SSD/cache performance advice

[DANgerous25]

Hi all, I’m currently running Unraid beta 6.9.29 and it is working perfectly for my recent needs until now. Among other things I have an “unassigned” SATA SSD which hosts a Win10 VM that I use purely for gaming. I also have x2 Nvme PCIE gen 3 SSDs in a raid 0 btrfs arrangement, which are Unraid’s cache pool, which I use as the game library for the aforementioned SSD, where the game library is a share in the cache pool (set to cache only). I have this arrangement as none of my SSDs have particularly high capacity.

 

None of this was really an issue until I installed the latest Microsoft Flight Sim, where I now realise I want to try to squeeze every bit of performance out of my system. So I’m planning on buying some higher capacity PCIE gen 4 Nvme SSDs and I am wondering what is the optimal arrangement. I am guessing that ideally I want the Win 10 VM and the game library on the same storage device, and within the confines of the VM (i.e. not on a share).

 

I’m not sure what would be the optimal setup; should I simply upgrade the existing cache pool with the new SSDs and move the VM to it (and also collapse the share), or will I get better performance for the Win 10 VM if the new Nvmes are a separate pool, not Unraid’s cache? (I could use my old SSDs for the cache). I am not concerned about resilience for the VM storage (periodic data backup is fine). 

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[DANgerous25]

Bump... can anyone help? Thank you.