PCIe sata 3 card worth it.

[ausham]

So I have two computers, a x299 and a x58 system. Both of witch are over kill for my needs. So I was thinking of selling the x299 system to put some cash into my race car and just use the x58 system. Both pull about the same power and I have some replacement parts for the x58 system if something broke anyway.

However I would very much like faster storage on the x58 system. Right now I have a newish mid range sata SSD and I was thinking of getting a PCIe 3 card and a Samsung 860 for the system and calling it a day. I know NVMe is a option, but legacy supported NVMe drives like the Samsung 950 are costly for what they are and I don't want a to deal with a USB boot drive if I got something like a Samsung 970.

So would it even be worth the time getting a PCIe sata 3 card or PCIe M.2 sata 3 to PCIe card? Or am I'm better off just sticking to the onboard sata 2 with something like a 860 drive?

 

 

[emosun]

if the board has a raid controller then you can raid two drives on sata 2 in raid 0 and get sata 3 speeds

[ausham]

5 minutes ago, emosun said:

if the board has a raid controller then you can raid two drives on sata 2 in raid 0 and get sata 3 speeds

It dose and I did think about that and its a good idea. But I did not want the cost or second set of cables and a second drive in the system. And if one drive died Id have to reload a backup.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, ausham said:

It dose and I did think about that. But I did not want the cost or second set of cables and a second drive in the system. And if one drive died Id have to reload a backup.

if you run a single drive and it dies then you still have to load a backup lol.

just coming up with solutions here. running two sdds in raid 0 on sata 2 is what i do because it was the easiest option.

[ausham]

7 minutes ago, emosun said:

if you run a single drive and it dies then you still have to load a backup lol.

just coming up with solutions here. running two sdds in raid 0 on sata 2 is what i do because it was the easiest option.

Whoops. I always forget that haha. usually when I go raid i go raid 1 so I get things mixed up.

If I went with a second drive Id have to make a sata power cable as I only have one in that system so just getting a new drive would be less work.

[Slayer3032]

DUET takes far less time to setup than Windows does, it's like a minute or two and a few clicks and a change of your boot order.

 

I have a SAS HBA in my home server and also have NVMe drives in both my X58 main rig and home server. Neither boot to sata drives, nor use the onboard sata. You're going to increase your boot times a lot more with anything other than the onboard sata, I found an NVMe to be around where it's almost the same as a lower performing sata drive after you turn off the AHCI bios and other junk like esata these boards run after post.

 

Raid 0 is trash, something like a SX8200 Pro, SN750 or a used PM981 would be a much better choice unless you already have the drives laying around.

 

I consider the 5 second penalty of spamming enter(after the memory check) going through DUET and my GRUB to be the cost of not buying more sata devices that I'll have to continue to use on future builds. It's all around faster and allowed me to drop my CPU temps by over 15c on my hottest core since I also pulled the whole drive cage out of my Corsair 450D when going to a 1TB SX8200 Pro from a 128GB SM951.

 

Oh and to make the 950 Pro even more confusing, the "AHCI" part numbers often lie and even when you buy one that's supposed to have AHCI support unless you physically inspect the board layout near the m.2 connector to confirm it's actually an AHCI drive, the "AHCI part number" SM951's are often just standard SM951's.

 

If you'd like more first hand experiences, the HEDT thread has some people who have done similar things to what you're thinking with going back to older platforms. There might be someone who can weigh in on their experiences doing the same thing as well.

 

[ausham]

I'm not using DUET or anything like that and that's not up for discussion.