Hi!, I’ve ben thinking of trying to get myself an Optane drive but they’re all pretty much unobtanium right now. So, I remembered when Intel released the first Optane modules in 16GB and 32GB capacities. The 16GB one’s are still fairly useless even now but the 32GB one’s have more of an appeal. So, my theory is. Would be putting the 32GB modules in a PCIE express x16 breakout card and putting 4 of them in RAID 0 be a terrible idea?
On paper those drives do 250K IOPS which is sort of pedestrian now but obviously Optane’s main claim to fame is the latency, So I’m wondering would 4 of them in RAID be a terrible idea?
What are you using it for? Those optane modules are great for affordable ZFS SLOGs, but in most other cases there are going to be a lot better options that are an order of magnitude cheaper per GB.
32GB m.2 sticks go for ~$45 on ebay. I’d personally go with the 118GB 800P which has about the same cost per GB, while only burning 4 pcie lanes. Gives you the ability to add more later.
Note that your motherboard would need to support pcie bifurcation of x16 to x4x4x4x4 for the more affordable asus adapters to work. If there is no bifurcation, then a much more expensive card with a PLX chip is needed like what https://www.highpoint-tech.com/ provides. Note that PLX chips and various “hardware” and software RAID schemes add some latency, though I couldn’t tell you how much.
I know this sounds sort of dumb, but WIndows boot media. I’ve tried Linux but it really wasn’t for me personally. Also I’ve just had a look at the 800P and it is actually cheaper than the 32GB modules x4. Also, I was going to upgrade my MOBO anyhow.
I’m currently on a Crosshair VI Hero which is an X370 board but I’m going to a Crosshair VIII Hero which supports Bifurcation, It also has 2x M.2 with direct links to the CPU.
My thinking though is that Sequentially the 32GB drives would be faster. also the Optane drives are also x2’s as well not x4 and doing RAID 0 on the 800p’s would be double the cost of the 32GB Accelerators.