Sata III 4 port pcie raid card

[lonely_sata_cable]

So it was just kinda a thought thats been going thru my head and im think8ng about doing it the more i look into it which is doing a ssd raid 0 setup on my rig but im wondering whats a good reliable raid card (pcie 4 port sata 3) and hopefully under 200$ US

[joshfrog]

how come you cant do the raid though your motherboards sata III ports?

do you want a raid card or HBA (host bus adapter)

[brwainer]

26 minutes ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

So it was just kinda a thought thats been going thru my head and im think8ng about doing it the more i look into it which is doing a ssd raid 0 setup on my rig but im wondering whats a good reliable raid card (pcie 4 port sata 3) and hopefully under 200$ US

don't get a Sata III RAID card, get a SAS2 Raid card, preferably one by LSI / Broadcom (they bought LSI). SAS2 raid cards are compatible with Sata 2/3 drives, and are more reliable since they are intended for more serious use. There are other brands that can be trusted, but LSI based cards have the best compatibility and top-tier reliability.

 

There are several good PCIe 2.0 cards from LSI under $100 new, but you probably want a PCIe 3.0 card if you're going to be doing RAID0 of SSDs. I'd recommend a 9207-8i (amazon, newegg) flashed with the IR firmware ( 9207-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows ) which gives you RAID 0, 1, 10, and 10E . You can also get a version of this card pre-flashed to IR mode as model 9217-8i, but these are usually OEM only (e.g. sold installed in a server or workstation when it is ordered). You could still go out and find one on eBay if you wanted.

[lonely_sata_cable]

3 hours ago, brwainer said:

don't get a Sata III RAID card, get a SAS2 Raid card, preferably one by LSI / Broadcom (they bought LSI). SAS2 raid cards are compatible with Sata 2/3 drives, and are more reliable since they are intended for more serious use. There are other brands that can be trusted, but LSI based cards have the best compatibility and top-tier reliability.

 

There are several good PCIe 2.0 cards from LSI under $100 new, but you probably want a PCIe 3.0 card if you're going to be doing RAID0 of SSDs. I'd recommend a 9207-8i (amazon, newegg) flashed with the IR firmware ( 9207-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows ) which gives you RAID 0, 1, 10, and 10E . You can also get a version of this card pre-flashed to IR mode as model 9217-8i, but these are usually OEM only (e.g. sold installed in a server or workstation when it is ordered). You could still go out and find one on eBay if you wanted.

Wow thank you, i think ive learned alot.

[lonely_sata_cable]

3 hours ago, joshfrog said:

how come you cant do the raid though your motherboards sata III ports?

do you want a raid card or HBA (host bus adapter)

And no i heard if you do a software raid0 performance isnt as good as a physical raid controller

[brwainer]

Just now, lonely_sata_cable said:

And no i heard if you do a software raid0 performance isnt as good as a physical raid controller

they were referring to chipset raid, which is sort of in between software raid (done by the OS) and true hardware raid (done by a dedicated chip). The chipset/motherboard raid usually gets pretty good performance for RAID 0, 1, and 10, but pretty bad for RAID5 (if the chipset even has it). The downside is that it does take up some additional CPU overhead.