 The concept of RAM disks or RAM drives is not exactly a new one and the idea behind it is pretty simple. If you have more system memory than your applications require, you can use software to allocate some of it to make a lightning fast storage device that your system sees exactly the same way it would any other standard hard drive or solid state drive. Meaning you could use it for anything. Sounds cool, right? Well, we do lots of cool stuff on this channel. We even got a Razer Siren review coming soon, so stay tuned for that. But for now, roll the intro. Then we'll tell you more. Cooler Master's Case Mod World series is your opportunity to show off your modding skills and win great prizes. Entries close February 7th, 2015. Click now to learn more. Now the first time pretty much anyone hears about RAM drives, their mind starts buzzing with ideas like, Oh snap, I could put my operating system on it or like, I'm gonna put all my games on it, so I'll be the first one to the heli in battlefield. But life is never that simple, is it? System memory is usually at least an order of magnitude more expensive than even high-end storage drives. So those multi-gig application and game installs get really expensive real fast. And even if you did want to buy as much RAM as you can fit in your motherboard, unless you're buying a server-grade board, that won't be as much as you might hope. And the list of disadvantages actually keeps on trucking here. RAM is what is known as volatile storage, which means every time the system powers off, it empties. That means that most RAM disk utilities need to essentially recreate the drive when they're launched, and every time you boot, the drive needs to be refilled with whatever you want to store on it from a reserved spot on your system drive, a process that is bottlenecked by the aforementioned system drive and can therefore be quite slow. Then, if you update anything while using the RAM drive, it will need to commit those changes back to your system drive when you shut down by dumping them from the RAM disk. And then of course, if the system shuts down unexpectedly, then you're in for a real problem because any changes not committed like a save game or a file are just gone. But in spite of all those challenges, many performance enthusiasts and gamers remain committed to trying to make RAM drives as practical as they can be, and one such enthusiast, at startup Tim on Twitter, thinks he's finally done it, at least for gamers, with a product called DimDrive. Now to be clear, the underlying technology is exactly the same here. There's no voodoo magic. But the claims that DimDrive makes about simplifying the process and optimizing the application itself for gamers intrigue me. So I got on the phone with Corsair, had them send me a 32-gig kit of their Vengeance LPX DDR4 2400 MHz RAM, which I ran in quad channel on an ASUS X99E WS motherboard for a basically as good as it could possibly get scenario for DimDrive, to really prove to me if it's worth the money. So first, a quick tour of the product, though. On the main screen is an auto-populated list of the Steam games that you have installed. The star allows you to easily sort whichever ones you want to the top. The psi shows you how much RAM you'll need to cache that game. The wrench to the far right lets you choose whether to auto-load that game and whether to enable real-time file synchronization, which should knock on wood protect you from progress loss in an unexpected shutdown scenario, and a less RAM option to show DimDrive where the important files are to cache for this title, so you can boost performance potentially without caching the entire game, and therefore getting a little bit more mileage out of your RAM. Finally, the slider next to the wrench tells that game whether to cache or not. In the apps tab, you can add non-Steam games or any other applications you want by manually dragging them onto the window or right-clicking and clicking add. Then, the settings tab lets you configure your drive letter, the size of your DimDrive, your startup options, and your color scheme. Finally, at the very top of the window is the master slider to turn DimDrive on and off, and I'll give this to Tim. This is a lot simpler to configure than RAM disk software that I've used in the past, but even if it works as intended, is a RAM disk really a sensible upgrade for gamers? Storage speed is well documented as having literally zero impact on your FPS, so the thing to look at then is loading times. We ran four different scenarios. A 1TB 7200 RPM WD Black hard drive, a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD, that same SSD with Samsung's rapid RAM cache enabled. We needed to show several results for this one, by the way, to show how it learns over time, and finally, DimDrive with the full game loaded into memory. And this conclusion probably won't surprise anyone who has fooled around with RAM drives before, but it was still an interesting experiment for me to run and make a video about since I wanted to play around with the software anyway. I really think that DimDrive has made enormous strides towards making RAM drives easier to use, but that doesn't change that the most compelling storage type for an enthusiast PC or gaming PC is still an SSD. It's only a few times more expensive than a hard drive and makes your entire system much more responsive, not just game or application loading times, and it costs about one tenth what you'd spend per gig to put your games in RAM every time you boot up. Now, if DimDrive was like 10 bucks, and you're the kind of person who really only plays one or two games and enjoys being the, you know, the first one to the heli, like I said before, then it would actually get a pretty strong recommendation. At $30 though, it's a little too much for me to buy for personal use though. Speaking of things that cost too much, razors! But fortunately, today's episode sponsor, Dollar Shave Club, has got that shiz taken care of for you. All you've got to do is for a very affordable monthly fee, sign up for Dollar Shave Club and they will ship you razors and other shaving supplies straight to your door once a month so you don't have to get off your butt, go to the grocery store, find someone to unlock that freaking safe that they keep the razor blades in for some reason. I've had people tell me, well Linus, they don't keep the razors in a behind a lock and key at my store. Well, you know what they do here. I actually have footage of it that maybe we can find or maybe we can't. But the point is, it's a pain in the butt to go get these supplies, and on top of that, you're paying way too much for them. Dollar Shave Club's razors are high quality, and they've got a bunch of other great shaving supplies too, including their Dr. Carver shave butter, as well as their aftershave, and their One Wipe Charlies, which actually aren't shaving supplies unless you were trying to clean your butt hole so you could shave that. One Wipe Charlies are butt wipes for men by the way, in case you couldn't figure that. Anyway, I don't remember where I was going with this guys. It's dollarshaveclub.com slash Linus to start saving time and saving money on your shaving supplies. It's good stuff. Check it out. It's linked in the video description, and I think we're pretty much done here. I can't believe I was talking about butt hole shaving. I mean, what does this show come to? Anyway guys, like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you thought it sucked, leave a comment below and let me know about DIMM drives or if your feelings are just more complicated than this. As always, also linked in the video description, you can support us. You can buy a cool t-shirt like this one, give us a monthly contribution so we can make videos like this one, or just there's one other thing, right? Change your Amazon bookmarks one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy stuff. 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