areca ARC-1231ML-KIT in a x16 slot?

Sure will. I have the same card and it runs in 8X or 16X full length PCI-Express slots. I've run mine in both the 8X and 16X slots on my 680I.
 
unixadm said:
Sure will. I have the same card and it runs in 8X or 16X full length PCI-Express slots. I've run mine in both the 8X and 16X slots on my 680I.
Click to expand...

awesome. How do you like the card? Looks like it will be wicked fast.
 
I really like the card. I recommend you pick up a PC-4200 1gb DDR2 ECC Non Buffered DIMM. This is the exact DIMM I purchased for my card and it works perfectly:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134308

I personally use Western Digital 750gb AAKS SE drives, and they run great. I originally started out with Seagate 750gb 7200.10 drives, but they were awful with this controller. It caused my whole system to stutter and lock up all the time for seconds at a time. The WD drives cured that issue. The web interface is nice, it has monitoring and alerting built in to SMTP, etc. The card does run pretty warm, so plan on having a fan blowing on the card for. It's not an issue in my Stacker 832 with the side 120mm fans it has. It's been rock solid since I installed it, but it needs some air flow to keep it cool. It does not have automatic parity checking, which I think they are adding in a future firmware. So I run a consistency check on the array every few months, and it can be done while the array is being used.

It's not a cheap card and if you don't need the 12 ports, there are cheaper options. However I don't have any regrets and can house up to 10 drives in the two Super Micro 5x3 hot swap bays, and still have two ports left over if need be.
 
That's a good controller, but it will not be as fast. However it should still offer excellent performance if you want to save the money. Cooling wise, if the 1220 will fit, it has the advantage of active cooling. Shoe horning the 1231ML between two SLI cards without direct cooling is asking for problems. This card started out in my Silverstone TJ-09, and it ran so hot that the thermal alarm went off the first day I owned it. That's when I decided to switch cases and go with hot swap bays. Now I don't have any cooling issues, and it does not require a lot of air flow. A little bit goes a long way, but without any air flow, the card heats up quick. Why they went with passive cooling only is a mystery to me.
 
you could also look at grabbing a perc 5/i off ebay, they're hardware cards with IOP333 chip that are shipped with Dell servers.....they're actually LSI 8408E SAS cards.

won't be as fast as an areca but it also costs about 1/10th the price and still gives solid reads/writes in raid 5 (300+mb/s), which is more than enough for most home servers and storage needs.

nothing against areca but they're a bit over the top price wise unless you have a server type environment.
 
UNIXADM, why did you get unbuffered SDRAM? Will buffered ram and/or registered ram work? Are there any compatibility issues? My Areca 1261ML is on the way but I haven't purchased any ram for it yet until I know whether it should be buffered or unbuffered, registered or unregistered. Thanks.
 
Seated said:
UNIXADM, why did you get unbuffered SDRAM? Will buffered ram and/or registered ram work? Are there any compatibility issues? My Areca 1261ML is on the way but I haven't purchased any ram for it yet until I know whether it should be buffered or unbuffered, registered or unregistered. Thanks.
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It will run Registered/Unregistered unbuffered RAM in an x8 or x16 configuration.....

I went with this ram for my Areca 1280ML:


KVR533D2E4/2G 2GB 533MHz DDR2 ECC CL4 DIMM 1
 
I would think twice before installing that card in a 780i SLI chipset based board. The 680i SLI boards and likely the 780i SLI chipset based boards (at least those using the reference BIOS) have had changes made to them which increase overclocking headroom at the cost of PCIe device compatibility. Specifically in regard to RAID controllers. My $500 RAID controller was broken on the 680i SLI reference boards from BIOS P29-P32. I actually had to downgrade to BIOS P28 to make it work again. I would not be at all surprised if NVIDIA kept the PCI-Express Spread Spectrum disabled by default in order to make the 780i SLI boards overclock better with quad core processors the same way they did with the 680i SLI reference boards. Since the boards have similar voltage design and use the exact same chipset, I think you are headed in the direction of major dissappointment.

I hope I am wrong and that they fixed this issue but NVIDIA has been nothing short of lazy about such problems on all their reference designs. I doubt the 780i SLI reference boards are any different in this regard. On another note, are these higher end Areca cards that are only marked SATA compatible on Newegg's site, are SAS compatible or are they just SATA compatible? On Newegg is shows a few that appear to be SAS only. If that's true then I'd recommend taking a serious look at LSI's offerings as they have always worked great for me at home and in enterprise environments. The card I have (LSI MegaRAID 8308ELP) is capable of supporting both SAS and SATA drives. Though I specifically desired SAS drive compatibility for the future as I plan to eventually get some SAS drives.
 
SAS spec allows for SATA drives, so I don't believe there is such a thing as an SAS only controller. The 1680 series is SAS/SATA, and the 11xx and 12xx cards are SATA only. The problem with the SAS/SATA cards is that they only come with 8 ports, and I haven't seen any SAS expanders that are economical (even the expensive ones are hard to come across).
 
Blue Fox said:
SAS spec allows for SATA drives, so I don't believe there is such a thing as an SAS only controller. The 1680 series is SAS/SATA, and the 11xx and 12xx cards are SATA only. The problem with the SAS/SATA cards is that they only come with 8 ports, and I haven't seen any SAS expanders that are economical (even the expensive ones are hard to come across).
Click to expand...

I could have sworn I saw a SAS/SATA MegaRAID card that had 12 ports. I thought that SAS was compatible with SATA as well, but I wasn't 100% sure. What I was really curious about is whether these Areca cards were SATA only or if they all did both, but were labled funny by Newegg.

EDIT: Apparently you can do way more than 8 devices with this bad boy: http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/pro.../megaraid_sas/megaraid_sas_8888elp/index.html However I'd imagine that they are using some type of port multiplier and to actually get 240 disk drives you'd have to be connecting external devices. From the looks of it more than 8 ports internally is a no go.
 
Dan_D said:
I could have sworn I saw a SAS/SATA MegaRAID card that had 12 ports. I thought that SAS was compatible with SATA as well, but I wasn't 100% sure. What I was really curious about is whether these Areca cards were SATA only or if they all did both, but were labled funny by Newegg.
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When I was referring to 8 ports, it was specifically Areca stuff. Haven't really looked into any other brands since I bought mine. Wouldn't want anything less. :p
 
Blue Fox said:
When I was referring to 8 ports, it was specifically Areca stuff. Haven't really looked into any other brands since I bought mine. Wouldn't want anything less. :p
Click to expand...

I've never used any of Areca's stuff. I know initially they were the lower cost alternative to Adaptec and LSI, but since then they've gained a much different reputation. I know they are generally revered for their performance, but I've never used them personally. Most enterprise class servers I've worked with all came with LSI or some OEM form of their cards. Occasionally I see Intel RAID cards built into stuff as well. Nothing from Areca though.

I'm looking for another RAID card actually, so I'm particularly interested in this topic.
 
Hi - This is my first post since I just found this thread by searching "ARECA sli incompatible". I have an evga780i mb with 8800GTX card that I am installing a new ARECA 1231ml card. I can't get it to post.
Has anyone tried this combo? I am running XP / 2Gb / Q6600

I will be contacting evga and ARECA to try to get it working, but if anyone has any suggestions I would sure appreciate them. I am not a hardware expert.

The problem I am seeing is an error during boot of 25 which indicates a graphics card related problem. I am suspecting a sli conflict of some type, maybe there is a bios setting that can be changed since I only have 1 graphics card.

Thanks for any suggestions

John
 
JOHNDS said:
Hi - This is my first post since I just found this thread by searching "ARECA sli incompatible". I have an evga780i mb with 8800GTX card that I am installing a new ARECA 1231ml card. I can't get it to post.
Has anyone tried this combo? I am running XP / 2Gb / Q6600

I will be contacting evga and ARECA to try to get it working, but if anyone has any suggestions I would sure appreciate them. I am not a hardware expert.

The problem I am seeing is an error during boot of 25 which indicates a graphics card related problem. I am suspecting a sli conflict of some type, maybe there is a bios setting that can be changed since I only have 1 graphics card.

Thanks for any suggestions

John
Click to expand...

I bet I know why you are having issues. You are experiencing what I predicted as the problem that started with BIOS P29 for the 680i SLI boards on up. The 780i SLI is essentially the same design with a few very minior modifications. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the problem never got fixed. Reference post #12 for more information.
 
That's so odd. I've not had any issues on my 680I with a 8800GTX. I've used every slot in the board and am running the P31 bios. I boot off of my Areca 1231ML - my OS and Storage all reside on the array in RAID5.

I'm about to swap my EVGA 680I out for a Asus P5E3 Deluxe, hopefully I don't run into any issues.
 
unixadm said:
That's so odd. I've not had any issues on my 680I with a 8800GTX. I've used every slot in the board and am running the P31 bios. I boot off of my Areca 1231ML - my OS and Storage all reside on the array in RAID5.

I'm about to swap my EVGA 680I out for a Asus P5E3 Deluxe, hopefully I don't run into any issues.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised. Most 680i SLI reference boards using BIOS P29 or higher don't work with most RAID controllers. Not even the cheap ones. As for the P5E3 Deluxe you should keep in mind that you will not get SLI support with it and other than that you'll need to re-install the OS. other than that, you shouldn't have any issues.
 
This is my second 680I - the original was the one without C2Q overclocking capabilities. The bios was older than P29 back then tho. I know a lot of people have had issues with this board, but for me it really has proven to be super stable. I believe heat plays a role in their demise, and with the Coolermaster 832 case, I have three Scythe FDB fans blowing directly onto the motherboard. So it runs pretty cool for the most part. It's just time to move on as I have a Q9450 on pre-order, and I picked up the P5E3 Deluxe AP/WiFi for $199 in like new condition with all accessories. I was going to go with the P5E3 Premium, but I figured I'd save the $140 and put that towards DDR3.

On the P5E3, I do not need SLI. I'm not as much of a gamer as I used to be. Getting old sucks. :)
 
unixadm said:
This is my second 680I - the original was the one without C2Q overclocking capabilities. The bios was older than P29 back then tho. I know a lot of people have had issues with this board, but for me it really has proven to be super stable. I believe heat plays a role in their demise, and with the Coolermaster 832 case, I have three Scythe FDB fans blowing directly onto the motherboard. So it runs pretty cool for the most part. It's just time to move on as I have a Q9450 on pre-order, and I picked up the P5E3 Deluxe AP/WiFi for $199 in like new condition with all accessories. I was going to go with the P5E3 Premium, but I figured I'd save the $140 and put that towards DDR3.

On the P5E3, I do not need SLI. I'm not as much of a gamer as I used to be. Getting old sucks. :)
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what age and gaming have to do with one another. In any case heat isn't the secret to longevity with the 680i SLI boards. I've got one that's been crammed inside an Antec Solo for over a year and it works fine. I've also had four or five of them under water cooling and a ton of fans. They still died. Even EVGA's Black Pearl Edition died within two months.
 
Dan_D said:
I bet I know why you are having issues. You are experiencing what I predicted as the problem that started with BIOS P29 for the 680i SLI boards on up. The 780i SLI is essentially the same design with a few very minior modifications. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the problem never got fixed. Reference post #12 for more information.
Click to expand...

Oh Great! I called EVGA today and tried their update bios & disable mb raid in bios.
No help, just won't boot. I still want to keep this ARECA card, do you think there is any reason to believe that a 790i board (any day now) would work with this card?

I don't know why I torture myself with nvidia stuff, my last striker extreme mb was a disaster!

Thanks for the comments,
John
 
JOHNDS said:
Oh Great! I called EVGA today and tried their update bios & disable mb raid in bios.
No help, just won't boot. I still want to keep this ARECA card, do you think there is any reason to believe that a 790i board (any day now) would work with this card?

I don't know why I torture myself with nvidia stuff, my last striker extreme mb was a disaster!

Thanks for the comments,
John
Click to expand...

Everyone is hinging all their hopes on the DDR3 capable 790i SLI chipset and the references boards based on it. Guess what? From what I've seen on the web (nothing in person) it looks like the same shit design that is the 780i SLI reference boards. Or as close as they can make it anyway. Lets not forget that NVIDIA has had their chipsets for Intel processors on the market for at least two years or more at this point. They've yet to do it right ONCE. They've only had their own reference boards for about 14 months or so and those have been pretty bad in general. They are a good deal better than the non-reference boards when it comes to memory compatibility and overclocking, but that's about it.

Based on experiences with 680i SLI and 780i SLI I have no reason to believe that the RAID controller card issues will be corrected on the 790i SLI boards. I think NVIDIA knows that only a select few actually use such cards and that the bulk of the people buying the 780i SLI boards aren't going to have high end RAID controllers.
 
I am running an Areca 1231ML on a EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 NF780I SLI R along with 2 EVGA 640-P2-N829-AR 8800GTS in SLi with no problems. I also have 2 separate volumes on the card - 2 X 75GB WD Raptors in RAID0 for my system partition, and 8 X Samasung 1TB drives in RAID6 for my data. Even with both volumes, I get GREAT read/write performance out of this card.
 
Phuurious said:
I am running an Areca 1231ML on a EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 NF780I SLI R along with 2 EVGA 640-P2-N829-AR 8800GTS in SLi with no problems. I also have 2 separate volumes on the card - 2 X 75GB WD Raptors in RAID0 for my system partition, and 8 X Samasung 1TB drives in RAID6 for my data. Even with both volumes, I get GREAT read/write performance out of this card.
Click to expand...

Awesome. One problem I had was when I had everything installed on a decent hardware RAID card and I installed a 9800GX2. Apparently they take up too much option ROM space and the SATA/SAS card BIOS won't load. So by upgrading to dual 9800GX2's, I killed my RAID cards' compatibility.
 
Dan_D said:
Awesome. One problem I had was when I had everything installed on a decent hardware RAID card and I installed a 9800GX2. Apparently they take up too much option ROM space and the SATA/SAS card BIOS won't load. So by upgrading to dual 9800GX2's, I killed my RAID cards' compatibility.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you can thank the incompetence of nVidia for that one. They give full OROM space immediately to all 16x groupings, which immediately shuts down anything beyond them. And the OROM on the 9800GX2 is just flat out stupid. You can try and force the SAS to F000-FFFF, but it's not likely to work, and most cards won't even do that anymore.
 
AreEss said:
Yeah, you can thank the incompetence of nVidia for that one. They give full OROM space immediately to all 16x groupings, which immediately shuts down anything beyond them. And the OROM on the 9800GX2 is just flat out stupid. You can try and force the SAS to F000-FFFF, but it's not likely to work, and most cards won't even do that anymore.
Click to expand...

Mine doesn't.
 
Dan_D said:
Mine doesn't.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I have a cheat for the LSI's but not for the Areca's. There's a way to get the Areca's up post-boot presuming your OS isn't on them, supposedly, but I've not seen it in action or used.

It's really moronic prioritization and just flat out incompetence on the part of nVidia. They won't permit a non-graphic OROM in a 16x slot on some, others they give all the OROM to the 16x slots whether or not there's something in them, just mindblowingly bad from a workstation standpoint. Guess that's why the nFarce Pros do it so differently.
 
AreEss said:
Yeah. I have a cheat for the LSI's but not for the Areca's. There's a way to get the Areca's up post-boot presuming your OS isn't on them, supposedly, but I've not seen it in action or used.

It's really moronic prioritization and just flat out incompetence on the part of nVidia. They won't permit a non-graphic OROM in a 16x slot on some, others they give all the OROM to the 16x slots whether or not there's something in them, just mindblowingly bad from a workstation standpoint. Guess that's why the nFarce Pros do it so differently.
Click to expand...

I'm using an LSI MegaRAID 8308ELP card not an Areca. If you've got a cheat that might make the card work, I'd love to here more about it. I miss my RAID card.
 
Dan_D said:
I could have sworn I saw a SAS/SATA MegaRAID card that had 12 ports. I thought that SAS was compatible with SATA as well, but I wasn't 100% sure. What I was really curious about is whether these Areca cards were SATA only or if they all did both, but were labled funny by Newegg.

EDIT: Apparently you can do way more than 8 devices with this bad boy: http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/pro.../megaraid_sas/megaraid_sas_8888elp/index.html However I'd imagine that they are using some type of port multiplier and to actually get 240 disk drives you'd have to be connecting external devices. From the looks of it more than 8 ports internally is a no go.
Click to expand...


Slightly off-topic, but that board is actually only eight ports. The SAS controller has 8 ports on it, and there is a mux on-board that can program the signals to go to either the internal or the external connector (configurable per group of 4), but not to both connectors.
 
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