There are a lot of important things to consider

when buying a new computer,

but I've got a question for you.

What's the most important one

when it comes to responsiveness?

Is it having an awesome processor?

Ton of memory, maybe a huge screen?

Or is it your lowly hard drive?

Actually, yeah, that is exactly what it is.

So the standard hard drive that you will find

in a lot of computers today

is a bottleneck in almost every single thing that you do.

Well maybe not every single thing, but you know,

loading programs, or booting Windows,

or, I don't know, loading up pictures of Ken.

These are all things that are much, much slower

on a mechanical hard drive,

and that, my friends, is where Intel Optane memory comes in.

Who are awesome enough to sponsor this video,

so we can answer a very simple question.

What exactly is Optane memory?

Take this Dell Inspiron I have here.

On the surface it looks pretty similar

to a lot of other laptops,

but thanks to improvements in processing power,

specifically with the 8th Gen Core processors,

you can do a lot more work a lot more efficiently

than you used to be able to do on a system like this.

And yet, grandpa hard drive is keeping us down.

I'm gonna say grandpa hard drive, and you're gonna like it.

If you've got a big budget, by all means, go for a full SSD.

It'll definitely give you the speed,

but the issue is cost.

Now if you need anything more than say,

a couple hundred gigs of space,

things get pricey very, very quickly.

Especially when you're spending less than $1000 on a system,

it can be really tempting to go for flashy options

like more RAM, but the thing is,

it won't really make a big difference

in day-to-day use for most people.

Sure, if you're one of those people who have 100 tabs open

in Chrome all the time,

then you probably do need more RAM.

And maybe to re-evaluate your life decisions.

But the best way to think about RAM verses a hard drive

is like this, having more RAM will allow you to have

more things open at once,

but having a faster drive will mean that all those things

will load much more quickly.

That's where Optane memory comes in.

Now the important thing to know

is that this is not a replacement for a hard drive.

It's in addition to it.

So the way that Optane memory works

is that when you're using your computer normally,

there's an algorithm that runs in the background,

that's constantly analyzing which files

you're pulling from the hard drive.

The ones that you're pulling most,

such as Windows, or your programs,

or whatever the case is,

will then be cached to the Optane module,

which will massively speed things up

without hurting your capacity.

There are a few things to understand

about how all this works.

Now the first thing is the actual Optane module itself.

One of the keys is capacity.

So with a standard SSD, you're usually getting

at least 256 gigs of space.

However an Optane module

only needs to be 16 or 32 gigabytes,

depending on which one you pick up,

and that is because it is sharing the space

with your standard hard drive.

Which can be a terabyte or two terabytes or 14 terabytes

in the case of our ultimate gaming PC.

This means a few things.

First of all, it dramatically cuts down

on the price per gigabyte,

which is a big deal, regardless of whether you're building

an over the top gaming PC,

or buying a thin and light laptop.

Secondly, it means that you still have

the mechanical hard drive,

and all the capacity that goes with it.

It really is the best of both worlds.

You have the capacity of the large hard drive,

but with the responsiveness and speed of an SSD.

No, it's not perfect right out of the box.

Optane memory does need a little bit of time

to process and analyze all the different programs,

apps, and files that you use on a regular basis,

but the idea is that Optane is going to make your computer

faster over time as it's more and more well optimized,

verses, well, basically every other computer ever,

which gets slower and slower

with the inevitable march of time.

Inevitable march.

Inevitable march of time.

This all sounds great in theory,

but how does it actually work?

To demo, I have a couple devices,

starting with by far the most common method

of using Optane memory, a laptop,

such as this HP Pavilion x360.

This is a well rounded system, with a Core i7,

12 gigs of RAM, dedicated AMD graphics,

and a one terabyte hard drive

that is backed up by a 16 gigabyte Optane module.

It works exactly like any other Windows system.

Wanna load up Chrome?

Bam, it's there.

How about jumping into a quick game of PUBG?

It's a lot faster than a traditional mechanical hard drive.

On the other hand, we have a full on gaming PC,

which has a whopping 14 terabyte hard drive,

which is accelerated with Intel Optane.

Now, mind you, this is a very extreme way

of using Optane, but the point stands.

We're running on a full video in this PC,

which you guys can check out.

But the way it works is that we're using a 32 gigabyte

Intel Optane module, paired with our huge Steam library,

to get some seriously fast speeds,

even though we have 14 terabytes of storage.

The best part is you don't have to do anything different.

As far as Windows is concerned,

I have a one terabyte hard drive inside my HP.

However, what's going on in the background

is that Optane memory is speeding up everything

without me having to do a thing.

Now of course, this isn't for everyone.

If you're buying a high end workstation, for example

you probably have the budget for a huge SSD.

For a lot of people though,

this is a really nice middle ground

between a super high end system,

and a budget option with a glacierly slow hard drive.

Whether you want to build a new gaming PC

or buy that new laptop,

if I can communicate anything in this video, it's this.

If you're getting a new system,

don't rely on just a mechanical hard drive.

There are just better options out there,

including Intel Optane memory.