With the RAM prices being kinda normal again, optane as a cache is pretty pointless and as a drive … if you don’t know that you absolutely need optane, you most likely don’t.
A 970EVO is already mad fast and if you have really stressful workloads, bump it up to a 970PRO. For storage in the desktop system I would go SATA SSD and spinning rust goes only in the NAS that’s sitting somewhere else.
What.
Please do this and have 1GB of ram.
If your workload requires more RAM than your box can handle (e.g., out of slots and no bigger dimms exist), then running swap is a requirement. If this is the case, then faster swap is better. Ergo, swapping to optane would be a win.
That said, the use case is vanishingly small, and normally you’d be better off running a bigger box with more ram capacity. Unless you are also cpu clock bound or something too… and moving to a bigger/badder HEDT or server setup would cost you clock speed or other benefits you need.