By Darren Allan
Intel launched its Optane Memory – which acts as a small turbocharging cache for a traditional hard disk for an SSD-like speed boost – earlier this week, but a caveat we were unaware of has emerged: the product won’t work with low-end Kaby Lake processors.
As we reported previously, the base requirements for Optane Memory is an M.2 storage slot (which the memory stick plugs into), an Intel 200 series chipset motherboard, and a Kaby Lake (seventh-generation) CPU.
However, as Tech Report spotted, the official list of requirements on Intel’s Optane website stipulates that users must have a Core i3, i5 or i7 Kaby Lake processor.
That’s an important distinction, because it leaves non-Core family CPUs out in the cold, even if they are the latest seventh-generation. This means Pentium and Celeron models, and on the laptop front the Core Y-series (which were referred to as Core M pre-Kaby Lake), isn’t supported by Optane either.
Pentium problems
Clearly, then, if you’re building a budget PC, and were thinking of boosting a large hard drive’s speed with 16GB of Optane Memory, this is an issue to bear in mind.
For those building from scratch, a truly budget Pentium processor, …read more
Source:: techradar.com – Computing Components
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