SAS/SATA controller raid card and mobo compatability

Hi,

I am looking to get the IBM ServeRAID M5110 8 port raid card (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0857.html?Open) which will be used with the Asrock z97 MB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157500&Tpk=N82E16813157500

The raid card says it has a SAS port and is SATA compatible. Is there anyway I can ensure they are compatible with each other? I remember reading that the MB needs an inbuilt SAS controller to work with SAS drives, need some help in deciding this.

On another note, are there are good and reliable 8+ ports SATA controllers?

TIA!

SYBA SI-PEX40071 8 Internal SATA III Ports PCI-Express Card

Works great for me and works right out of the box.

Go here for a hardware compatibility list.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility#PCI_SATA_Controllers

I would not go with the card you're asking about. First, your case would need a SAS board that all of your SATA drives would plug into. Second, that IBM card requires a PCI Express 3.0 x8 slot, which you only have two slots for. If you go with the Syba that I recommended, you can put him in the PCI express 2.0 slot, leaving your two 3.0 slots for video cards.

The IBM card is probably a bit more expensive as it is meant for enterprise servers and can handle raid, which you don't need. Also, the raid controller would increase boot time.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

reluctantflux- good info. Thank you!

I am looking to have up to 30 drives in this new unraid box. The plan is:

10 - from MB

8 - from SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 (from current system, x8, 8 ports)

8 (or more?) - to buy a new card (x2 port?)

4 - 2 x1 cards providing 2 ports SYBA SY-PEX40039: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124045&RandomID=295686823218621120141120214651

This will leave a pci 3 x16 slot which will be used for a video card (R9 280x)

The x2 Syba 8 port card you suggested may fit perfectly for our Asrock Z97 MB's. How are the disk read/write speeds with the card you suggested, SYBA SI-PEX40071: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124070. I am a little concerned with the discussion I saw about reduced bandwidth for this x2 lane card: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12404.195

Would having a x8 card in the last pci 2.0 x16 slot operating at x2 mode provide any additional benefit than having this Syba x2 card?  The reason I ask is, in the long run I do not mind spending little more to ensure faster access to the disks.

SYBA SI-PEX40071 8 Internal SATA III Ports PCI-Express Card

 

Works great for me and works right out of the box.

 

Go here for a hardware compatibility list.

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility#PCI_SATA_Controllers

 

I would not go with the card you're asking about. First, your case would need a SAS board that all of your SATA drives would plug into. Second, that IBM card requires a PCI Express 3.0 x8 slot, which you only have two slots for. If you go with the Syba that I recommended, you can put him in the PCI express 2.0 slot, leaving your two 3.0 slots for video cards.

 

The IBM card is probably a bit more expensive as it is meant for enterprise servers and can handle raid, which you don't need. Also, the raid controller would increase boot time.

 

Let me know if you have any more questions.

For the performance of the SYBA-SI-PEX40071, I haven't noticed any problems with it all, but I also have not run any sort of performance testing on it. 

I guess those SYBA SY-PEX40039 cards will work.  At first I didn't think so since it's a PCIe 2.0 card, but the reviews say people are using them in the x1 slots.

Having an x8 card running at x2 is definitely going to be a performance hit.  If the card was able to run at full performance at x2 instead of x8, then they surely would have advertised as such.  As for an x8 running at x2 compared to the Syba x2 card, there's no way to tell the performance difference without running tests.  That PCIe 2.0 slot is x16, though, so why wouldn't you run the x8 card at x8?

I have been trying to see what options for a 8 port card we may have and seems like what you have suggested may be the better option.

I have been reading some reviews about this 8 port syba card that only 4 ports are being some recognized on some motherboards. Did you get a chance to use or test all the 8 ports? I assume you have installed this on the corner Pci x16 slot which is rated as x2. Thank you for all the help and suggestions.

For the performance of the SYBA-SI-PEX40071, I haven't noticed any problems with it all, but I also have not run any sort of performance testing on it. 

 

I guess those SYBA SY-PEX40039 cards will work.  At first I didn't think so since it's a PCIe 2.0 card, but the reviews say people are using them in the x1 slots.

 

Having an x8 card running at x2 is definitely going to be a performance hit.  If the card was able to run at full performance at x2 instead of x8, then they surely would have advertised as such.  As for an x8 running at x2 compared to the Syba x2 card, there's no way to tell the performance difference without running tests.  That PCIe 2.0 slot is x16, though, so why wouldn't you run the x8 card at x8?

Allot of people use the IBM M1015 SAS/SATA controllers which are re-badged LSI SAS controllers.

People flash them to be in IT mode (without the raid).

You can get them used on eBay for a decent price. A couple of Mini sas to sata cables and you're good to go.

What is nice about the min SAS to SATA cables is the connections are a lil neater.

People who run ESX favor these and the LSI card.

I would suggest doing a search on the board and reading the related threads to the IBM M1015 and LSI sas controllers.

The 2 port SYBA SY-PEX40039 is using:

ASM1061 Chipset (Asmedia 1061 SATA Host Controller)

In a PCIe Gen 2 Slot you can get some great speed out of this card.

I was able to get 450MB/s to an SSD which is about as fast as you can get from a PCIe Gen2 x1 SATA.

In addition, this card supports Port Multipliers on one of the two ports.

I own and have used a startech model that is similar, but has configurable internal and external ports.

Weebotech- thanks for the info,  I initially was thinking about the IBM m1015 card, it is a pci2 x8 card.  The third Pci x16 slot,  which I am planning for the new raid card in the asrock z97 extreme 6 motherboard operates in x2 mode. Will this card work in that slot? I called asrock tech support but was unable to get a confirmed answer from them.  This motherboard has 3 Pci x16 slots,  1 is Pci3 x16, second is Pci x8 (have a supermicro sas2lp-mv8 for this slot) if the first one is a video card and the third x16 slot operates in x2 mode.  Honestly, I am little confused by the generations and the slot width, unsure whether a pci2 x8 slot will get its full bandwidth and work correctly. Appreciate any help here. With the downselection.

Allot of people use the IBM M1015 SAS/SATA controllers which are re-badged LSI SAS controllers.

People flash them to be in IT mode (without the raid).

You can get them used on eBay for a decent price. A couple of Mini sas to sata cables and you're good to go.

What is nice about the min SAS to SATA cables is the connections are a lil neater.

 

People who run ESX favor these and the LSI card.

I would suggest doing a search on the board and reading the related threads to the IBM M1015 and LSI sas controllers.

 

The 2 port SYBA SY-PEX40039 is using:

ASM1061 Chipset (Asmedia 1061 SATA Host Controller)

 

In a PCIe Gen 2 Slot you can get some great speed out of this card.

I was able to get 450MB/s to an SSD which is about as fast as you can get from a PCIe Gen2 x1 SATA.

In addition, this card supports Port Multipliers on one of the two ports.

I own and have used a startech model that is similar, but has configurable internal and external ports.

The slots are supposed to be backward compatible.

A Gen2 slot will support a Gen1 card, at the card's speed as if it were in a Gen1 slot.

Where you may find difficulty is in using a slot dedicated to Video for a storage controller.

You'll only know by research and/or testing it out.

You can try moving the supermicro card into the other slots to see how your motherboard handles it.

Weebo - The first PCI3 slot is for video and I intend to use it for video. The key concern is will I be able to get the full IO bandwidth if I use a IBM m1015/m1115 or a SAS2008 card which will be installed in a Pci2 x16 slot operating in x2 mode? As I see it, this pci2 x2 slot will provide about 1200 MB/s and may be enough to sustain max speeds if all the 8 drives were spinning together. Although the solution could be pricier than I budgeted (~ $100+ range), in the interest of avoiding potential problems later I would like the best recommended solution. Copied below is a snippet from the Asrock Z97 extreme6 manual:

•    2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE2/PCIE4: single at x16 <-- PCIE2 is for videocard and PCIE4 for Supermicro SAS2LP-MV8 raid card

(PCIE2); dual at x8 (PCIE2) / x8 (PCIE4))

* If M2_1 slot is occupied, PCIE2 slot will run at x8 mode, and PCIE4 slot will run at x4 mode.

•    1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (PCIE5: x2 mode) <-- New card to be installed in this slot

•    2 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 Slots <-- the card we discussed before (2 port SYBA SY-PEX40039)

•    1 x mini-PCI Express Slot

* mini-PCI Express slot is shared with PCIE3 slot.

•    Supports AMD Quad CrossFireXTM and CrossFireXTM

•    Supports NVIDIA® Quad SLITM and SLITM

•    15? Gold Contact in VGA PCIe Slot (PCIE2)

The reason I am debating this much is I haven't opened up any of the boxes yet and if this MB cannot provide the number of ports I need I will send it back rightaway and start my hunt for another MB. The other features of this MB for passthru seems to work well for other users here and would like to hold on to this board if this SATA ports detail is taken care of. Thanks again for the help and suggestions.

The slots are supposed to be backward compatible.

A Gen2 slot will support a Gen1 card, at the card's speed as if it were in a Gen1 slot.

 

 

Where you may find difficulty is in using a slot dedicated to Video for a storage controller.

You'll only know by research and/or testing it out.

 

 

You can try moving the supermicro card into the other slots to see how your motherboard handles it.

After a closer look a I see this, and you would have to answer it yourself.

* If M2_1 slot is occupied, PCIE2 slot will run at x8 mode, and PCIE4 slot will run at x4 mode.

Do you plan to populate that slot?

In any case, from what I'm reading, the PCIE5 slot is an x16 Physical slot, but only has x2 lanes. ( I missed that )

PCIe slots:

PCIE1 (PCIe 2.0 x1 slot)  is used for PCI Express x1 lane width cards.

PCIE2 (PCIe 3.0 x16 slot) is used for PCI Express x16 lane width graphics cards.

PCIE3 (PCIe 2.0 x1 slot)  is used for PCI Express x1 lane width cards.

PCIE4 (PCIe 3.0 x16 slot) is used for PCI Express x8 lane width graphics cards.

PCIE5 (PCIe 2.0 x16 slot) is used for PCI Express x2 lane width graphics cards.

Therefore max you'll get  a potential of 1000MB/s, thus you'll get 'close' to the performance your attempting, but not max out the board or the drives.

A PCI Gen 2 x1 slot is capable of 500MB/s half duplex, 1G full duplex

Gen 2 x2 would be 1GB

As far as drive benchmarks, 

The fastest I've benchmarked a Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM with 1TB platters was 190MB/s.

The fastest I've seen posted publicly was a Hitachi 6TB 7200 RPM drive with 1Tb platters rated at 226MB/s.

So there would be a potential performance bottleneck, although it should still work.

Anything you put in that slot would have the same limits.

If you could move the video card to PCIe 5 and deal with the slower speed you might be able to allocate the bandwidth for disk speed.

Is this a gaming rig or a HT movie playing rig?

Frankly, the thing about SAS cards is that in the right slot, you can grow past the card with SAS expanders. Although it's expensive.

I cannot remember if the supermicro supported port multipliers.

I know the ASM1061 cards do.

Weebo - Good info and thanks for looking at the details, you confirmed what I have been thinking in terms of the bandwidth availability. This is a new system being assembled and I am still sourcing the parts to it. At this point, I see no reason to cripple the I/O bandwidth availability given what we know. I am going to try and send the unopened Asrock shipping box back and pick up a GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD5H board - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128707

This Gigabyte board has 8 sata ports (2 less than ASRock) and if using the M.2 SSD an additonal 2 ports. However, I will be gaining a PCI3 x4 slot (instead of PCI3 x2) and additional 2 PCI slots. Also on a PCI x16 slot, a 8 port sata card should provide up to 8 GB/s bandwidth and with all 8 sata3 ports being used simultaneously they shouldn't be IO throttled. This will give room for any expansion/addition in future if needed. I intend to explore more with VM's, one will be a HTPC+gaming and another maybe a Linux distro. Attached are some snapshots of the board layout and pci specs from the Gigabyte manual. The slots seem to be closer spaced than I would like though.

What do you think?

Edit: for the gigabyte board,  it appears that when the 3rd pci3 x4 slot is used,  the speeds for the other two are also reduced to x8 and x4.

After a closer look a I see this, and you would have to answer it yourself.

* If M2_1 slot is occupied, PCIE2 slot will run at x8 mode, and PCIE4 slot will run at x4 mode.

Do you plan to populate that slot?

 

In any case, from what I'm reading, the PCIE5 slot is an x16 Physical slot, but only has x2 lanes. ( I missed that )

 

PCIe slots:

PCIE1 (PCIe 2.0 x1 slot)  is used for PCI Express x1 lane width cards.

PCIE2 (PCIe 3.0 x16 slot) is used for PCI Express x16 lane width graphics cards.

PCIE3 (PCIe 2.0 x1 slot)  is used for PCI Express x1 lane width cards.

PCIE4 (PCIe 3.0 x16 slot) is used for PCI Express x8 lane width graphics cards.

PCIE5 (PCIe 2.0 x16 slot) is used for PCI Express x2 lane width graphics cards.

Therefore max you'll get  a potential of 1000MB/s, thus you'll get 'close' to the performance your attempting, but not max out the board or the drives.

 

A PCI Gen 2 x1 slot is capable of 500MB/s half duplex, 1G full duplex

Gen 2 x2 would be 1GB

 

As far as drive benchmarks, 

The fastest I've benchmarked a Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM with 1TB platters was 190MB/s.

The fastest I've seen posted publicly was a Hitachi 6TB 7200 RPM drive with 1Tb platters rated at 226MB/s.

 

So there would be a potential performance bottleneck, although it should still work.

Anything you put in that slot would have the same limits.

 

If you could move the video card to PCIe 5 and deal with the slower speed you might be able to allocate the bandwidth for disk speed.

Is this a gaming rig or a HT movie playing rig?

 

Frankly, the thing about SAS cards is that in the right slot, you can grow past the card with SAS expanders. Although it's expensive.

 

 

I cannot remember if the supermicro supported port multipliers.

I know the ASM1061 cards do.

From what I'm reading, that will be crippled a bit also.

You'll achieve x8 on the video slot

x4 on 1 slot

x4 on the other slot.

If you use GEN2 cards, then it's like GEN1 x8.

Figure as a rough rule of thumb 1 Gen1 x1 slot per drive.

So if it's a Gen2 x1 slot, you can easily support 2 drives at high speed.

As long as you are prepared for it, it will work.

Really the only time you need that much bandwidth is during parity check/calc.

it should be fine unless you are going for maximim bandwidth during parity gen/calc.

If you were to put the parity drive on it's own x1 card, it might help alleviate contention.

Weebo -  wouldn't the two pci3 x4 slots be equivalent to pci1 x16 slot ~ 8 GB/s for each pci3 x4? There are 3 pci3 x16 slots, 2 Pci x16 slots and 2 Pcie x1 slots.

Alternatively there are two Pci x16 slots. Using a x8 8 port raid card on these ports should yield full max speed for the hdds on these slots?

I was thinking more about limited bandwidth for the video card slot.  I have a R9 280x for the video card slot. My head is starting to hurt thinking about options. If you think this board may not work for what I have in mind,  do you have any recommendations?

From what I'm reading, that will be crippled a bit also.

 

You'll achieve x8 on the video slot

x4 on 1 slot

x4 on the other slot.

If you use GEN2 cards, then it's like GEN1 x8.

 

Figure as a rough rule of thumb 1 Gen1 x1 slot per drive.

So if it's a Gen2 x1 slot, you can easily support 2 drives at high speed.

 

As long as you are prepared for it, it will work.

Really the only time you need that much bandwidth is during parity check/calc.

it should be fine unless you are going for maximim bandwidth during parity gen/calc.

 

If you were to put the parity drive on it's own x1 card, it might help alleviate contention.

Each x1 in Gen 2 is 500MB/s Perfectly capable of 2 Spinners.

I believe the LSI SAS card is GEN2 so x4 ~ 2GB/s and 4GB/s Full duplex.

AOC-SAS2LP-MV8

Bus Type  PCI-E x8 Gen 2

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.cfm

This is an old post that i'll quote, you can go back and read the whole thread.

I'll confirm, you should not feel any any slowdown even with 8 mechanical disks on it..Keep in mind the SASLP-MV8 is Gen 1 and the SAS2LP-MV8 is Gen 2. on your board, a SAS2LP-MV8 will still be running twice as fast as an older SASLP-MV8.I personally am running M1015's (PCIe V2 8X cards) in PCIe V2 4x slots and am still getting full disk speeds.

A spinner doesn't exceed 250MB/s yet. Some bandwidth gets eaten by support communication.

I think you'll be OK with this board.

Perhaps stating it will be crippled a bit is just slightly alarming. Where I was trying to make a point is if you populate the widest PCIe slots, each one looses lanes, so you will end up with x8 gen2, x4 gen2, x4 gen2.  The block diagram in the manual represents that also.

That's plenty for 16 drives.

The most you can get on this board is 28 drives.

Frankly, that's allot of drives and unless they are spares laying around, you might be better of with less mechanical drives utilizing larger drives.

Weebo -  thanks for your reply, was waiting to hear back from you.  I pulled the trigger on the gigabyte board and the asrock will go back on Monday. That old thread was informative and helpful. As you said, with the on board 8 sata slots + 2x8 raid slots + 2x2 raid slots will give 28 hdds. This gigabyte board also has couple of Pci slots,  are you aware of any good controller cards that could use these slots?

I am planning to so some mod these holidays to put together two Roseville L4500 cases (bare server case each supporting 15 drives). If things work out as I am planning the combined large case can house upto 30 drives. I don't anticipate I will use all of them in unraid, some would be housed for preclearing and backup of key data. Hope you had good Thanksgiving, thank you for your help and suggestions. I have a seasonic gold 1250w to drive all of this. Seems like an elaborate plan, fingers crossed on how all of this will work out.

Each x1 in Gen 2 is 500MB/s Perfectly capable of 2 Spinners.

 

I believe the LSI SAS card is GEN2 so x4 ~ 2GB/s and 4GB/s Full duplex.

 

 

AOC-SAS2LP-MV8

Bus Type  PCI-E x8 Gen 2

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.cfm

 

This is an old post that i'll quote, you can go back and read the whole thread.

I'll confirm, you should not feel any any slowdown even with 8 mechanical disks on it..Keep in mind the SASLP-MV8 is Gen 1 and the SAS2LP-MV8 is Gen 2. on your board, a SAS2LP-MV8 will still be running twice as fast as an older SASLP-MV8.I personally am running M1015's (PCIe V2 8X cards) in PCIe V2 4x slots and am still getting full disk speeds.

 

A spinner doesn't exceed 250MB/s yet. Some bandwidth gets eaten by support communication.

I think you'll be OK with this board.

 

Perhaps stating it will be crippled a bit is just slightly alarming. Where I was trying to make a point is if you populate the widest PCIe slots, each one looses lanes, so you will end up with x8 gen2, x4 gen2, x4 gen2.  The block diagram in the manual represents that also.

That's plenty for 16 drives.

 

The most you can get on this board is 28 drives.

Frankly, that's allot of drives and unless they are spares laying around, you might be better of with less mechanical drives utilizing larger drives.

for PCI, I've always had good result with the Promise TX4's. But I've used them in 66Mhz slots. This board only supports 33mhz pci.

33Mhz pci is limited to approx 132MB/s. Therefore I would only put 1 of the smallest drives on those.

I would probably go more with port multipliers or SAS expanders if I had to add more.

Being frank about this. I would not put 30 drives in one server knowing that some slots were going to be used just for pre-clearing and drive maintenance.  You only have 26 drive letters in unRAID. 1 is used for the flash. 1 is for the parity, So that's 24 data drives.

So that means you will need to use some OS/hypervisor ESX? to access all those drives.

I would put what's needed for gaming, media and archiving in the server. Then getting a cheap HP microserver proliant for drive maintenance. With the right removable on top it'll be easy to work with. It will be cost effective. They are going for less then $200 these days.  Just add drives and stir.  You can test beta unraids on it without disturbing the big rig. You can use it for critical backups, etc.  By time you purchase some of these controllers (promise TX4) you would be half way to a micro server.

Another idea in this is to put a good quality port multiplier capable card in the x1/gen2 slots, then use some kind of silicon image raid adapter to do hardware raid on some of the drives. It will use one drive letter in unRAID (think cache), and you can have a protected cache drive.

weebo - I am going to hold out on the pci slots for awhile until I saturate all the raid slots and I think it won't be anytime soon. I also ordered a case to move my current and older hardware Q6600 unraid system to it. As you said, this may serve as an experimental smaller unraid machine which could also help preclear and do backups. I saw the post from Jonp about future unraid plans to include a second parity check, maybe when that finally happens I may be comfortable adding more disks to the unraid OS.

In your previous post you mentioned about the pci slots operating in Gen2 mode when the widest slot is occupied, was that a typo or could you clarify more on that? As the Gigabyte manual says, if the last pci3 x4 slot is occupied, the first two lose their bandwidth by half and operate at pci3 x8 and pci3 x4 (the third one also at pci3 x4). So they are still gen3 pci slots and not gen2. So theoretically they should provide pci3 bandwidth at reduced I/O lanes: 4x8=32Gb/s and 16Gb/s respectively -> a M1015 raid card designed for pci2 x8 slot should not be bandwidth limited in a pci3 x4 slot. Is that correct?

I have been looking at the discussion http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=16769.0 and the Intel RES2SV240 doesn't seem to be a bad idea eventually if the M1015 will get its full I/O bandwidth in the pci3 x4 slot.

So they are still gen3 pci slots and not gen2. So theoretically they should provide pci3 bandwidth at reduced I/O lanes: 4x8=32Gb/s and 16Gb/s respectively -> a M1015 raid card designed for pci2 x8 slot should not be bandwidth limited in a pci3 x4 slot. Is that correct?

This concept is correct, Yes, x4 GEN3 is almost x8 GEN2,  But the cards are only GEN2 cards, so actual bandwidth is x4 GEN2

(which is enough).

Check out this article

http://www.tested.com/tech/457440-theoretical-vs-actual-bandwidth-pci-express-and-thunderbolt/

I recently bought the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 board, and a SYBA SI-PEX40064 PCI-Express 2.0 Low Profile Ready SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card.  I know it's only 4 ports, but I'm guessing the firmware of the 8 port card is likely going to function the same.

I have a nVidia GeForce 550Ti board in the first PCI x16 slot, the SATA III card in the second slot.  I had my old SATA II card in the third slot, but that required me to plug a Molex power cable into the board, but it's on the far side of the board, and I didn't want to run a long power cable all the way over there, and I don't need the extra SATA connections, so i just removed it.  (I didn't have anything plugged into the third card, but it still required the power connection).

Anyway, this all works fine for me.  I've not tested any speeds, but if there is anything you want me to test, just let me know.

Hi Justin -  thank you for chiming in.  I am not sure whether you had the chance to read the long winded discussions above,  the gist is weebo has been helping me understand what transfer speeds I can expect for different slot scenarios. I am looking to maximize hdds in this unraid build with up to 28 drives eventually. I am almost swayed toward a gigabyte board since the third pci3 slot in asrock operates at x2 while the gigabyte board has it at x4. An idea that weebo gave was to use sas expanders although it may be expensive. The potential downside with the gigabyte board are some early reviews about pass through on some builds.

I saw some discussion you had to use kvm on this asrock board. Can you share your experiences? I am looking to run a HTPC/gaming win7 kvm. I need hdmi + audio (Radeon r9 280x videocard) and USB pass through. My other machine has an asrock board and I have been quite happy with it. Thanks!

I recently bought the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 board, and a SYBA SI-PEX40064 PCI-Express 2.0 Low Profile Ready SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card.  I know it's only 4 ports, but I'm guessing the firmware of the 8 port card is likely going to function the same.

 

I have a nVidia GeForce 550Ti board in the first PCI x16 slot, the SATA III card in the second slot.  I had my old SATA II card in the third slot, but that required me to plug a Molex power cable into the board, but it's on the far side of the board, and I didn't want to run a long power cable all the way over there, and I don't need the extra SATA connections, so i just removed it.  (I didn't have anything plugged into the third card, but it still required the power connection).

 

Anyway, this all works fine for me.  I've not tested any speeds, but if there is anything you want me to test, just let me know.

Weebo - I had read that article before but it didn't sink in that the max bandwidth = min{card lane, card gen, slot lane, slot gen}. Although I ordered the gigabyte board I saw some reviews of older gen gigabyte board where users had trouble with pass-through. I think he will pick one board based on what Justin says. Thank you for all the help!

So they are still gen3 pci slots and not gen2. So theoretically they should provide pci3 bandwidth at reduced I/O lanes: 4x8=32Gb/s and 16Gb/s respectively -> a M1015 raid card designed for pci2 x8 slot should not be bandwidth limited in a pci3 x4 slot. Is that correct?

 

 

This concept is correct, Yes, x4 GEN3 is almost x8 GEN2,  But the cards are only GEN2 cards, so actual bandwidth is x4 GEN2

(which is enough).

 

 

Check out this article

http://www.tested.com/tech/457440-theoretical-vs-actual-bandwidth-pci-express-and-thunderbolt/

I am looking to maximize hdds in this unraid build with up to 28 drives eventually.

I believe that unRAID only supports 26 drives. /dev/sda -> /dev/sdz.

It may support the double letter /dev/sdaa -> /dev/sdzz drives, but emhttp may not.

This question requires further clarification from Limetech and you might want to reach out first.

Weebo,  that was a typo. I meant  to say 26 drives per your earlier message. Thanks for correcting.

I am looking to maximize hdds in this unraid build with up to 28 drives eventually.

I believe that unRAID only supports 26 drives. /dev/sda -> /dev/sdz.

 

It may support the double letter /dev/sdaa -> /dev/sdzz drives, but emhttp may not.

 

This question requires further clarification from Limetech and you might want to reach out first.

Hi Justin -  thank you for chiming in.  I am not sure whether you had the chance to read the long winded discussions above,  the gist is weebo has been helping me understand what transfer speeds I can expect for different slot scenarios. I am looking to maximize hdds in this unraid build with up to 28 drives eventually. I am almost swayed toward a gigabyte board since the third pci3 slot in asrock operates at x2 while the gigabyte board has it at x4. An idea that weebo gave was to use sas expanders although it may be expensive. The potential downside with the gigabyte board are some early reviews about pass through on some builds.

 

I saw some discussion you had to use kvm on this asrock board. Can you share your experiences? I am looking to run a HTPC/gaming win7 kvm. I need hdmi + audio (Radeon r9 280x videocard) and USB pass through. My other machine has an asrock board and I have been quite happy with it. Thanks!

No problem.  I did skim the discussions about speed, but didn't pay close attention.  I would ask though, why do you care about the absolute very fastest speeds you can get to all your drives?  If you run a cache drive, most/all writes in real time will go to that disk only, so that's the only one you really need to be fast.  Even if you don't use a cache drive and write directly to the array, it will be calculating parity during those writes, which I understand will happen well below any theoretical limits the disk have.

If you run a VM, and need the best write speeds to that VM, you can force that to run on whatever disk you want, so just make sure that disk is on a 'full speed' controller (motherboard SATA connection).

Now, if there are other reasons, so be it, I'm not saying it shouldn't be important to you, just trying to throw out a 'reality check' in how important this may really be to you in the end.

As for my experiences with this board, I'm REALLY happy so far.  I don't know if you've noticed all the problem/weird issue reports I've made over the last 2-3 months, but it's probably at least half my total post count.  I've had TONS of weird issues, and finally came to the conclusion that my motherboard may be the cause of them (because I lost 2 SATA posts and one NIC on the motherboard).  So, I replaced the motherboard last week.  I replaced the power supply a month ago, and 3 hard drives in the month prior to that.  I also replaced the CPU cooler, and 2 case fans, just to make sure it's not a heat issue.

Since then (admittedly, only a few days so far), I've had no troubles (knock so very, very hard on wood).

I've had my VM running for 3 days without any problems, no random reboots, no skipping while watching videos, no weirdness at all.

I like the fact that the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 has 10 onboard SATA ports, so that I can use just a $25 4-port SATA card, and can use 12 drives, plus 2 SSD drives just sitting loose in the case (I don't have any more room to easily mount more drives in my case).

I'm of the opinion that any more drives is just asking for trouble.  With just one failed drive I was stressed until I got a replacement, pre-cleared it, installed it and rebuilt the array.  Plus, with all the troubles I was having, I was really concerned about another drive failing during this process.

Anyway, I've been really happy with the ASRock board so far, and with the SATA III card I got on sale.

I've not done any speed tests so far, but will probably move some files around in the next couple of weeks, so will watch for any speed issues then, but so far, no complaints from me.

Good luck with your build!!

Good info, thanks Justin. So are you able to have a hdmi+audio, disks, usb passthrough and take advantage of the dual nics without trouble on this MB? This is my primary consideration for this build and could help leverage your experience in getting things to work. Asrock MB would be an obvious choice in this case.

My previous build was a budget build that was put together with relatively older hardware and over the last couple of years I have spent way more resources (money and time) to fix things that should have been trivial. Given this is a new build, I am trying as much as possible not to throttle any bandwidth and have room for future upgrades.

My build config:

Case: 2x Roseville L4500 modded to be one big case (2x15 drive bays)

MOBO: To be decided (AsRock Z97 extreme 6 or Gigabyte Z97x-UD5H)

CPU: Intel I7-4790

RAM: 8x2 Team Vulcan 16GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) + 4GBx2 Mushkin 8GB DDR3 < Specs are same, hoping they work or will use the 8GB in another m/c

HDD controller: 8 port: Supermicro SAS2LP-MV8, 2 port: SY-PEX40039

Hi Justin -  thank you for chiming in.  I am not sure whether you had the chance to read the long winded discussions above,  the gist is weebo has been helping me understand what transfer speeds I can expect for different slot scenarios. I am looking to maximize hdds in this unraid build with up to 28 drives eventually. I am almost swayed toward a gigabyte board since the third pci3 slot in asrock operates at x2 while the gigabyte board has it at x4. An idea that weebo gave was to use sas expanders although it may be expensive. The potential downside with the gigabyte board are some early reviews about pass through on some builds.

 

I saw some discussion you had to use kvm on this asrock board. Can you share your experiences? I am looking to run a HTPC/gaming win7 kvm. I need hdmi + audio (Radeon r9 280x videocard) and USB pass through. My other machine has an asrock board and I have been quite happy with it. Thanks!

 

No problem.  I did skim the discussions about speed, but didn't pay close attention.  I would ask though, why do you care about the absolute very fastest speeds you can get to all your drives?  If you run a cache drive, most/all writes in real time will go to that disk only, so that's the only one you really need to be fast.  Even if you don't use a cache drive and write directly to the array, it will be calculating parity during those writes, which I understand will happen well below any theoretical limits the disk have.

 

If you run a VM, and need the best write speeds to that VM, you can force that to run on whatever disk you want, so just make sure that disk is on a 'full speed' controller (motherboard SATA connection).

 

Now, if there are other reasons, so be it, I'm not saying it shouldn't be important to you, just trying to throw out a 'reality check' in how important this may really be to you in the end.

 

As for my experiences with this board, I'm REALLY happy so far.  I don't know if you've noticed all the problem/weird issue reports I've made over the last 2-3 months, but it's probably at least half my total post count.  I've had TONS of weird issues, and finally came to the conclusion that my motherboard may be the cause of them (because I lost 2 SATA posts and one NIC on the motherboard).  So, I replaced the motherboard last week.  I replaced the power supply a month ago, and 3 hard drives in the month prior to that.  I also replaced the CPU cooler, and 2 case fans, just to make sure it's not a heat issue.

 

Since then (admittedly, only a few days so far), I've had no troubles (knock so very, very hard on wood).

 

I've had my VM running for 3 days without any problems, no random reboots, no skipping while watching videos, no weirdness at all.

 

I like the fact that the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 has 10 onboard SATA ports, so that I can use just a $25 4-port SATA card, and can use 12 drives, plus 2 SSD drives just sitting loose in the case (I don't have any more room to easily mount more drives in my case).

 

I'm of the opinion that any more drives is just asking for trouble.  With just one failed drive I was stressed until I got a replacement, pre-cleared it, installed it and rebuilt the array.  Plus, with all the troubles I was having, I was really concerned about another drive failing during this process.

 

Anyway, I've been really happy with the ASRock board so far, and with the SATA III card I got on sale.

 

I've not done any speed tests so far, but will probably move some files around in the next couple of weeks, so will watch for any speed issues then, but so far, no complaints from me.

 

Good luck with your build!!