A Frankenstein SSD – Intel Optane Memory H10 EXPLAINED!

hello good people on Dmitry and today
let’s talk about a really exciting topic Intel Optane memory now to be honest
with our previous experience with Intel Optane it wasn’t so exciting for the
DIY community now on paper it’s supposed to cache data from the most used
programs and use that information to accelerate applications and when those
loading times when paired with a standard hard drive and that’s exactly
what happened however there were too many limitations
with Intel Optane so it didn’t really add any value over traditional SSDs they
were expensive modules if you were adding it to an existing machine with a
hard drive you most likely had to do a complete revamp and reinstall windows
and it could only accelerate the hard drive onto which the OS was installed
however I would say it deemed pretty successful for the notebook space and so
now Intel is launching a completely new module that could point towards them
really interesting evolution for the SSD market let’s talk about that right this
give you a hardware the power deserves would be quiet straight power 11 power
supply with a wire free internal design fantastic cooling with silent wings
three fan and a fully modular layout with black cables and 80 plus gold
efficiency check them out below alright so in order to understand where the h10
module fits in let’s talk about the current lineup of Intel Optane because
it is a bit confusing first of all anything with Optane memory name means
that it uses 3d xpoint storage to boost system responsiveness through data
caching rather than being a standalone SSD and that’s where the Optane memory
m10 comes in it’s targeted towards entry-level systems with spinning hard
drives now the drives without the memory designation are full-blown SSDs in the
mainstream market there’s the 800P series that’s only offered and really
odd 118 and 58 gigabyte capacities and finally there’s the opting 900P and 905P which use higher capacity 3d xpoint modules and cost an absolute fortune so
those are pretty much reserved only for enthusiasts with pretty deep pockets and
so the Optane memory h10 fills the spot between entry-level and mainstream and
it will not be sold separately because intel sees that is like a value add
towards the notebook space instead and so this is the H10 module it may look
like any other m.2 SSD but it she takes a very different approach so
on the one side there’s the 16 or 32 gigabytes of obtain memory that can
provide latency measured in microseconds rather than milliseconds like in most
others as these and the other part of this drive is actually a dedicated SSD
with up to one terabyte of qc3 dean and now in the past Optane did not have
enough performance to properly accelerate SSDs but with technological
improvements we can now take this SSD section and accelerate with octane by
supposedly a pretty big amount and this communicates with the system via the x4
and vme interface which reserves two lanes for the NAND and the other two for
opt-in caching and with Intel Smart Response driver working in the
background to cache your most-used files and dynamically accelerate them this is
all supposed to happen without any interaction from the user and so having
a single module with opted in memory on it and the SSD that it’s accelerating is
exciting because you’re basically miniaturizing your primary storage and
the Optane memory acceleration and this whole space-saving approach could lead
to more connectivity on notebooks card readers are disappearing way too fast it
could open up secondary storage compartments in a notebook that the user
or the noble manufacturer could also populate so that the Intel update memory
module itself is not occupying the m dot to stall on the motherboard but that
slot now is occupied by your primary storage and the opting itself and right
now these Optane modules would only be available to notebook manufacturers and
they’ll be available in three capacities the sixteen gigabytes that will provide
caching for 256 gigabytes onboard SSD I expect to see that one is slightly lower
end systems and the other two are a lot more interesting since they provide 32
gigabytes worth of space for acceleration along with 512 and one
terabyte of SSD storage that is a huge amount of accelerated storage for
notebooks that normally get less now in terms of performance the h10 equipped
optane memory machine is on its way to michael and eber so stay tuned for all
our performance results there but until then Intel has provided some
interesting charts so you see here even though most
synthetic benchmarks are on the entire range of queue depth most programs
actually spend their loading times between
one and two and that’s where Optane memory provides most of its performance
meanwhile it does struggle to compete in benchmarks that put continual stress on
this storage system again here looks like intel is targeting a more typical
scenario for application loads rather than someone who requires a ton of
continuous storage performance and that’s pretty important since it shows
the h10 might not be a benchmark monster but it provides performance where people
need it most and so I would love to hear what you think about this whole
evolution of Intel Optane memory you know in our previous experience it was
nothing special sure it accelerated by a few seconds but it was really not
user-friendly so I’m excited to see you know how h10 module performs Michael and
Eber will be doing their testing and see if it’s a bit more user friendly and if
it actually makes sense for you look thin in like notebooks that most likely
coming out in June I guess the biggest concern for me right now the price and
if adding these new h10 update memory modules into notebooks will just
increase the cost of them but hopefully not too much because the primary hard
drive is already kind of built in on the same module that is being accelerated so
I guess we’ll have to wait and see now the thing that I’m most excited about
with these modules is the whole system responsiveness especially on a notebook
space like everything will just completely fly you know opening premiere
this is not gonna show me the loading bar it just like open up or opening
audition or Lightroom know those things that thing kind of forever even on the
fastest SD will just fly and especially because we’re already talking about
they’re really fast and DME SSD and adding opting on top of that to just
like bring us to that next level of performance but stay tuned for our full
performance analysis coming later thanks so much for watching I’m Dimitri we’ll
see you the next video

Glenn Chapman


  1. so this thing works like ddr cash on normal ssd. no need for this, thanks.

  2. I was considering Optane but it only speeds up main drive and not other drives… so if my OS drive is an SSD, and have hard drives storing "Epic Store" library, Optane won't speed up my hard drive… So I went with PrimoCache instead…

  3. Why don't high-end Intel mobos already come with integrated 16 or 32 gb optane chips ?

  4. there is a slight "hick-up" in the video at the 5:21 right after the slide

  5. So they are developing a great development for storage and restricting it to notebook manufacturers and not releasing it to consumers to "replace" the other Optane modules? Really?

  6. Seems SSDS are actually getting slower as new ones come out https://youtu.be/OffzVc7ZB-o So pairing optane with a slower QLC based ssd makes sense

  7. By the time I finished watching the video I get the notification for the video thumbs up if this happens to you

  8. Those desktop icons at the bottom left bother me for some reason… Good video as always tho 🙂

  9. Dimitry bro I need a small help from you please tell me from where you get those desktop wallpapers especially those autumn ones. Please do reply to my comment.

  10. When's Avengers endgame coming out? Please give us more information on this subject.

  11. Only 2 lanes of write/read is disappointing. I would rather have seen 4 lanes and Optane caching just being on the device not treated as a separate device.

  12. Nice video, but in the beginning you mentioned optane was originally only able to accelerate the OS drive, but with the release of coffee lake, they added support to secondary drives.

    I have been using a 32gb optane module to accelerate my 8tb hdd, and i have seen significant decreases in load times for games. However, the operating system takes additional time to boot with the optane software, and I have had an issue before that almost corrupted my data.

  13. just save money to buy real ssd or m2. bad bad experience with optane. no desire to try this one

  14. I think that Optane is totally and absolutely USELESS these days, when even the cheapest SSDs outperforms Optane, and they come as low as 20$ for 128GB or 40$ for 256GB… Hell, for 32$ on sale you can already buy a freaking 120GB NVMe that will just run circles around Optane. I can't understand, why such product even exists. It would've been a nice upgrade in 2008 or so, but these days – absolutely useless. Especially given the fact that this requires M.2 slot on motherboard! How many PCs with M.2 capable motherboards still uses HDD – 5% maybe? And for those people Optane is even more useless, as they have no idea about this update option.

  15. QLC NAND oof. That thing is going to fail much faster than any other type of NAND memory. Surely it's reliable in the warranty time Intel is giving on their products but I wouldn't count on that thing lasting that long. I'm not sold either on the fact that it's going to magically make a system much faster. The NAND part is connected with 2 PCIe lanes so, at best, 2/3 slower than pure NAND SSDs. I don't think any user would see the difference between an SSD and this Optane module. There's also software overhead to handle all this "background magic" that's happening which will use some CPU cycles. Just speculation, but I think I didn't go much far from the truth.

  16. As with a lot of Intel stuff it just screams "Apple please use me!"

    Still look at Kaby Lake G. It paired an Intel CPU with an AMD GPU on a single module with a fast, low power interconnect. It would have been a natural fit for a thin laptop with an Intel CPU and AMD graphics. Apple seem to have ignored it though.

    And I suspect they're ignore Intel Optane H10 too, because modern Macbooks have soldered NVMe storage which Apple implemented with their own T2 chip.

    It's a shame really because one of the worst design decisions in modern Apple machine was non upgradeable storage. If they built a machine with a door at the bottom where you could change an M.2 SSD, or even add one to increase the soldered storage it would be a great machine.

    And a flash NVMe with an Optane cache should provide a boost for any application whose on disk working set fits in the Optane cache. Still Apple being Apple they'll do the usual thing of offering a low end model with too little storage and a high end model with more storage but at an eye watering price and probably some other misfeatures. E.g. to get more than 256GB of storage on a Macbook Pro you need to either wait two weeks for a custom build or buy the Touchbar version. Which is significantly more expensive and no one really likes the Touchbar. So Apple up sell people who need more than 256GB of storage to the Touchbar model.

    If Apple do use this, they'll no doubt solder the damn thing to the board. However I think the T2 team will probably fight hard against it on 'Not Invented Here' grounds. I need to give up Apple stuff like crackheads need to give up crack.

  17. Don't forget this is QLC memory that slows down when about half of the storage capacity is being used. Pass on this for me.

  18. Don't know about you guys, but when I watched this video on my 120hz monitor, it had some big stuttering issues.

  19. 900p or just get an SSD. Not going to pay money for an extra cache. Also SATA/NVMe SSDs are basically the same for most general use, why would anyone pay extra to boost their SSD speed? You could have just bought a faster SSD in the first place if that was a priority

  20. Buy an SSD , create a partition , allocate the partition as Virtual Ram . It is THE SAME THING BUT CHEAPER

  21. wouldnt this have the same problem as the 660p, that ther performance drops to HDD speed one the cache is full when transfering large files?

  22. The thing that this feature has been in windows for such a long time and now Intel is selling it as separate hardware just confuses me

  23. As an alternative to StoreMi or Optane, I'd suggest trying tiering with Windows Storage Spaces, which is built into Windows 10. You can even do three-tier storage with Optane+SSD+HDD, with tons of RAID-style redundancy options. You can't boot from a storage spaces volume, but you CAN move your user folder over to it.

  24. Dimitri, I like how you explain the optane storage but you and I and I guess a lot other hardware geeks feel that this Optane story needs to get into high gear soon or this tech will get forgotten. See we had 4200RPM drives, that became 5400 variable and ultimately moved to 7200RPM and some to 10k and 15k. We have seen the same in SSD – first the SATA interface up to where we are today NVMe PCIe 3×4 . We have, at the same time seen the access times being reduced and the speeds to and from the chip being optimized. As long as we do not step away from the race towards 4nm CPU config and now the CPU/GPU combo I see the bus on the motherboards as one of the largest hinderances. Intel did introduce Optane as the saving grace and so far has not done much with it.

  25. Still not impressed by marketing graphs, waiting to see the actual tests

  26. I've a 2tb samsung nvme m.2 (Boot) 2 samsung 4tb ssds and 3 WD 10tb mechanical drives. Would I benefit from Optane?

  27. Are they just replacing the standard DRAM cache with Optane? It sounds neat and all, but I'm not fully getting it. DRAM Caching has basically already taken over the SSD space, I don't see how SSDs are going to benefit from adding an Optane module rather than your standard caching method. Heck, even a 970 Evo Plus is already reaching the limits of the PCIe 3×4 NVME capability.

    I definitely don't know enough about this new product to understand it, but (and probably due to that), it sounds a lot like a marketing gimmick.

  28. There’s an enterprise storage startup using this exact approach, but scaled up to exabytes of data. Think a petabyte of data in a single 1U server with a mix of cheap SSDs and Optane, sprinkle in nvme over Ethernet (100gbit of course), and add in some AI in the caching algorithm. They’re still in stealth mode now as I think they were expecting Optane prices to drop faster than they have

  29. Just using a Simple SSD is better. SSDs have come down in price so I don't see the point of Intel Optane…

  30. Optane ended up bricking my hard drive. I had to send it back to the retailer who couldn’t fix it either so sent me a new one back. As for my Optane module, I threw it in the bin. Just buy a fast drive if you want a fast drive.

  31. Did I hear your right? They are going to let it speed up nvme drives not just the SATA 3D NAND that comes on the chip itself? That would be cool. I currently run Adobe suite off an NVME drive and I still occasionally see the loading bar.

  32. Did they provide security charts also ? You know…like their cpu's 😂😂😂

  33. I'm just wondering if using the intel optane as a cache will allow the QLC storage to have better write endurance than usual

  34. I like choices when it comes to my tech, however. I can ride down to my local Microcenter and I'm really wanting a big SATA SSD: 1TB $95+tax or $130 for an nVME drive, that's is the entry point. . Even top the top tier stuff isn't that much worse in price right now.

  35. Benchmarks 1st, and if its good,let us all buy it for our systems if we want.

  36. I see that keyboard in the background 😘
    Are u making a review on it??

  37. I just don't understand why I SHOULD want this. If I can occasionally BARELY notice the difference between a mainstream SATA SSD and the higher end-sub enthusiast level PCIe M.2 NVME x4 drive that I replaced it with as my OS & software drive, then why would I possibly want to pay extra for a technology that, while impressive, while bridging the performance & usability gap between solid state storage and RAM, I'm just never going to actually make use of or in any way leverage this technology to improve my user experience.

    The statement doesn't change; this is an absolutely incredible, market changing technology – in, maybe, 2007 when high speed iron disk storage is still king…
    But it's 2019, and, not only are 2.5 solid states utterly dirt cheap, but M.2 NVMEs are downright affordable, even x4s, even name brand(and, much like 2.5s, budget brands are actually proving to be of pretty damn legitimate usable quality too)

  38. If they could keep the price just marginally more than current 660P samples (1 TB at only $109?!), that might be nice….

  39. I recently saw a YouTube video that showed that Intel is also looking into making RAM for computers that use optain memory. If that works out, then you might eventually find optain memory inside the future Intel video cards as well to potentially cover as many segments as possible for Intel

  40. As an SSD caching an SSD, this is interesting. As my current needs have no need for this kind of storage, I'll have to see what these do for us when we finally do need this kind of storage.

  41. It seems interesting, but I'm not too sure if it will be anything to care about.

  42. Interesting, Optane before to me was quite a niche solution, using it to improve SSD performance could be good though wondering if you'd practically notice the little extra boost 🤔

  43. I dont get it why there is so much hate on these. The tech is cool and promising. I think its good to have competition between techs too, to have a choice, you know. 😀
    For those who dont get why the Optane Memory exists: it was the first implementation of a new tech, they probably learned a lot from the manufacturing, and got back some money from the sell for te reasearch, so these allows them to make it better sooner.
    Any news on the Optane Dimms in the consumer world?

  44. Huh? I am able to use my Optane on my 3TB HDD which is only the storage for my games. My OS is on an SSD. And yes, it has improved my load times. Crystal Disk Mark reports from:
    Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 129.079 MB/s

    Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 53.738 MB/s
    Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 923.507 MB/s

    Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 151.604 MB/s

  45. The best explanation of Intel H10, Frankenstein SSD good for laptops.

  46. i like that they only compare it too there own drives which have low endurance and read/write speeds should try to compare with say a Samsung evo drive with 4 lanes.

  47. cache is like ram, if the intel optane is almost as fast as ram, then i will not run out of ram. My 8gb ram if ill add the basic 32gb intel optane as cache equals longer usage and still fast response rate??! Hope i can use it in my laptop, i5 8250u cpu but with fix 8gb ram only…

  48. Why is the Optane size still so small?
    16 & 32, in the SSD world these are like floppy disk.

    why can't the make 120 & 256, even a 64 would be better?

  49. Intel kills the Optane performance when they limit the device to a certain CPU.

  50. I've been seeing a lot of laptops with optane that are advertised with 20 GB of memory. That's 4 GB of RAM and a 16 GB optain module. Honestly its very dishonest of these companies to say it has 20 GB memory when it really only has 4GB of memory.

  51. Hi Dmitry
    Will there be any video with "Sentry 2"??
    Would love to see one from you.

  52. How I feel about H10? I wouldn’t get it because it has ”normal” SSD with it. I just want the Optane part, because it has better random read/write speeds than any other regular NVMes even. It’s always weird seeing people refer to Optane as the HDD caching solution since from the beginning me and many others have simply enjoyed them being fast boot and work drives. Putting a few Optane modules on RAID gives plenty enough capacity for OS and a couple of main games or working environments. (But of course HDDs are great for long-term storage. and SSDs are cheaper than optane.) shrugs

  53. I was expecting this new iteration coming with 64GB cache already. Especially for the 1TB flash one.

  54. Starlord.. he must meet Chris Pratt and then say: oh hello brother :v

  55. @HardwareCanucks just a fun fact for you. Take a Optane system and cut the power circle of the system. In my case i had to reinstall 8 from 8 systems new because of a broke RAID from Intel Optane….

  56. I think a normal DRAM chip for cache makes more sense 2GB or 4GB of DRAM would be very nice for cacheing an SSD. Faster performance, and extends NAND life.

  57. So it's like shoving a small SSD cache on a 7200 RPM drive, limited usage.

  58. Just letting you know. 3DXPoint is pronounced 3D Cross Point. Just in case you create any more videos discussing this. Great video and very informative.

  59. If it comes in a Zen 2 laptop I'll buy it maybe but we both know it won't thumbs down to Intel for making it only accessible to the big brands

  60. I would like to mention that Intel released last year an update that you can use the optane memory for the secondary HDD that you don't have windows on it.
    I will also mention that I bought the module one year ago and only started using it 2 days ago because I had to reinstall windows, and used the opportunity to activate optane.

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