ASUS A8N-SLI Premium - Level 2 Tested

[BryantD]

I have had this motherboard running unRAID for over 8 months, just powering down to add drives. I have the following hardware:

 

* Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard (4 Sata II ports on PCIe, 4 Sata I ports on PCI. Great board for unRAID as you can easliy get 17 ports on the PCIe bus with 2 1x16, 1 1x4 and 1 1x1 PCIe slots. Plus you get Gigabyte ethernet on the PCIe bus using the built-in nVidia. The only negative is you need a graphics card thus the reason I grade it an A instead of an A+)

* Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2PT DDR 400 (PC 3200) 4GB (4 x 1GB)

* AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4GHZ 89W Single Core Processor (P/N ADA4000ASBOX)

* Rosewill R6AR6-BK 0.8mm SECC 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (Holds 13 Drives with the 2 Lian-Li EX-23NB Black Drive Bay Expansion/Cooling Kits)

* PNY Attache 2G USB (running 4.4.2 Pro)

* Cosair CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply

* 1 - Sabrent SATA-PE2P SATA II (on PCIe x 1 slot. Has 1 internal & 1 external Sata II connector; giving 2 Sata II ports on the PCIe bus plus it is Port Multiplier friendly)

* 2 - Adaptec 2240900-R PCI Express 4-lane 2.5 Gb/s SATA RAID 1430SA Kit RAID (1 on the PCIe x 4 slot & 1 on the 2nd SLI PCIe x 8 slot; giving 8 Sata II ports on the PCIe bus)

* 2 - Lian-Li EX-23NB Black Drive Bay Expansion/Cooling Kit (fits 3 3.5" drives into 2 5.25" slots; giving me 6 drives in 4 bay slots with fans for cooling)

* 2 - Seagate ST31000340AS 1T Sata II HD (1 Parity/1 Data)

* 5 - Samsung HD753LJ 750G Sata II HD (5 Data)

* 1 - Seagate ST3750640AS 750G Sata II HD  (1 Data)

* 1 - Seagate ST3250410AS 250G Sata II HD (Cache Drive)

* 2 - Asus Sata Brackets (Allows 2 Sata I/II Connections with Power on each bracket)

 

I plan on adding the KINGWIN KF-4000-BK 3.5" Internal (I will use external) hot swap rack raid-4 bay using my 2 Asus Sata Brackets to bring my Drive total to 17.

 

The only issue I have is when I do have to reboot it takes 3 or 4 times before both of the Adaptec 1430SA's show up. Once they both show up everything works great.

[prostuff1]

HIS SPECS

 

Thank you so much for taking up the rains and doing this.  I believe it is the first post of its kind.  You even added the information to the wiki and got it all done for me.

 

Thanks again and hopefully this spurs others to do the same!!

 

 

P.S. I am working on Level 2 verification for my server with the Abit AB9 Pro board in it.

[marcusone]

Could you give some performance statistics?

I.e.

1. Parity Check Speeds

2. Transfer speeds from Gigabit connected computer (and which port you use, the nforce or marvell)?

3. Boot time? (what settings you have in the BIOS to allow booting from USB, and how long it takes)

4. Where your drives are connected (nforce or silicon)

5. any other issues/things to note?

 

I've tried using this board (spare I now have) and found the performance to be dreadful (at least while copying to the unraid box via gigabit) where as using the board in my sig I would get 12-18MB/s, using this board I would get 8-12, with may drops to 4-5 and/or pauses in the transfer.

 

Thanks.

[SSD]

FYI - The syslog will show you the sync speeds ...

 

Mar  5 11:36:48 Tower kernel: md: sync done. time=15903sec rate=61420K/sec

 

Note that this is an average speed over the entire run.  Drives are quite a bit slower towards the end of their sectors than at the start.  On my system, I obverve about a 58K speed over the first few minutes, but in the end the average shows about 51K.  I'd expect this user to say he sees about 70K parity check speeds.

[RobJ]

His syslog shows:

Mar  5 11:36:48 Tower kernel: md: sync done. time=15903sec rate=61420K/sec

which is about 60MB/s, which for 8 drives is quite fast.

[marcusone]

His syslog shows:

Mar  5 11:36:48 Tower kernel: md: sync done. time=15903sec rate=61420K/sec

which is about 60MB/s, which for 8 drives is quite fast.

 

But on what board... stay on topic

[SSD]

His syslog shows:

Mar  5 11:36:48 Tower kernel: md: sync done. time=15903sec rate=61420K/sec

which is about 60MB/s, which for 8 drives is quite fast.

 

But on what board... stay on topic

 

The motherboard is in the thread title. 

 

 

[BryantD]

Could you give some performance statistics?

I.e.

1. Parity Check Speeds

2. Transfer speeds from Gigabit connected computer (and which port you use, the nforce or marvell)?

3. Boot time? (what settings you have in the BIOS to allow booting from USB, and how long it takes)

4. Where your drives are connected (nforce or silicon)

5. any other issues/things to note?

 

I've tried using this board (spare I now have) and found the performance to be dreadful (at least while copying to the unraid box via gigabit) where as using the board in my sig I would get 12-18MB/s, using this board I would get 8-12, with may drops to 4-5 and/or pauses in the transfer.

 

Thanks.

 

Concerning the following:

1) I average over 60MB/s

2) Not really sure. I use the cache drive on the video and it moves it while I'm sleeping. I use the nVidia G-Lan as it is on the PCI-e bus whereas the Marvell is on the PCI bus.

3) Really don't remember the bios setting to get it to boot (but I'll check next time I add a drive. My boot times are not great (prpbably due to the 2 Adaptec 1430SA's) and the slow PNY 2G Flash.

4) I have my drives somewhat evenly +split among the nVidia4, built in Sillicon Image 3114R, Sabrent and the Adaptec 1430SA cards. I could bypass the Silicon Image 3114R and be strictly on the PCI-e bus but with 1 or 2 drives the difference is small.

5) The only issue I have is when I poweroff to add a drive (or whatever) I have to reboot 2 or 3 times before it will see both Adaptec 1430SA's. I have no idea why. I also experience slight pauses when using Windows Media Player on MP3's (XP Home). Again no idea why as video and FLAC's play perfectly using Homecinema MPC and J. River Media Center respectively.

[marcusone]

I didn't have a good experience; so I Would Love to see your BIOS settings (all of them if its not too much trouble and you have a digital camera handy )

I only used it for a day and decided to keep using my newer Celeron setup (though it has less SATA connection so future expansion will be harder/more costly - yet the current 7 disk setup works much better than with my A8N board).

 

 

[BryantD]

I didn't have a good experience; so I Would Love to see your BIOS settings (all of them if its not too much trouble and you have a digital camera handy )

I only used it for a day and decided to keep using my newer Celeron setup (though it has less SATA connection so future expansion will be harder/more costly - yet the current 7 disk setup works much better than with my A8N board).

 

 

 

I will take a picture(s) of the bios settings in the next few days.... hopefully it will help you out.

[BryantD]

I didn't have a good experience; so I Would Love to see your BIOS settings (all of them if its not too much trouble and you have a digital camera handy )

I only used it for a day and decided to keep using my newer Celeron setup (though it has less SATA connection so future expansion will be harder/more costly - yet the current 7 disk setup works much better than with my A8N board).

 

 

 

Attached are some of my bios settings.

[BryantD]

I didn't have a good experience; so I Would Love to see your BIOS settings (all of them if its not too much trouble and you have a digital camera handy )

I only used it for a day and decided to keep using my newer Celeron setup (though it has less SATA connection so future expansion will be harder/more costly - yet the current 7 disk setup works much better than with my A8N board).

 

 

 

and a few more.

[BryantD]

I didn't have a good experience; so I Would Love to see your BIOS settings (all of them if its not too much trouble and you have a digital camera handy )

I only used it for a day and decided to keep using my newer Celeron setup (though it has less SATA connection so future expansion will be harder/more costly - yet the current 7 disk setup works much better than with my A8N board).

 

 

 

Last one.

[SSD]

BryantD - Thanks so much for providing so much information about this MB.  It is theads like this that new users will find very helpful in making hardware selections. 

 

Marcusone, will be interesting to see if you can get your A8N working with this information.

 

[marcusone]

I have/got it working... its just so much slower (writes) than the Foxconn MB setup; although this was with Beta1, so could be better now.

[BryantD]

I have/got it working... its just so much slower (writes) than the Foxconn MB setup; although this was with Beta1, so could be better now.

 

What ports are you using as the built-in Silicon Image 3114R ports are SATA I and on the PCI bus whereas the nVidia ports are SATA II on the PCI-e bus? How are you measuring your write speeds?

[marcusone]

I didn't realize that the Sil ports were SATA1, that is likely part of the "problem". 

[BryantD]

Could you give some performance statistics?

I.e.

1. Parity Check Speeds

2. Transfer speeds from Gigabit connected computer (and which port you use, the nforce or marvell)?

3. Boot time? (what settings you have in the BIOS to allow booting from USB, and how long it takes)

4. Where your drives are connected (nforce or silicon)

5. any other issues/things to note?

 

I've tried using this board (spare I now have) and found the performance to be dreadful (at least while copying to the unraid box via gigabit) where as using the board in my sig I would get 12-18MB/s, using this board I would get 8-12, with may drops to 4-5 and/or pauses in the transfer.

 

Thanks.

 

I moved 10.2G off my cache drive (which is on the PCI bus via the SI3114) and it took 11.57 minutes which by my math comes out to 23.6Mb/s.

[detz]

Just a heads up if anyone is getting kernel panics.  There are dram settings that are enabled, I disabled these and it worked fine but I didn't notice my ram went form 4GB to 2GB so they seem to affect that. Once the system is up and running I will probably try and turn these back on to see what happens.

[BryantD]

I tried to get a 3rd Adaptec 1430SA to work in my system. So far I cannot get the MB to see all 3 cards. I can always get it to see the card in the 1st Video slot but depending on which bios setting I use, it will either see the 2nd Video slot or the PCI-eX4 slot but not both. Any ideas?

[BryantD]

Just to follow up on the Adaptec situation. I tried my SI 3132 in both the PCI-eX1 & PCI-eX4 slot and it worked in both (this is with 2 of the Adaptec 1430SA in the 2 PCI-eX16 slots). Puttting the 3rd Adaptec 1430SA in the PCI-eX4 will not work (does not show up during boot), yet the SI 3132 (which is a PCI-eX1 card) does. I guess when both PCI-eX16 slots are used the PCI-eX4 slot becomes a PCI-eX1 slot. Now I have an extra Adaptec 1430SA card which is disappointing because I could have had 18 SATAII ports on the PCI-e bus. Now I can only get 16 SATAII ports on the PCI-e bus. I do have 4 additional SATAI ports on the motherboard but they are on the PCI bus which going past 2 drives plus the cache drive slows down parity checks alot. Of course I can go with PM's using the SI 3132 which would be less of a penalty than using 3 or more drives on the PCI bus.

[mcs]

Now I have an extra Adaptec 1430SA card which is disappointing because I could have had 18 SATAII ports on the PCI-e bus.

 

This thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3706.0 suggests the 1430SA can be used in x1 slot.  Not the best solution, but at least you will still be able to use the card...

[BryantD]

Now I have an extra Adaptec 1430SA card which is disappointing because I could have had 18 SATAII ports on the PCI-e bus.

 

This thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3706.0 suggests the 1430SA can be used in x1 slot.  Not the best solution, but at least you will still be able to use the card...

 

I read that but for some reason the bios will not read the Adaptec card in the PCI-eX4 slot if I have the other 2 Adaptec 1430SA in the 2 PCI-eX16 slots. If I take out one of the 1430's in the PCI-eX16 slot then it will see the 1430SA in the PCI-eX4 slot. I don't have this issue with the SI 3132 PCI-eX1 card.

[WeeboTech]

Not sure if this is the case, It might have something to do with BIOS address space or port space.

When you say the third card cannot be seen, do you mean after unRAID has booted?

Can you turn off the bios on the cards? I've seen this issue on older SCSI cards. I've had to turn off the bios on one of the cards for the devices on it to be detected.

 

[BryantD]

Not sure if this is the case, It might have something to do with BIOS address space or port space.

When you say the third card cannot be seen, do you mean after unRAID has booted?

Can you turn off the bios on the cards? I've seen this issue on older SCSI cards. I've had to turn off the bios on one of the cards for the devices on it to be detected.

 

 

I turned off the Bios on the Adaptec 1430SA's. I'm talking about when the MB boots up, it does not see the Adaptec card in the PCI-eX4 slot when both the PCI-eX16 slots are used by the other 2 1430SA cards. On the other hand the MB sees the SI 3132 card in the PCI-eX4 slot. unRAID does not see the drives on the Adaptec 1430SA in the PCI-eX4 slot either.