A dilemma, don't know which would be better

[WeirdTrekkie]

Okay, I have myself a bit of a dilemma regarding upgrading the storage on my system.

 

I bought a second-hand system from a friend with a brand new Be Quiet! 600w PSU, which made it a real bargain. The specs were/are: Core i7 3770, 16Gb RAM, nVidia GTX 980, 60Gb SSD and 2x 2Tb HDD.

 

It's a pretty decent system, I'm happy with it. The weak link in the chain so to speak, is the motherboard. It's an Asus P8H61-MX R2.0. Don't get me wrong, it's actually very reliable, but it only had USB 2 and 4x SATA 300Mbps with no RAID. On the expansion slot side of things, it has one PCIe x16 3.0 and 2 PCIe x1 2.0. It only had 2 DIMM slots too, so 16Gb max

 

I want more speed from the SSD side of things and as I see it I have two ways of doing it (Three ways if you count a new motherboard, but that seems overkill when these boards are really pricey right now!).

 

1: I get a PCIe SATA 600Mbps adapter and get a bigger SSD

2: I get the same adapter, but instead move some of the other drives to the adapter and get another 60Gb SSD and stripe them in Windows (I have checked, you can stripe a Windows 10 installation partition), but leave them connected to the onboard SATA ports.

3: I screw the whole thing and get another motherboard, which I'd rather not do as I have a Win 10 attached to the board.

 

I'm tending to think that even at SATA 300Mbps, striping two SSDs with the on board controller would be the way to go, or there's a fourth option actually I could get TWO PCIe adapters and put an SSD on each one and stripe them.

 

In my experience Windows software striping is actually pretty decent.

 

Anyway, I'd be really grateful what you guys think.

 

[dizmo]

I'd just go with the PCIe adapter. No point in adding complexity.

I remember having a 60GB SSD. Horrible days.

[Electronics Wizardy]

I'd just get a bigger ssd and run it on sata3. You won't notice the speed difference. Also I'm pretty sure you can't install Windows on a software raid. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Also I wouldn't get the cheap sata adapters. They normally suck and are unreliable with bad drivers. If you want to raid get something from lsi. 

[m0k]

15 minutes ago, WeirdTrekkie said:

snip

 

first of all you have 4x SATA3 ports (these run at 6gbps, not 300mbps)

 

I would suggest getting a new bigger SSD , its most likely going to be a little faster too

the last time 60 gb SSDs were a thing was a white back, i imagine its an older model
 

[Mr.Meerkat]

A PCIe Sata 6Gbps is probably the best option out of those 3, easiest option which can be done in a 10-20 mins where as a RAID set up would take quite a lot longer. 

 

On a side note, if you need USB 3.0, you could always get a USB 3.0 PCIe card as well  

[Mr.Meerkat]

3 minutes ago, mok said:

first of all you have 4x SATA3 ports (these run at 6gbps, not 300mbps)

Excuse me? 

Quote

Intel® H61(B3) chipset : 
4 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s), blue

Taken from here: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8H61MX_R20/specifications/  

 

3 minutes ago, mok said:

I would suggest getting a new bigger SSD , its most likely going to be a little faster too

the last time 60 gb SSDs were a thing was a white back, i imagine its an older model

That is however deffo true...

 

edit: And it's 3Gbps/300MBps, not 300Mbps  

[WeirdTrekkie]

15 minutes ago, mok said:

first of all you have 4x SATA3 ports (these run at 6gbps, not 300mbps)

 

I would suggest getting a new bigger SSD , its most likely going to be a little faster too

the last time 60 gb SSDs were a thing was a white back, i imagine its an older model
 

I'm afraid the H61 chipset has no 6Gbps SATA ports. It's 4x 3Gbps, trust me!

[m0k]

27 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Excuse me? 

woops

completely missed his mobo and chipset in the OP

[Mr.Meerkat]

22 minutes ago, WeirdTrekkie said:

I'm afraid the H61 chipset has no 6Gbps SATA ports. It's 4x 3Gbps, trust me!

He just made a simple mistake and didn't read OP properly  

[WeirdTrekkie]

As far as gaming, 16Gb of RAM is more than enough for the moment. However, I do some limited content creation and music work, but RAM has not been an issue thus far. My logic is, by the time 16Gb is just too little RAM then it would be time to upgrade the system anyway.

 

I would be very grateful for suggestions on host adapter cards/chipsets. I've been told to avoid Marvell chipset cards.

 

And, yes getting USB 3 too would also be a good idea, thanks for that

[WeirdTrekkie]

Oh, one last thing I was going to ask, as well as any suggestions on what PCIe SATA host adapter cards to use, what's the general consensus at the moment of the best manufacturers of SSDs right now?

 

Any help would be very gratefully appreciated!