Is it worth me to go SAS over Vraptors? also need RAID controller suggestions

[LibertySyclone]

So I am looking to update my OS/Game drive setup. 2x74GB Rapts in RAID 0 (mobo controller, i know we all have to start somewhere)


I am looking at either doing 2 V Raps in RAID 0 or

three or four of these (also in RAID 0) I have a WHS for backup so redundancy is not needed


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116058
Fujitsu MBA3300 MBA3147RC 147GB 15000 RPM

I was just looking on price, I could do 4 of the Fuji's for cheaper than the V Raps and have almost the same storage.



Now for a Raid Controller?

I would Prefer a PCI-Ex1 because I have an open on on my mobo (750i SLI FTW) because my PCI-e x16 are filled with 2 GTX 280's

I understand that this may restrict my bandwidth, if so please explain.

But I may have a solution to open a PCI-Ex16 slot (and keep my GTX's) so I can take suggestions for a x4/8/16 as well. if not I plan on a X58 in the spring and it should have enough slots

I have read that the 3ware 9690SA is a decent card for the money and Newegg has them $100 off for an open box

[LibertySyclone]

Anyone?

[nitrobass24]

emmm well I like my SAS drives 15k is really fast and I have them short stroked.

I wouldnt buy drives off of newegg...shitty packaging...i would get on EBAY they have sick deals on brand new SAS drives....people are just giving them away compared to retail pricing.

As for the card it just depends on your budget...I dont know anything about that particular card but I do like the Areca 12xx cards and if you want cheap you could always get a Dell Perc5/i card on ebay for around $100

[Ockie]

That is a pretty good price on those SAS drives. I was gonna say just go vraptor, but for the price of those sas drives, it's even hard for me to resist.

[canislupy]

PCI-E x1 is 250MB/sec. This is going to be your bottleneck for R0. Also, I know of no SAS controller that will work in a x1 slot (most will work at x1 speed, but usually need at least an x4 or x8 slot). Velociraptors in R0 will reach nearly 250MB/s and this would also cap the burst rate. Of course onboard software RAID, you will see some kind of cap anyway....

[alamone]

Have you considered using 15K savvios? They have the best access time of mechanical drives, and run cool and quiet (relatively) compared to 3.5" sas drives. I have two of them in a RAID0 for my boot partition. The tradeoff is that the sustained read rate isn't as good as the 3.5" drives, and the disk space is only about 73GB, but you could remedy that by having additional drives in your raid. You can also pack more drives in less physical space using 2.5" drives. Basically they're like the enterprise version of the velociraptors.

As for 1x raid cards, like everyone said 1x isnt much bandwidth to work with, and it may be hard to find a 1x card with sas connectors, although Highpoint might have something. Either get a motherboard with more 16x pcie slots, or toss the SLI card.

Also a bit of a warning, some mobos, especially the SLI ones, don't play well with non-graphics cards in the 16x slot. I remember that the reference bios in the 780 board I was using actually complained about a non-graphics card being in the 1st 16x slot and wouldn't even boot. It's kind of a hit and miss, and you won't really know until you've actually tried it. FYI, I'm running an Adaptec 51645 and a 8800gt (soon to be 4870) on a Gigabyte X48-DQ6.

Additionally, a lot of those extra 16x slots on current motherboards don't really actually provide 16x - it might say in parenthesis 4x or 1x electrical, and that's the real bandwidth you're going to get. Also, some of these 16x slots are not directly connected to the northbridge, but kludged onto the southbridge by extra bridge chips or the like, and may cause compatibility issues with raid cards.

Bottom line, you won't know until you try, and stress test it to make sure it's stable.

[Ockie]

Have you considered using 15K savvios? They have the best access time of mechanical drives, and run cool and quiet (relatively) compared to 3.5" sas drives. I have two of them in a RAID0 for my boot partition. The tradeoff is that the sustained read rate isn't as good as the 3.5" drives, and the disk space is only about 73GB, but you could remedy that by having additional drives in your raid. You can also pack more drives in less physical space using 2.5" drives. Basically they're like the enterprise version of the velociraptors.

As for 1x raid cards, like everyone said 1x isnt much bandwidth to work with, and it may be hard to find a 1x card with sas connectors, although Highpoint might have something. Either get a motherboard with more 16x pcie slots, or toss the SLI card.

Also a bit of a warning, some mobos, especially the SLI ones, don't play well with non-graphics cards in the 16x slot. I remember that the reference bios in the 780 board I was using actually complained about a non-graphics card being in the 1st 16x slot and wouldn't even boot. It's kind of a hit and miss, and you won't really know until you've actually tried it. FYI, I'm running an Adaptec 51645 and a 8800gt (soon to be 4870) on a Gigabyte X48-DQ6.

Additionally, a lot of those extra 16x slots on current motherboards don't really actually provide 16x - it might say in parenthesis 4x or 1x electrical, and that's the real bandwidth you're going to get. Also, some of these 16x slots are not directly connected to the northbridge, but kludged onto the southbridge by extra bridge chips or the like, and may cause compatibility issues with raid cards.

Bottom line, you won't know until you try, and stress test it to make sure it's stable.

Yep, you are right about that. It's a hit or a miss in terms of forcing it into a graphics x16 slot, some boards will play with it and others wont.

I would also vote for the savvios if they weren't so expensive to justify against the raptors.

[nitrobass24]

speaking of vraptors where can find the ones without the icepack?

[Ockie]

speaking of vraptors where can find the ones without the icepack?

300GB
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=HD-W30BLFS&c=fr&pid=d380c5f0eb230da8932b7dee1b7500a716bc9632ccaf6eda30367493 48eeea65

[LibertySyclone]

Looks like the EGG raised the prices on those drives

I may just go with those Savvios I found the 74gb's for $215

I'll just get 2 for now and expand to 4 next spring.

[soulesschild]

Wasn't there a thread about how Raid 0 doesn't help games?

[pawstar]

PCI-E x1 is 250MB/sec. This is going to be your bottleneck for R0. Also, I know of no SAS controller that will work in a x1 slot (most will work at x1 speed, but usually need at least an x4 or x8 slot). Velociraptors in R0 will reach nearly 250MB/s and this would also cap the burst rate. Of course onboard software RAID, you will see some kind of cap anyway....

eh, the Promise FastTrak TX2650 is a PCIe x1 controller that takes two SAS drives (have one), but performance isn't that great.

[dmw5678]

74GB 15K for 215. Please post link to vendor

[LibertySyclone]

Wasn't there a thread about how Raid 0 doesn't help games?

I have seen a noticeable difference in load times, between a 150 rap and my 2 74's in R0

74GB 15K for 215. Please post link to vendor

http://www.computerdrives.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2506

I couldn't find much on reviews but they seem pretty legit, I found a link to their store info and they dont look "scammery"

[Ockie]

215 is a little steep for a savvio for home use. I paid something like 600 for the 4 of mine.

[LibertySyclone]

Ockie where did you get yours?

[limxdul]

honestly I only see SAS viable in the production world for now. I only handle SAS drives when swapping out old ones working with racked servers.

[Ockie]

Ockie where did you get yours?

It was on ebay a while ago, you have to keep your eye peeled, sometimes there are some great savvio deals and sellers sometimes sells in lots for cheap. It's basically just a matter of playing the waiting game and you can save a few hundred bucks.

[scihon]

I was at the same point as you but with the vrap's versus scsi a while. The sas or scsi will give you faster access times over the vrap's.

To get the full bandwidth out of the sas setup, you'll need to run a controller in a PCIe x8 or higher slot so bandwidth isn't limited. In a PCIe x1 slot I get limited to a real throughput of 210MB/s read while in the PCIe x8 (with 4 drives) I can hit over 650MB/s (write is still limiting around 160MB/s and my burst is still low. Any advice on that would be appreciated)

[nitrobass24]

I was at the same point as you but with the vrap's versus scsi a while. The sas or scsi will give you faster access times over the vrap's.

To get the full bandwidth out of the sas setup, you'll need to run a controller in a PCIe x8 or higher slot so bandwidth isn't limited. In a PCIe x1 slot I get limited to a real throughput of 210MB/s read while in the PCIe x8 (with 4 drives) I can hit over 650MB/s (write is still limiting around 160MB/s and my burst is still low. Any advice on that would be appreciated)

What controller are you using? and what RAID level are you using?

[scihon]

Using a LSI 320-2e with 128MB in a PCIe x16 slot. 6xMBA3147 drives in raid-0 (with 3 drives per channel)