the potentially 10TB of eventual HDD storage that will likely end up on this system overtime (My previous one that I just retro-fitted into a PLEX media server ended up with 8TB over the 6 years I was using it).

[InquiringMind]

Your motherboard supports RAID (according to your parts list) so getting a second 250GB Samsung SSD and setting your SSDs up as a RAID-0 array would give you a 500GB drive with double the throughput of a single SSD (and for less if the $108 SSD price mentioned still applies). RAID-0 has no redundancy so if either drive goes, you lose data but you can (and should!) be making regular image backups to your 2TB HDD and supplementing this with file versioning to automatically copy frequently changed data (savegames, etc) to HDD.

500GB should be enough to accommodate your current gaming needs, and if more space is needed, adding more drives to your RAID array is a straightforward - if lengthy - task (backup SSD RAID partition to HDD, reconfigure RAID, restore SSD RAID partition - you will need a backup Windows install or a bootdisk/USB for the third stage but this is needed anyway to restore backups).

Alternatively, invest more money for a larger NVMe drive (a 512GB drive can be yours for $200) but future expansion here would mean replacing rather than supplementing.

My view is that with current SSD capacities, it should be possible to use SSD as your main storage and reserve HDD for data where access speed is less important (downloads, media, image backups) and that would avoid the complications of PrimoCache L2 (I just use L1 RAM caching myself). However if you think that 500GB won't be enough, then by all means try out L2 caching.