ASUS P5Q Premium

Here is my 1st attempt at an unraid server. Originally was going the road of building a WHS and was glad that I did some homework and found unRAID.

I decided to jump into the deep end by trying an unverified board (ASUS P5Q Premium). Fortunately it was a very smooth process and I have had the system up and running with zero issues (knock on wood) for about 3 weeks. I haven't had a chance to do any sort of extensive performance testing but the results I am sure would be very close to 'smino' who did a great write-up on the P5Q deluxe. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3630.0

The only issue I have run into is with large file transfers (>30GB) to the cache drive. One of the drive consistently fails and the transfer stops. I believe the Drive Expert (RAID 0) config is the culprit but again, I haven't had a chance to determine if it is a drive issue or something else. I wasn't planning on using this config initially, so I will probably just pull one of the drives and repurpose it. 

unRAID Ver - 4.5 beta

Motherboard - ASUS P5Q Premium

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E8400

Heatsink/Cooler - ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro

Memory - CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)

USB Flash - OCZ DIESEL 4GB

VGA - EN8400GS SILENT (PCIe)

Case - Antec Twelve Hundred

Power Supply - Antec CP-850 (850W Continuous Power)

Multi-Bay Backplane Module - Qty. 3 - ICY DOCK MB454SPF-B

HBAs - Qty. 2 - Adaptec 1430SA

Data Drives - Qty 6 - Seagate 1.5TB (ST31500341AS)

Parity - Seagate 1.5TB (ST31500341AS)

Cache Drive - Qty 2. ST3320613AS (In Drive Expert - Performance/RAID-0)

Cool, you went for the same MOBO (almost) and the same tower.

I am finding that raid0 although it works, it looks like one of the drives power downs even though I set it to never power down.

So I will be defaulting back to non Raid0 for now, unless I build a full distro, where I can then add the proper drivers...).

If you get a chance to do that, please let me know.

Nice, icoburn!  I really want this mb and I'm buying this week...either this one or the "recommended" Supermicro. 

So, there are 6 "regular" sata ports and 4 for drive xpert.  If drive xpert is not used, I read that you can only use 2 of the 4 as regular sata ports...can you confirm?  That means 8 total for the board. 

Also, can you confirm whether any of the sata ports are on the pci bus or not?  My attempt to call Asus to try to find this out was not met with success!

How quiet would you rate your system?  Very nice wiring job, btw!

Thanks,

Jim

D@mn!  Newegg just jacked the price on this board $30 to $199. 

Thanks, the wiring job too me some time to complete If you are not using Drive Xpert you will have a total of 8 sata ports. To the best of my knowledge, none of the Sata ports are tied to the PCI bus. I seem to recall coming across a link that discussed this but for the life of me can't find it now. The system would be very quiet without the Icy Dock fans, they are certainly the loudest of the bunch. The Antec case fans each have 3 settings (low-med-high) and are whisper quiet on low. I was thinking about replacing the Icy Dock fans but I have the system in a ventilated closet so I can hardly hear it.

Nice, icoburn!  I really want this mb and I'm buying this week...either this one or the "recommended" Supermicro. 

 

So, there are 6 "regular" sata ports and 4 for drive xpert.  If drive xpert is not used, I read that you can only use 2 of the 4 as regular sata ports...can you confirm?  That means 8 total for the board. 

 

Also, can you confirm whether any of the sata ports are on the pci bus or not?  My attempt to call Asus to try to find this out was not met with success!

 

How quiet would you rate your system?  Very nice wiring job, btw!

 

Thanks,

Jim

I just pulled the 2nd drive yesterday and reconfigured the Xpert port to normal. Not proficient enough to build my own distro, but something I would like to learn to do time permitting.

Cool, you went for the same MOBO (almost) and the same tower.

 

I am finding that raid0 although it works, it looks like one of the drives power downs even though I set it to never power down.

So I will be defaulting back to non Raid0 for now, unless I build a full distro, where I can then add the proper drivers...).

 

If you get a chance to do that, please let me know.

 

So, there are 6 "regular" sata ports and 4 for drive xpert.  If drive xpert is not used, I read that you can only use 2 of the 4 as regular sata ports...can you confirm?  That means 8 total for the board. 

...

I can share my experience with Drive Xpert (2 total Xpert ports) on a P5Q Deluxe (same behavior in XP and Vista).  When I put it in normal mode with just one drive and get it booted and configured, I could then shut it down and then add a second drive to the other Drive Xpert port, boot up, and it would see the second as a separate drive.  IF I tried to start with two drives in normal mode right away, it wouldn't work see either, which is "as advertised".

Maybe,  just maybe, the same technique would work with unRaid.

Can anybody confirm that the two PCIe x16 slots in this board will work with x4 Sata controllers? According to the specs, it would appear so but I wondered if anybody had confirmed this with an actual build?

EDIT:  Just noticed that icoburn has two Adaptec 1403SA's in his build so I assume he's using the black PCIe slots for these cards.

Hi,

this board is my favorit too because there are 4x glan, does unRaid supports glan teaming?

best regards Unknown

Hi,

 

this board is my favorit too because there are 4x glan, does unRaid supports glan teaming?

 

best regards Unknown