How to handle SLC cache exhaustion on FireCuda 530 in Horizon?
Running across the wilds, I'd hit these brief freezes every time I entered a new zone, which totally killed the immersion. Because the FireCuda 530 500GB is a smaller drive, the SLC cache basically dies once you have less than 15% free space, causing write speeds to plummet from 6000MB/s to around 1200MB/s. I tried disabling all Windows indexing services, but that only shaved 0.5 seconds off the load time—basically pointless. I ended up clearing 100GB of junk to get the free space above 30% and manually triggered a TRIM command to optimize block reclamation. CrystalDiskMark showed sequential writes climbing back to 5200-5500MB/s, and the micro-stutters disappeared completely. I did notice a CPU spike right after the first TRIM run, but it settled down after about ten minutes of background processing. SSD temps are hovering between 44-50℃ thanks to the heatsink. Checked the in-game performance panel, and the throughput is finally where it should be.
