16GB Optane + 1TB spinner vs. SSD

[PrinceXizor]

Sourcing a cheapish office computer. Seen quite a few sales with the first configuration. What's the performance like for typical office use? Is this a hybrid type system or two separate HDD's that need managed. Just seeing if I should worry about it, or get one without the optane (doesn't save that much) and add an SSD instead.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, the Optane 16GB 3DXpoint PCI-E 3.0 x2 NVMe Memory Device, is generally used as a "cache drive", for the HDD, as I understand it. (Played with Intel SRT / RST a little in the early days, Optane looks to be an evolution of that, only with super-fast SLC 3DXpoint memory, which is faster and lower-latency than even NAND is.)

Basically it SHOULD appear to the user, as just one C-colon drive, and then D-colon is probably the DVD-RW, and E-colon, is the memory card reader on the front panel.

Shouldn't need any special management, unless the OS gets corrupted, or one of the drive(s) in the caching pair fails.

If there's not much price difference, I would definitely go with the Optane, I've heard that it helps pretty significantly, in most general cases.

Another possibility, is removing the Optane drive, and putting in a "real" NVMe PCI-E M.2 SSD, which should certainly be possible, I would expect, barring any OEM firmware weirdness, which is a possibility.

 

[PrinceXizor]

Thanks for the info! I poked around at a few reviews and that seems to be the case. Should be sufficiently snappy and if it ever doesn't feel that way should be able to drop in an SSD as you said.