Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

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S2GUnit
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Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by S2GUnit »

Hi,
I learned about PrimoCache & Optane from the LvL1Tech's video & have read through this forum a bit. I just got my Optane 905p & my PC is used 75% of the time for use with business software & 25% gaming. I have no use for large bandwidth file transfers but just want the fastest Random 4k reads possible for day to day use.

I've done some reading but wanted confirmation on setting up my Optane with PrimoCache.

My ram is overclocked with tightened timings, so even after stability testing, I'm not so sure I'd like to trust my ram in this setup for accelerated reads. How much faster would the random reads be if I were to use part of 32GB of ram? I never see my system use up more than 16-20GB's.

I will mirror my current Windows install on to the 905p to speed up my 990 Pro & 6TB HDD. I'm willing to give up quite a bit of space on the Optane to accelerate the 2 other drives. I'd be willing to give up 60GB+ on that drive. What are your suggestions on how much to give up?

I'll still need to do some more reading on a L1 vs L2 setup.

My system:
32GB DDR5
980GB Optane 905p
2TB 990 Pro
6TB HDD
Windows 11

Thanks,
tverweij
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Re: Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by tverweij »

For Optane, I would not put much effort in it as it is end of life:

"As announced in Intel’s Q2 2022 earnings, after careful consideration, Intel plans to cease future development of our Optane products. While we believe Optane is a superb technology, it has become impractical to deliver products at the necessary scale as a single-source supplier of Optane technology."

see:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... orage.html
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Re: Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by Support »

I think you can use the optane 905p to speed up the HDD, no need to speed up the 990 Pro ssd.
S2GUnit
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Re: Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by S2GUnit »

I have my Optane now, along with my 990 Pro & I am testing PrimoCache with L1 & L2.

A few things:

1. Without using defer-write (even though my system has been properly stability tested), for best OS response/quickness. Should Windows be installed on my Optane with L1 or on my 990 Pro, with I'm guessing L1 & L2 to support it?


2. If I dared to use defer-write with unimportant data. How would I go about doing that in the somewhat safest way considering my boot drive in split in 2 partitions. 1 for the OS & 2nd for games & work programs. Only use defer write for my C drive that needs to frequently backed up with Macrium Reflect?

3. In a pretend world, with no budget, I'm guessing there would be no real point in buying a P5800x for home PC use because using Optane 905p with PrimoCache & L1 will be just fast as a P5800x with PrimoCache?


Thanks.
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Re: Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by Support »

S2GUnit wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2023 4:18 am 1. Without using defer-write (even though my system has been properly stability tested), for best OS response/quickness. Should Windows be installed on my Optane with L1 or on my 990 Pro, with I'm guessing L1 & L2 to support it?
990 Pro is much faster than Optane 905p, so I prefer installing Windows on the 990 Pro.
S2GUnit wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2023 4:18 am 2. If I dared to use defer-write with unimportant data. How would I go about doing that in the somewhat safest way considering my boot drive in split in 2 partitions. 1 for the OS & 2nd for games & work programs. Only use defer write for my C drive that needs to frequently backed up with Macrium Reflect?
Yes, that will be good. And you can set your location of personal document folders from C: to other drives, thus the C drive will not contain any personal data, making it safer.
S2GUnit wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2023 4:18 am 3. In a pretend world, with no budget, I'm guessing there would be no real point in buying a P5800x for home PC use because using Optane 905p with PrimoCache & L1 will be just fast as a P5800x with PrimoCache?
I don't think it worth.

BTW, don't use optane 905p as level-2 cache for the 990 Pro, this will degrade the performance instead.
hkccc
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Re: Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by hkccc »

Support wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2023 6:11 pm
BTW, don't use optane 905p as level-2 cache for the 990 Pro, this will degrade the performance instead.
I wonder why using optane 905P will degrade the performance. If OP's 990Pro was used as a dedicated OS disk, most of its workload should be random 4K and a 905P as L2 will improve the 4K read performance a lot?
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Re: Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by Support »

According to their data specifications, Samsung 990 Pro is almost 2x faster than Optane 905P in both Sequential R/W and Random 4K R/W.
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Re: Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by S2GUnit »

Support wrote: Mon Sep 04, 2023 8:02 am According to their data specifications, Samsung 990 Pro is almost 2x faster than Optane 905P in both Sequential R/W and Random 4K R/W.
The 990 Is slower than my Optane for 4k random read & writes.
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Re: Optane 905p OS Drive, 2TB SSD & 6TB HDD setup help

Post by Support »

Thank you for your correction. Sorry, I forgot to compare the 4K QD1 of these two drives, as the Optane 905P specs don't provide this value. I checked our test data, combined with the test results on the Internet, and found that the 4K QD1 value of the Optane 905P is about 70~90K IOPS for both read and write, while the 990 pro claims read 22K IOPS and write 80K IOPS. So, yes, you are right, the 990 Pro's 4K QD1 (read) is much slower than the Optane 905P.

However, I still don't recommend using the Optane 905P as L2 cache for the 990 Pro. While this improves the 4K QD1 (read) performance, it also degrades other performance to the 905P level.
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