IntelOptane Memory M10 16 GB PCIe M.2 80mm

I recently built a new computer for my nephew to run his virtual reality games. I had heard of Optane on the tech channels but never used it. The product acts as a fast, low-latency caching drive that uses a combination of hardware and software to intelligently cache frequently accessed data. In essence, it allows you to run a (much) cheaper HDD but get storage speeds comparable to an SSD. The advantages are 1. price, since Optane + a 1TB HDD is still considerably cheaper than a 1TB SSD, and 2. storage density, since HDD come in sizes way larger than SSD.There are serious limitations you should understand going in. First, it won't work great in all cases, such as when you are working with very large files. Second, you need to match the Optane product to a newer Intel chipset motherboard specifically designed to use Optane. And third, you can only use Optane with your primary HDD; it won't work with drive arrays that I'm aware of.Still, installation wasn't too involved and on the computer I built it reduced boot times to something like 4 seconds; not bad at all in my book. If you are looking to build a basic-ish computer and want a decent amount of storage but have a limited budget, I would seriously consider Optane.

A cheap simple upgrade to my Dell mini PC that had an open M.2 slot. These Optane modules only work with certain CPUs and motherboards, so check your computer to make sure it will be recognized by the BIOS and the OS. You also have to use the Intel Optane driver package which can be finicky to install. I had to install and reinstall a couple of times before the software recognized the Optane. I also had to go into the BIOS and select the correct HDD settings for Optane (it's kind of like a RAID setup, but not). Once configured, everything seems to be working great. There's no noticeable difference in PC performance so the gains are questionable. But for less than $20 it's a fun PC hardware upgrade.

Wow, this module is a huge step forward in hybrid HDD/SSD technology.I highly recommended brushing up on all of the requirements for installation with your MOBO manufacturer as well as using Intel's online resources, however once you have the basics down, this installation really isn't too bad. In about 15 minutes, I was able to have the hardware installed, software installed, and drive correctly optimized.In terms of performance, I am using the Optane chip to accelerate a secondary HDD. My Main OS drive is an M.2 SSD, therefore I wanted to use this on my 4TB WD Black drive to optimize applications/games/music production/large files. The difference is night and day for this particular application.Synthetic read/write speeds (CrystalDiskMark, sequential)BASELINE: 180MB/s R - 175MB/s WOPTIMIZED: 1397MB/s R - 359.5MB/s WIn terms of real life performance differences, games load 4x as fast, and moving large files around for music production (Ableton as well as non-DAW) is twice as responsive.Good luck everyone :)

I'm using a pair of these small but fast SSDs as cache drives for my Synology NAS. The Synology OS uses one for write caching and one for read caching. This makes transferring lots of small files much faster than before. While these drives are not on Synology's official compatibility list, I've heard from other Synology users who have also had success with these drives. At their current price, it is worth it!Edit: Upon update to the latest Synology software, one of the cache drives was either unsupported or died. This caused a major issue that required a complete reinstall of the Synology software on my NAS. Fortunately, this did not lose any of my data but did require that I re-install all my packages and re-configure everything. It could have been worse.

After you get it working it does indeed make a big difference in HDD performance, but the software is its Achilles Heel. First, Intel RST is forced on all your drives even though you're only pairing one of them. Also, and maybe I'm missing something, it keeps automatically disabling itself every few days without warning or explanation. I tried googling a solution but nothing comes up. So now it's basically unusable and I'm super bummed. :(EDIT:Tried a last ditch effort by updating Optane software and motherboard firmware. Still no go. Final verdict, this thing is too much of pain to set up and too unreliable. For about the same cost you can just buy a small SSD and just stick particularly slow games on that. As inconvenient as that sounds, it is infinitely less annoying than this thing turned out to be! >:(

Used this on the front end of my home TrueNAS system. Didn't need the potential write speed increase, but liked the bufferd/write capabilities, and perhaps a bit more resilience on a power outage. Had a slot for it on my new system, and cheap enough for a bit of potential extra insurance.