X58 ans SAS
- Thread starter gary996
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Soldato
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Would like to know too as I've just bought a couple of Hitachi 15k 300GB SAS drives for the P6T.
Associate
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well im no expert but surely if you can spend hundreds on a sas controller i cant think the one on the p6t could be that good?
Right, for those of you that don't know SAS is the latest generation of scsi drives.
The fact that you have a SAS controller onboard is good news, and ultimately lets face it for what you need it will be more than adequate.
The onboard controllers either SAS or SATA effectively are good enough, the reason you pay for more from say adaptec, is the added functionality and scalability of the controller.
SCSI drives are efectively parallel devices, like IDE, so you daisy chain them together.
SAS, like SATA (it uses the same cables and can run sata drives) is a single item per channel device - SERIAL.
The advantage of this is that your bandwidth is not shared between the devices on a chain, instead each channel having their own controller.
The reason SAS discs are so much more expensive, is because of the quality of the components.
Designed for enterprise, they often are required to be on constantly for years on end.
They are much better engineered also, especially as enterprise like servers wants fast read/write capabilities.
So what does this mean to you?
Well SAS drives are brutally fast, and although SSD's are fast in burst, and read, they suffer in sustained data transfer and write speeds.
Well, its like this, put simply, if you want a bullet proof system which goes fast enough to make your eyes water you'd do a lot worse that this:
Seagate Cheetah 15,000 rpm SAS drive for OS and pagefile only.
(this will be approx. +50% faster than a velociraptor - yes you did read that right!)
standard SATA off the regualar controller for general storage and stuff.
If I could, i'd move my programmes folder or new programme installs onto another sas drive, especially if you play stuff that writes/loads a lot of levels etc.
When you break it down like this, the size of a drive say 146GB suddenly doesn't seem so bad, as you're selective about what's on there.
Any other questions Just ask !
The fact that you have a SAS controller onboard is good news, and ultimately lets face it for what you need it will be more than adequate.
The onboard controllers either SAS or SATA effectively are good enough, the reason you pay for more from say adaptec, is the added functionality and scalability of the controller.
SCSI drives are efectively parallel devices, like IDE, so you daisy chain them together.
SAS, like SATA (it uses the same cables and can run sata drives) is a single item per channel device - SERIAL.
The advantage of this is that your bandwidth is not shared between the devices on a chain, instead each channel having their own controller.
The reason SAS discs are so much more expensive, is because of the quality of the components.
Designed for enterprise, they often are required to be on constantly for years on end.
They are much better engineered also, especially as enterprise like servers wants fast read/write capabilities.
So what does this mean to you?
Well SAS drives are brutally fast, and although SSD's are fast in burst, and read, they suffer in sustained data transfer and write speeds.
Well, its like this, put simply, if you want a bullet proof system which goes fast enough to make your eyes water you'd do a lot worse that this:
Seagate Cheetah 15,000 rpm SAS drive for OS and pagefile only.
(this will be approx. +50% faster than a velociraptor - yes you did read that right!)
standard SATA off the regualar controller for general storage and stuff.
If I could, i'd move my programmes folder or new programme installs onto another sas drive, especially if you play stuff that writes/loads a lot of levels etc.
When you break it down like this, the size of a drive say 146GB suddenly doesn't seem so bad, as you're selective about what's on there.
Any other questions Just ask !
Soldato
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Cheers sev
Will my two be cool enough in a Lian Li PC7 case?
drives will be directly in front of the intake fan
Will my two be cool enough in a Lian Li PC7 case?
drives will be directly in front of the intake fan
should be fine, be ware that 15K drives will make some noise and generate some heat - you're playing with the big boys of storage now! they'll click like buggery, but once you've tasted 15K drives you'll never really look back.
Your location sounds fine, just to be sure perhaps space then 1 or 2 bays apart.
But the onboard controller will be fine.
The advantage of an external controller card other than the increased functions, is that you do take all the load of the disk management off the CPU, so effectively you do get a bit of a performance increase.
I've got an adaptec SATA controller, but i'm using the onboard marvell on my asus P5Q Deluxe for the now.
I'd wait till the three and four series adaptec stuff comes down in price on fleabay and then buy - at the moment the proces don't really justify the need for the home user - you'd be better off putting the cash towards a powerful GPU or a truck load of RAM.
Your location sounds fine, just to be sure perhaps space then 1 or 2 bays apart.
But the onboard controller will be fine.
The advantage of an external controller card other than the increased functions, is that you do take all the load of the disk management off the CPU, so effectively you do get a bit of a performance increase.
I've got an adaptec SATA controller, but i'm using the onboard marvell on my asus P5Q Deluxe for the now.
I'd wait till the three and four series adaptec stuff comes down in price on fleabay and then buy - at the moment the proces don't really justify the need for the home user - you'd be better off putting the cash towards a powerful GPU or a truck load of RAM.
One other reason that the onboard is the way to go at the moment is that all the PCIe cards availiable still don't run at x16, most are x4 or x8.
It's still quicker than a scsi controller sitting on a PCI-X slot which will handle up to 8GB/s throughput, but for now spend your money on better things.
In many ways the SAS controllers are really there so that the manufacturer can excuse the price of the X58 boards, and tbh, you'll find a 15K drive on a SAS brutally fast compared to what you've been used to!
Just get into the habit of having only a clean system on a drive, and all your user data on another.
Let the onboard regular sata handle day to day storage - disc writers etc.
It's still quicker than a scsi controller sitting on a PCI-X slot which will handle up to 8GB/s throughput, but for now spend your money on better things.
In many ways the SAS controllers are really there so that the manufacturer can excuse the price of the X58 boards, and tbh, you'll find a 15K drive on a SAS brutally fast compared to what you've been used to!
Just get into the habit of having only a clean system on a drive, and all your user data on another.
Let the onboard regular sata handle day to day storage - disc writers etc.
Well I had a SATA drive on there and it booted fine, you just need to make sure that the boot rom is enabled in bios (should be by default anyway).
SAS can be used as a boot device, most servers and workstations do this, or scsi.
It's very much up to the controller, but there's no reason why not.
As I said, you can also drive ordinary sata discs from SAS controllers, but if you've got a cheetah 15K sas then go for it!
It's very much up to the controller, but there's no reason why not.
As I said, you can also drive ordinary sata discs from SAS controllers, but if you've got a cheetah 15K sas then go for it!
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SAS drives in raid 0 would require a pretty expensive controller card I think. SSD's in raid are a bit touch and go. You can have 2 decent sized ones for a still expensive price, or have a single Intel model and probably have it perform better.
Fergie, i'm not sure, if the onboard sas controller supports raid, then you're laughing!
The P6T deluxe from Asus offers SAS Raid 1 and 0, thus if you wanted fast above all else, then two 15K SAS drives in raid 0 would be as good as you'd get.
The issue with SSD's as you've so rightly pointed out is that the cost for a decent sized on is still stupid money - and the write speeds are still not as good as their read speed.
If you're a hardcore gamer, then there's every likelyhood that an SSD for games will be great as the read speed is what metters when you're loading in levels and maps.
Barnei,
I think that for the OS, 15K SAS on the onboard controller is all you need. Just keep the OS install clean.
For apps and games use another drive, if you can afford it, another 15K SAS, or an SSD.
Or..
two 15K SAS drives in raid 0. but have another drive to create disc backups - if you're using vista, take advantage of the image backup, it's worth it's weight in gold if the raid goes down.
If you really are going to start looking at controller cards then start looking at the Adaptec 3400 series or better. (300 quid to you)
That's why I say wait until the technology becomes more mainstream and you'll start seeing them floating around on fleabay for decent money. Also, they'll more than likely have come from enterprise workstations or servers, and so won't have been overcooked by some goon who didn't know what he's dealing with!
The advantage of these is that they have an onboard cache on them, so like the graphics card, they've got their own processor, and their own cache for NCQ functions which will completely take the loading off the CPU.
The trade off is that they take a second or two longer to boot as the card initialises.
Also as I said above, the ones which run at PCIe x8 are still stupid money.
Be aware that 15K drives make a fair amount of noise and generate some heat, so if you were after a buddhist temple tranquility rig, forget it!
But going back toyour question, SAS Raid 0.
You might be interested in the following:
http://www.storagereview.com/
they've got benchmark stats for all of the drives we've been discussing, and you'll see that in reading SSD's roar ahead, but for all round everything else, 15K SAS.
There's still a lot to be said for a load of spinning discs covered in expensive rust!
The P6T deluxe from Asus offers SAS Raid 1 and 0, thus if you wanted fast above all else, then two 15K SAS drives in raid 0 would be as good as you'd get.
The issue with SSD's as you've so rightly pointed out is that the cost for a decent sized on is still stupid money - and the write speeds are still not as good as their read speed.
If you're a hardcore gamer, then there's every likelyhood that an SSD for games will be great as the read speed is what metters when you're loading in levels and maps.
Barnei,
I think that for the OS, 15K SAS on the onboard controller is all you need. Just keep the OS install clean.
For apps and games use another drive, if you can afford it, another 15K SAS, or an SSD.
Or..
two 15K SAS drives in raid 0. but have another drive to create disc backups - if you're using vista, take advantage of the image backup, it's worth it's weight in gold if the raid goes down.
If you really are going to start looking at controller cards then start looking at the Adaptec 3400 series or better. (300 quid to you)
That's why I say wait until the technology becomes more mainstream and you'll start seeing them floating around on fleabay for decent money. Also, they'll more than likely have come from enterprise workstations or servers, and so won't have been overcooked by some goon who didn't know what he's dealing with!
The advantage of these is that they have an onboard cache on them, so like the graphics card, they've got their own processor, and their own cache for NCQ functions which will completely take the loading off the CPU.
The trade off is that they take a second or two longer to boot as the card initialises.
Also as I said above, the ones which run at PCIe x8 are still stupid money.
Be aware that 15K drives make a fair amount of noise and generate some heat, so if you were after a buddhist temple tranquility rig, forget it!
But going back toyour question, SAS Raid 0.
You might be interested in the following:
http://www.storagereview.com/
they've got benchmark stats for all of the drives we've been discussing, and you'll see that in reading SSD's roar ahead, but for all round everything else, 15K SAS.
There's still a lot to be said for a load of spinning discs covered in expensive rust!
Looking at the storage review charts again though, the best all round compromise is the WD Velociraptor 300GB.
It sits at the top of nearly all the real world rests, (farcry, world of warcraft, office apps, and high end apps like photoshop and 3d rendering)
The 15K scsi and SAS drives shine in the sustained read write server style tests where they're both feeding and storing chuncks of data continuously and simultaneously.
The only disc that beats everything at everything by a mile is the MTRON msd-sata3035-64 which is an SSD, but for the privelege you pay £450 for a single 64GB ssd.
Now, two of these babies in a raid 0 on the high end adaptec card would be the ultimate! but unless you're prepared to rob a bank it looks like it's the normal stuff for the rest of us.
What i'm strying to say is that at the moment, you won't see the real benefits of using a controller card vs the onboard for SAS, as in the consumer market the technology is still relatively new.
The 15K SAS drives in real world examples are faster than 10K verlociraptors, and the price isn't that different between them, but if you're going to just rattle off a few letters emails and browse the internerd then you wont really notice the difference!
It sits at the top of nearly all the real world rests, (farcry, world of warcraft, office apps, and high end apps like photoshop and 3d rendering)
The 15K scsi and SAS drives shine in the sustained read write server style tests where they're both feeding and storing chuncks of data continuously and simultaneously.
The only disc that beats everything at everything by a mile is the MTRON msd-sata3035-64 which is an SSD, but for the privelege you pay £450 for a single 64GB ssd.
Now, two of these babies in a raid 0 on the high end adaptec card would be the ultimate! but unless you're prepared to rob a bank it looks like it's the normal stuff for the rest of us.
What i'm strying to say is that at the moment, you won't see the real benefits of using a controller card vs the onboard for SAS, as in the consumer market the technology is still relatively new.
The 15K SAS drives in real world examples are faster than 10K verlociraptors, and the price isn't that different between them, but if you're going to just rattle off a few letters emails and browse the internerd then you wont really notice the difference!