So with the latest Ryzen launch, AMD slipped in another feature that fell under the radar with everything else going on. They call it StoreMI and at first glance, you might dismiss it but after playing around with it more I think all Ryzen owners should rethink that and at least check out my performance testing later in this article. Officially StoreMI is a free version of the Enmotus FuzeDrive and it may look like a caching tech like Intel’s Optane but it isn’t. It is a Tier setup like run on enterprise hardware allowing you to experience SSD speeds on your slower spinning storage with a hands-off approach that is especially good for non-enthusiasts who don’t think about which drive they install programs on.

Product Name: AMD StoreMI

Review Samples Provided by: AMD

Written by: Wes Compton

Pictures by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Links: Samsung 860 EVO and WD Blue 2 TB

 

What is StoreMI

Okay, so a lot of you might be wondering what a Tier setup is compared to a cache. The short version is basically that Caching is basically a buffer where a Tier setup uses your fast and slow drives as actual storage, placing things in the correct category. So often accessed files are moved to your fast storage. Both are used in enterprise and lucky for us StoreMI actually has both as well in a way. Most of it is set up with a Tier setup but they did also include an option to turn on a 2GB ram cache.

So where does Enmotus FuzeDrive come in with all of this? Well, they are the company that actually came up with the tech and funny enough it is Ryzen exclusive through them as well, at least for now. You can upgrade your StormMI setup to a FuzeDrive to gain more features. As it sits, the StoreMI free setup allows you that one 2GB RAMCache that you can turn on or off but you can’t change its size. You are also limited to just a 128GB fast tier SSD. Upgrading allows you to use a full 1TB SSD and allows for up to 4GB of ram cache.

There are still some limitations, even with the upgraded plan. Right now you can only run one StoreMI or FuzeDrive on your PC and right now you can only run two drives.

 

What Did AMD Send

Okay, I’m all about full disclosure and things are no different here. Like with a lot of our reviews, I was provided with hardware to do testing and as always I did not receive any payments for any coverage or favorable review. That means AMD did offer and send over a testing kit. That had the two drives needed to test this, then, of course, the software was free. Enmotus did offer a copy of the upgraded software months ago, I should check that out one of these days.

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So AMD sent a 2TB 7200 RPM drive from WD’s Blue line for the slow storage and a Samsung 860 EVO SATA based M.2 drive for the fast drive. Obviously, an NVME drive would have been a lot better for this, but even with the SATA limited speeds, it should be enough to get a look at what StoreMI is all about.

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I also took a few pictures of them with the Ryzen box for fun.

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Test Procedures and Test Bench

 

Test System

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X - Live Pricing

Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming - Live Pricing

Cooling: Noctua NH-U12S for cooling - Live Pricing

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste - Live Pricing

Memory: G-Skill Sniper 3400MHz CL16-16-16-36 8GB - Live Pricing

Storage: Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD - Live Pricing

Video Card: Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti - Live Pricing

Power Supply: Cooler Master v1000 - Live Pricing

Case: Dimastech Test Bench - Live Pricing

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit - Live Pricing

 

tests

 


Performance

Okay for testing I took most of our tests directly from our normal SSD benchmarking suite. But how do I really get a look at the performance of StoreMI? Well, I decided to benchmark both the hard drive and the SSD independently before getting into any other testing to get a look at their normal performance. Then from there I set up the StoreMI drive and benchmarked that. Then lastly I tested a fourth time with the 2GB RAMCache turned on as well.

Setting everything up wasn’t that difficult. You have to download the program from AMD to start off. Once that is downloaded and installed you can run it and it will walk you through everything. You can do it automatically where it decides which drive is slow and fast or you can do a manual setup where you pick the fast and slow.

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Once set up, because AMD sent a 256GB drive and StoreMI is limited to 128GB it actually sets up two drives. One is the Tiered drive with the 2TB capacity combined with the 128GB and the other is the remainder of our SSD allowing normal use of that.

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Remember once you set this up you still need to go into Computer Management and activate the drives and then also format them so you can use them.

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Once setup you can spot the DRAM cache option. This gave me trouble turning it on. At one point it actually was boosting that secondary non-tier half of the SSD. I ended up having to delete everything and start the setup over. It seemed to work better when I didn’t manually set everything up.

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With all of the setup out of the way, I can finally get into the overall results. I started with Passmark’s Performance Test 9 where I ran the full Disk Mark for an overall score. It's nothing like benchmarking a spinning disk, even though this is a relatively fast one, against RAM Cache to put speeds into perspective. Running just the StoreMI configuration actually showed an improvement over the SSD itself and as you can see adding the cache on top of that really kicked things into high gear as well.

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For my next test, I used AS SSD’s copy benchmark. This is a timed benchmark so the lower the score the better the result. It copies files that are similar to game usage, program usage, and an ISO for the tests. Not surprisingly the hard drive was much slower. But what might surprise you is that here the RAM Cache was the second slowest and the StoreMI Tiered setup was fastest.

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Next in Anvils Storage Utilities I tested both read and write speeds in IOPS at 4k file size 16 queue depth. Here the RAM Cache dominated on the read side of things but for write speeds, the cache dropped the ball. It defaulted back to the regular StoreMI and SSD performance. As you can see StoreMI did, however, tower above the hard drive speeds both on write and reads.

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Next, I went with Crystal Disk Mark for the sequential read and write speed results. These results looked a lot like the IOPS results only here the RAM Cache was even faster on read speeds with a crazy 4440.7 MB/s read speed. The hard drive doesn’t look as slow with these numbers, in fact, 150+ on both read and write would have been amazing to have 5-7 years ago but even the limited speeds of the SATA based M.2 drive offer a big improvement when paired up together for StoreMI. Notice the SSD and StoreMI results are basically the exact same, as are the write speeds on the cached version.

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For my last set of tests, I wanted to look at how all of the drives responded as you increase the queue depth. On the read results it's not a surprise that the Cache was well above everything else, but it is interesting to see that it actually slows down after a queue depth of 64. The StoreMI configuration was a little slower than the SSD independently, but it was also more consistent, not really improving from 16 on up. The SSD results on the write speeds are so close to the StoreMI results that the line is basically hidden behind it, the same goes for QD8 and above with the RAM Cache as well. The RAM Cache was actually slower on the writes in the early tests and just even on the rest shows that you only see an improvement on the reads, but man it’s a big improvement.

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Overall and Final Verdict

So hopefully now you have a better idea what StoreMI is all about. For Ryzen and Threadripper owners, this is an interesting area where AMD has actually added value to a purchase long after some of you may have built your system. So the performance numbers really speak for themselves, StoreMI can offer a new way of dealing with your storage and while AMD provided the hard drive and SATA based SSD for this test, there are some other unique things you can do. If you want you could actually run two SSDs. Pairing an Intel Optane drive or an NVMe SSD for the fast drive along with another higher capacity SSD could give you the performance of a much more expensive high capacity NVMe at a cheaper price.

This is also a good way for system builders to simplify the idea of SSDs for users who don’t seem to have any concept of using two drives. You know who I’m talking about, the person who stores everything on their SSD or that doesn’t pay any attention to where things are installed (by default your C drive) or where files are saved. Your OS can be installed on this drive as well, but the setup is more complicated. Given that you can pick up a 128GB NVMe drive for about $50 this is a great way to see a big performance boost. Not to mention anyone with a little extra RAM should really consider running the RAMCache as well. There were a couple of slowdowns, but I think overall you are basically getting free performance.

Now the whole system could see some improvements, mostly in allowing higher capacity fast drives. I would also like to see the option, even if in the premium version, to tier more than two drives. Imagine Having a cold storage like spinning disk with a 6-10TB capacity, a 1TB SSD, and then an ultra-fast NVMe or Optane drive, all with RAMCache on top!

As it sits though, I would recommend Ryzen owners to at least check it out for RAM Cache and if your setup allows it you could toss in a small $50 drive to pair with a high capacity drive as well.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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