Can SSDs in RAID run effectively on a P45?

Gogl

Gogl

Gogl

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Hi there,

I semi-hijacked a thread before, I know ZXSpectrum gave me some feedback but I'm still a bit lost. I'm looking at options for running an SSD RAID on an older system, I have a Q6600(3.4GHz) running on a Gigabyte EP45-DS4 and I need to boost hard disk performance as I'm doing fluid simulations (calculated on a GPU) and the cache write performance is the biggest issue I have at the moment. Not that I couldn't do with an upgrade to the CPU but I can't afford much and if I went for the CPU this problem would still be with me.

I wondered if I put a couple of Samsung Evos or Crucial MX100s in RAID 0, how would they perform on a P45? I guess I'd need a controller card of some kind but how cheap could I go? I wouldn't be running any more than the two drives on the RAID.

Does OcUK stock anything like that, any of the SATA Controllers cater for RAID? I can only see the LSI things which look to be beyond the sort of thing I'm after, I've seen a HighPoint RocketRAID 644L External 4-Port PCI-Express 2.0 x4 SATA III 6Gbps Controller Card which while it's not exactly a known brand (to me at least) is more reasonable in price, would that sort of thing work to any degree, if so is the 4x version more than I need for a two drive RAID?

I don't mind losing a bit off maximum possible speed as I would hope to (eventually) bring the rest of the system a little more up to date, but if it isn't doable without being too crippled by the older technology or without requiring a hideously expensive controller card, I'll just save my pennies for the time being. Any thoughts appreciated, thanks.
 
How big a fluid simulation? What software are you using?

You may be better off getting more RAM and running a ram-disk. http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-ramdisk/ - given your motherboard can only support 16 GB, a new motherboard & CPU may be in order - but still may be cheaper than SSDs.

OTOH extra RAM on its own may reduce swapping with no need for a ram-disk.

This is a business purchase and time = money, right?
 
Thanks for the thoughts, Quartz, the software is TurbulenceFD, the cache files will depend on the simulation but you're looking at gigabytes per frame so unless the simulation is very short a RAM drive would fill up very quickly. The larger simulations are not a necessity it's just I would like to be able to experiment with a little more freedom without my system getting bogged down, but am too stretched financially to make any great outlay for running tests.

Steveocee, I had been looking at those a few weeks back, some benchmarks looked good, others, not so great. If I got 2 Samsung Evos and the controller I mentioned would work then I could have a 500GB array (I think) for ~£250. But I'll look into these some more, thanks for the suggestion.

I guess it should have been a question more of how to run an SSD RAID on a SATAII board than P45, but I'll keep digging around, see what I can find.
 
What kind of IO do you actually need? What size are these files at peak?

Given your stuck on SATA II you could probably pick up some older SSDs off ebay for much less.
 
Right, not the fluid dynamics I had in mind!

I'd still recommend maxxing your RAM - anything to avoid paging to disk.
 
Concorde Rules said:
What kind of IO do you actually need? What size are these files at peak?
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I'm not sure what they would cap at sensibly, but reaching several gigabytes per file is too easy and there'll be 25-30 per second of animation depending on the format, it's especially easy to over-blow things when you're trying things out. I should probably enquire with the developer about the bottleneck and whereabouts the calculation time might increase vs the cache size so there would be more time to do the writing to disk, if that's at all likely.

Given your stuck on SATA II you could probably pick up some older SSDs off ebay for much less.
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Well I was hoping that with a controller card I wouldn't need to stay stuck with SATAII, but I am wondering whether instead of paying the money for one of those I should just sell off my old mobo, RAM and CPU. Mobo and CPU not worth all that much but I have 8GB PC2-8500 Corsair Dominator which seems to sell well, I might pop to the MM at some point and do a price check for a straight sale, might be the better option. Cheers.

Quartz said:
Right, not the fluid dynamics I had in mind!
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Ahh, thinking RealFlow or something?

I'd still recommend maxxing your RAM - anything to avoid paging to disk.
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Yeah, I could always do with more RAM, but on this occaision the simulation RAM usage can be relatively low while still writing massive bloody cache data.

Thanks.
 
Well knowing what transfer rates you need would tell us if you need RAID at all.

I'd be very surprised that your rig would be able to constantly push >100MB/sec R/W, let alone the 700+ that RAID0 Samsung SSDs would give you.
 
if you are going to be doing tons of writes then using SSDs might not be the best idea as they may hit their max write capacity too fast.
 
It would be perfectly fine to get a cheaper PCI-E Sata3 card and use the in-built windows dynamic striped volume (or whatever it is called) to create a software raid 0 array. The only limitation of this would be you wouldn't be able to boot to it. If you also wanted to speed up your boot and general OS times a separate SSD would be needed (it's unclear whether you have one already). You have access to the members market get yourself in there, 120Gb SSD's are going for around £30.
 
Concorde Rules said:
Well knowing what transfer rates you need would tell us if you need RAID at all.

I'd be very surprised that your rig would be able to constantly push >100MB/sec R/W, let alone the 700+ that RAID0 Samsung SSDs would give you.
Click to expand...

It's difficult to know the exact figures, I guess I should at least get some estimations from the developer, then I'll know better where I stand. Cheers.

Kotu said:
if you are going to be doing tons of writes then using SSDs might not be the best idea as they may hit their max write capacity too fast.
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Well I would be writing a lot in one go when solving but outside that, for rendering and compositing use should be considerably lighter, I would hope they aren't that limited but I'll look into it, thanks.

Quartz said:
I don't know, but I know people who do and would have been able to ask them on your behalf.
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Ahh, I was just curious, thanks for the thought.

Clav said:
It would be perfectly fine to get a cheaper PCI-E Sata3 card and use the in-built windows dynamic striped volume (or whatever it is called) to create a software raid 0 array. The only limitation of this would be you wouldn't be able to boot to it. If you also wanted to speed up your boot and general OS times a separate SSD would be needed (it's unclear whether you have one already). You have access to the members market get yourself in there, 120Gb SSD's are going for around £30.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I do have a Samsung SSD that I was going to keep as the system drive so what you say about using the Windows thing would work out. I'll keep my eye on the MM, I think I'm going to see how much I can for some old bits I have and take it from there.
 
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