Intel Optane Memory M10 32 GB PCIe M.2 80mm

Got two of these as a boot drive for TrueNas Scale, work great and the cost together was less than 50usd. I'm happy.

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.

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.

I have a 512GB M.2 SSD as my primary drive and a 4TB HDD where I store all my games. I purchased this 16GB Intel Optante cache drive without having any expectations. At the current price (around $30), it was almost an impulse buy. Since I got this drive for gaming I thought 16GB wouldn't be enough to make a noticeable difference, but boy was I wrong. The speed improvement really cannot be overstated. All of my games load much quicker, especially when you die and reload or play the same game over and over. It's much faster than my SSD in fact. In one game in particular (Rising Storm 2), I loaded into the training area, went back to the menus to tweak some settings, and when I went back into the training map, it was nearly instant - I mean like 1 - 2 seconds loading time. Without the cache drive it took 10 - 20 seconds minimum. This is an amazing technology, I'm very pleased with my purchase, of you play games off of a mechanical hard drive, I'd consider this a necessity. The 16GB Intel Optante drive made a huge difference in loading times for me.

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.

WARNING!!! This chip is for HDD, not SSD! This chip AND program has been fighting me since day 1! I got it for crazy cheap so there is no point in getting a refund but my god is it such a waste of my time! I'm understanding at this point in my installation experience that this is a pre-build add on. that is the BIGGEST confusion that I have come across. over HUNDREDS of help posts in hundreds of forums and I still have not found an answer to my problem. So I'm going to try to make this review as easy as possible to understand! NO : This chip is for the building process of your PC, NOT for a PC that is already running an operating system!! NO : If you are building a PC this will not make an SSD any faster for you, There is little to no improvements it brings to your SSD. YES : Building a PC with a very big Hard Disc Drive(HDD) will make it feel like you are running off of a Solid State Drive(SSD). NO : Although I have found forums stating that an update was done to the software, I am still not able to get a secondary Hard Drive to work with this chip. YES : The M.2 slot DOES interfere with your SSD in a way that makes it unbootable if you don't have the right BIOS setting preset. I have no idea how but I read it's because the M.2 port runs on the SATA connection so the Optane chip interrupts the SSD and the SSD doesn't fight, it just stops communicating. It doesn't damage anything as I know of, it only stops communication on boot up, not while it's running. YES : You need to update your BIOS in order to support this chip as it is a program much like RAID in a way that makes it a pain in the *** to get running properly. YES : I am almost certain you need to mess around with Command Prompt in order to get your system to recognize the chip, program, and run the Optane smart storage manager properly. NO : This M.2 is not NVMe, it is PCIe. NO : This is not a plug-and-play chip! You NEED to know how an operating system works and you will have your patience tested many times over! YES : You need to touch your motherboard in order to get the Optane chip connected and you need a small but long and preferably magnetic Phillips screwdriver. (Mine DID NOT come with hardware but as I said, I got this secondhand and YES the chip/Hardware is working fine) YES : 7th gen Intel CPU is what this is supported by and that doesn't mean i7's, I am using an i5 and I am understanding that my CPU is supported even though I can't get it to work with my HDD. I think I covered everything I came across so far and hope I help you with your purchase of the Intel Optane Memory M10 16 GB PCIe M.2 80mm.

I should have done my homework: the Optane Memory is mainly used to accelerate your HDD and make it almost as fast as a SSD. The problem is that my primary drive is already a SSD and I was thinking that I could accelerate my HDD as a secondary drive. No, you can't do this! The Optane Memory Module, on top of all technical requirements (Windows 10 + Optane Ready MOBO + 7th generation 64 bits Processors) also requires that the drive to be accelerated has to be the primary drive in which the Windows is installed. Fine, my fault here, I should have done my homework in reading carefully Intel page about the Optane Memory Module (go to the FAQ). Although it can accelerate a SSD the gain is not high enough to justify its price. If I knew that already, I would have chosen to buy a bigger SSD rather then spend money on the Optane. Nevertheless, despite all the frustration (once again, I think that was 80% my fault), what really makes this a three star review is the installation process: while reading Intel's website and watching their tutorials makes you think it's a "plug & play" process, it is not! Already have your Windows up and running? 99% chance that you'll need to format your PC, so be prepare to back up everything you have. There are several guidelines that you need to follow: your disk should be formates as GPT (MBR is not allowed), you need to have at least 5MB of non-allocated memory in your disk as part of the installation. Oh, and your BIOS should probably be updated and customised with a few tweaks to properly access the Optane Module. And how do you know that? Google + Youtube (users video, the Intel one doesn't give you much information). On top of all that you will need a lot, really, a lot, seriously, a looooot of patience. Bottom of line: seems that Intel came up with a good idea for on budget people who doesn't want to spend a lot of money in bigger SSDs, but rather accelerate their HDD. That's awesome, but still, the lack of clear information of how the memory can be used (go to the FAQ before buying it) and also the misleading "simple installation" idea are frustrating. Once you get pass this obstacles, the equipment does what it should do: accelerate you HDD or your SSD (barely perceptible for the last one).

Es un increible producto, cambio el comportamiento del disco duro ( Me refiero a los discos duros de platos los de baja velocidad), acelera la carga de informacion del disco duro, hizo que mi disco duro de baja velocidad se comporta mejor que un SSD , optane es un intermediario entre el disco duro o SSD y almacena los ulitmos 16GB utilizados,(esta accion la hace demanera desatendida, sin que debamos hacer nada, lo hace completamente debajo del sistema) Debes de leer la guia de como se configura e instalar el software, que se descarga en la pagina de intel, no debes usarlo como disco duro, cuando el sistema optane esta correctamente instalado, no es visible como unidad de disco/almacenamiento, simplemente no se ve, algo super importante es que debes hacer ingresar a la BIOS de tu equipo y cambiar la configuracion de tu administrador de disco duro a tipo RAID, si no sabes que es RAID es simplemente dividir la carga de informacion en dos o mas discos de almacenamiento y esto permite acceder a ambos discos como si fuese uno solo, lo que hace esto es dividir toda informacion , pero en realidad preriza la informacion al disco SSD de optane y despues cuando esta ya no es requerida se entrega lentamente al disco duro que es mas lento , pero al hacer la lectura es como si el optane se quedara con una copia, de la primera lectura del disco duro y cualquier consulta de los ultimos 16 GB utilizados se mantienen el el SSD entregando la informacion realmente rapido, si tu equipo tiene mas de 8GB de te recomentaria comprar mejor el optane de 32GB ya que esto significa que tu equipo utilizara mas memoria de lo que el optane puede mantener de los archivos recientes. PRECAUCION si tienes la funcion de hibernar en uso, cada vez que mandes a hibernar el equipo, el sistema guardara la informacion de la RAM en el disco duro, pero esto hara que los ulitmos 16 GB de archivos recientemente utilizados, se pierdan, optante funciona muy bien, repite si las actividades que realizas, no utilizan una carga demandante de informacion del disco duro no supera los 16 GB, yo lo veo un producto maravilloso, siempre y cuando tu actividades en el equipo no supere 16 GB de lectura de archivos, es ideal para juegos, diseño, y ingenieria, pero no para edicion de video, por que por lo general la edicon de video utiliza mucho disco duro, para eso mejor usa el tamaño adecuado de disco duro como la version de 32 GB

Best from the rest I paired it with my 250 Samsung evo and believe me my PC is flying. Super fast boot and usage very easy to setup and use. And it was delivered within 2 weeks form the US. Thanks Amazon and Intel

Excelente produto qualidade Intel. Não consegui configurar tive de levar em uma assistência! Mas ficou melhor , mais rápido apesar de que já tenho SSD INSTALADO. RECOMENDO.

Fiquei muito satisfeito com o desempenho do computador após colocar esse módulo Optane. Meio chato de configurar mas ficou excelente.

Je ne regrette pas de l'avoir acheté (32 euro) en reconditionner à l'époque couplé avec un 2 TO, la vitesse est impressionnante. J'ai mis mes jeux dessus, c'est bête que cette technologie a été abandonné, si vous avez de la chance essayé d'en trouver un à pas cher.

Literalmente, ha convertido mi hdd de 1tb en un ssd de 1tb. No hay mucho más que explicar, simplemente funciona y lo hace muy bien, el ordenador inicia en 10-15 segundos (antes me tardaba un par de minutos en cargar todo el escritorio) y los programas cargan enseguida. Lo único en mi caso fue que tuve que actualizar bios y activar el modulo de memoria desde la bios, pero depende de cada caso y además no es dificil de hacer.