I'm actually in the process of putting together a NAS server (still waiting on some parts)...and I'm also doing an upgrade on my gaming rig. Anyways I wanted to get an SSD for it and I was torn between just grabbing a single 1 TB Samsung 840 or getting 2x of the 512 MB variants and running them in RAID 0, and doing nightly backups of the image to my NAS (and yes my NAS will also have an offline backup). Not sure if the extra performance would be noticeable at all when loading high res textures, etc. Any thoughts?
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RAID 0 for gaming rig?
- Thread starter Booyaah
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I have 2 SSDs in a RAID 0 and see no performance increase that I can tell. The only thing you'll get out raiding SSDs is bragging rights.
RAID 0 might have been a thing for gaming on HDDs, but it's not for SSDs. The simplicity, lesser expense, and greater reliability for a single larger SSD is far more valuable than the better sequential read rates of two smaller SSDs in RAID 0 - which may or may not make a particularly large level load a second or two faster. Single SSDs will actually beat RAID 0 SSDs in some benchmarks because RAID isn't totally without penalties - not that you'll notice the penalties any better than you did the benefits in real world usage.
What RAID 0 SSDs is a thing for is capturing raw video. Awhile back, serious video capture setups were using four SSDs in RAID 0 to avoid dropping frames, but I suspect those guys have moved to the PCI-E SSDs by now.
What RAID 0 SSDs is a thing for is capturing raw video. Awhile back, serious video capture setups were using four SSDs in RAID 0 to avoid dropping frames, but I suspect those guys have moved to the PCI-E SSDs by now.
Abula
[H]ard|Gawd
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There is very little reason for a standard gaming rig to have raid 0 ssd, unless you benefit for high sequential reading/writing, which most dont see any difference. My MSI GT70 One has two msata ssds in raid 0, and i cant perceive a difference in every day tasks. Raid 0 also comes with increasing twice the risk of losing your data... not worth for not gaining much. Also you have to match the orom of the bios to the intel rst to have trim pass on under the array, so you can't just go with newer drivers, you have to stay with whatever the motherboard bios is set to, or have someone modify the bios, for example ASUS / ASRock / MSI / GIGABYTE BIOS's with updated RAID OROM
Go with the biggest and fastest single ssd your budget allows, forget raid unless you in fact benefit from sequentials, its not worth it. Personally i wouldnt invest much in ssds atm, as we are in the process to transition into sata express, where ssds will be faster not only in sequentials but in random, i see ssds like Samsung 840Evo and Crucial MX100 as one of the best options to have a good performance ssds while we move on the next gen.
Go with the biggest and fastest single ssd your budget allows, forget raid unless you in fact benefit from sequentials, its not worth it. Personally i wouldnt invest much in ssds atm, as we are in the process to transition into sata express, where ssds will be faster not only in sequentials but in random, i see ssds like Samsung 840Evo and Crucial MX100 as one of the best options to have a good performance ssds while we move on the next gen.
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or just get an SSD and skip the RAID
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IMHO, RAID0 is only useful in some very limited circumstances, and the added failure risk usually doesn't make it worth it.
Keep in mind, when you add any RAID mode, you are increasing your seek times (bad) at the same time as you are increasing your sequential transfer speeds.
For OS/Programs/Gaming seek times tend to be way more important for system responsiveness than sustained transfer speeds, which really only matter if you are regularly transferring large files.
Besides, what RAID0 does is increase performance through parallelizing multiple drives. SSD's are already massively parallel internally, and typically become more so as the size goes up.
So to sum it all up: RAID0 on your OS drive will likely speed up copying large files, but slow down other things. It will add a higher risk of failure, increase your boot time, increase drive CPU load (unless you have a hardware RAID controller).
Another thing worth mentioning is, is, historically TRIM would not work if SSD's were in RAID, over time slowing down writes. Not sure if this is still the case, as I haven't read up on it lately, but it is worth considering.
So adding RAID0 adds a lot of complexity and risk for very little (if any) gain, and possibly slower performance in many areas. I would just stay away if I were you.
Keep in mind, when you add any RAID mode, you are increasing your seek times (bad) at the same time as you are increasing your sequential transfer speeds.
For OS/Programs/Gaming seek times tend to be way more important for system responsiveness than sustained transfer speeds, which really only matter if you are regularly transferring large files.
Besides, what RAID0 does is increase performance through parallelizing multiple drives. SSD's are already massively parallel internally, and typically become more so as the size goes up.
So to sum it all up: RAID0 on your OS drive will likely speed up copying large files, but slow down other things. It will add a higher risk of failure, increase your boot time, increase drive CPU load (unless you have a hardware RAID controller).
Another thing worth mentioning is, is, historically TRIM would not work if SSD's were in RAID, over time slowing down writes. Not sure if this is still the case, as I haven't read up on it lately, but it is worth considering.
So adding RAID0 adds a lot of complexity and risk for very little (if any) gain, and possibly slower performance in many areas. I would just stay away if I were you.