A few questions about intel optane p4800x

hi all,

I’ve read and watched a lot about these drives and I want to use a couple in my workstation. Before I pull the trigger I want to get a few things right , these are too expensive to improvise.
Looking in eBay prices are all over the place. The cheapest one is IBM Intel Optane D4800X Series 750GB PCIe NVMe 2.5in U.2 SSD SSDPD21K750GAI | eBay and looks ok but the next cheapest one is almost twice as expensive. In some cases I see the sellers mention things like EMC only so what should I look for?
Is it still recommended to use a PCIe card instead of cables?
In a thread from last year Delock Produkte 90169 Delock PCI Express 4.0 x16 Karte zu 4 x intern U.2 NVMe SFF-8639 - Bifurcation (LxB: 288 x 122 mm) was recommended (actually an older version that it seems no longer available). Is it still the best option?
In terms of cables, I couldn’t find anything recent and I’m not sure what viable options I have and Amazon has DiLinker, the only brand that I read I should stay away from.
My motherboard is a Gigabyte MC62-G40 and has 3x slimSAS connectors with PCIe Gen4 x4, I would like to use them if possible.
I realize that everything I said is more relevant for gen 4x4 U.2 NVMes and the one I want to buy is Gen3x4 but I want to future proof this a bit.
Thanks in advance

  • $360/TB was the best offer I have gotten on record for Optane (and it was for the P4800X 1.5 TB). I would tolerate up to $422/TB.
    • But also understand that there is a dwindling supply of these drives. It’s not 100% certain where the prices could go in the future depending on a lot of factors.
  • If there are any D4800X, do not buy them. You will be very sorry.
  • Micro SATA Cables and Serial Cables are good sources for cables if you want absolute guarantee that the cables will be good. However, the P4800X series are PCIe 3.0, so you really don’t have to stick to the best.
  • If you want to make use of PCIe 4.0 speeds and/or have even greater write endurance, go for the P5800X series.

thanks for the info, I’ll check micro sata cables now that you mentioned it I remember reading good things about it.
That price gauge helps a lot, what do you think about IBM Intel Optane D4800X Series 750GB PCIe NVMe 2.5in U.2 SSD SSDPD21K750GAI | eBay? It looks legit to me.
P5800X is still too expensive, I can’t stomach over $1000/TB, hopefully in a couple of years it will be a different story.
Thanks

You most certainly do not want this. The D4800X series is only for dual-port operation, and cannot be configured to operate otherwise. In a normal system (e.g., a workstation), you would get only two PCIe 3.0 lanes out of it, which is not the worst deal as the normal P4800X can barely use three lanes worth. But those D4800X also run very hot—at least the ones I tested and then returned. They reached the thermal limit and then shut down while doing absolutely nothing at all. I touched them while pulling them out of the tray, and let’s say that pain has a way of etching things into memory.

You know that only know that you called it out I realize that the link I provided was for a D4800X and not P4800X, good to know, those are discarded.
And how come that they can only use 3 lanes? I always thought they saturated the gen3x4.

I think second gen Optane can saturate PCIe 4.0, bit first can’t saturate 3.0

Optane Series Maximum Throughput PCIe 3.0 Lane Equivalent
M10 1 GB/s ~1
800P/P1600X 2 GB/s ~2
905P/P4800X/P4801X 2.4 GB/s < 3
P5800X/P5801X/P5810X 7.2 GB/s < 8

Very nearly so. The cream-of-the-crop P5800X 3.2 TB can exceed 7.2 GB/s, but that is still a few hundred MB/s shy of the interface limits. I have seen 7.8 GB/s before. Now that PCIe 5.0 SSDs are available, it should be a matter of time before somebody attempts to CrystalDiskMark one in PCIe 4.0 mode, which will give a good indication of the true limits of NVMe over PCIe 4.0, but 7.8 GB/s really ought to be the limit, because at 16 GT/s × 4 lanes with 128b/130b overhead, that works out to 7.88 GB/s of PCIe goodput, which leaves merely a margin of tens of MB/s more an NVMe SSD could possibly do over 7.8.

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Thanks for the details

sanity check before pulling the trigger, has anybody tried https://www.microsatacables.com/pcie-gen4-slimsas-to-u-2-cable?
I want to connect it to a p4800x or a Samsung PM1725a.
Both drives are Gen 3 but I want to make sure it’s the right cable when Gen 4 becomes more affordable :slight_smile: