The Poor-Nerd’s RevoDrive

OLDPHART · 4 Apr 2013 at 10:21

Just had a look at one of these, if you need that bit extra speed and don't have the latest mobo, you can get them in the uk about £50, say 256GB SSD £200 - £250. Uses a single PCIe 2.0 x1 slot 2.5" SSD connects via SATA III interface Additional Auxiliary SATA III connector for expansion, compared to a 256 Revo about £400.

Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 PCIe SSD Adapter Review -

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/[primary-term]/apricorn_velocity_solo_x2_pcie_ssd_adapter_review

JonJ678 · 4 Apr 2013 at 11:08

It's not obvious what that offers over a pci-e sata III card. Am I missing something?

CaptainUnlikely · 4 Apr 2013 at 12:10

JonJ678 said:
It's not obvious what that offers over a pci-e sata III card. Am I missing something?

Nope...it's just a Marvell 9182 on a PCI-E x2 card. Sorry OP but this is an entirely different thing to the Revo, the only difference from a normal PCI-E SATA card is the controller isn't as dire as some (though still not as good as the Intel 6Gb/sec controller) and you can, for some reason, mount an SSD directly onto the card. I assume this is to make things look neater, looks odd to me but each to their own! The card does have an additional SATA port so you can use another drive mounted elsewhere with it, too.

Yamahahahahaha · 4 Apr 2013 at 12:23

Or you can get one of the normal accelerator SSDs like the Crucial Adrenaline. I've not found a software based solution one which is as reliable as the onboard Intel acceleration solution though.

CaptainUnlikely · 4 Apr 2013 at 12:27

This is a SATA controller, not an accelerator/hybrid setup.

Yamahahahahaha · 4 Apr 2013 at 12:44

CaptainUnlikely said:
This is a SATA controller, not an accelerator/hybrid setup.

How likely is it that someone would have PCI-E 2.0 and not have SATAII? Not very. It's also very unlikely you'd need the extra speed this card offers if you didn't have a new system (one built in the last ~12 months).

The only time this might be useful is if you've used the 4 SATA heads on your motherboard and want a few more.

CaptainUnlikely · 4 Apr 2013 at 12:49

I assume you mean SATAIII, not SATAII? If so, it's not so uncommon, for example practically every X58 board (boards with the Marvell 9128 don't count as that's abysmal) with the exception of a few with the 9182.
Besides, PCI-E v1 x2 still provides 500MB/sec, not far short of SATAIII's max of roughly 600MB/sec. In other words, there's no requirement to have PCI-E 2.0 slots to use this card.

I have to admit I'm not really seeing your original point though, this is an entirely different product to an accelerator drive or Intel SRT.

Edit: I'm not saying this seems like a fantastic idea, as if your system is modern enough to have any SATA ports, an SSD will massively improve the feel of the system regardless of whether it's running at SATA I/II/III speeds. So to me it's somewhat pointless, all you gain over using onboard SATAIII for example is higher benchmark numbers.

Yamahahahahaha · 4 Apr 2013 at 12:51

CaptainUnlikely said:
I assume you mean SATAIII, not SATAII?

I meant SATAII, there's not a lot of real world difference between running an SSD on II and III outside of disk intensive tasks.

CaptainUnlikely said:
Besides, PCI-E v1 x2 still provides 500MB/sec, not far short of SATAIII's max of roughly 600MB/sec. In other words, there's no requirement to have PCI-E 2.0 slots to use this card.

I'm not disputing that, but 2x ports are fairly unusual, so it would end up taking up a 4x, 8x or 16x slot...

CaptainUnlikely · 4 Apr 2013 at 12:56

Yamahahahahaha said:
I meant SATAII, there's not a lot of real world difference between running an SSD on II and III outside of disk intensive tasks.

That's exactly what I said in response to your post. If you just meant SATA and PCIE in general, then sure, I agree completely.

I'm not disputing that, but 2x ports are fairly unusual, so it would end up taking up a 4x, 8x or 16x slot...

Yes...