My problem with discrete RAID controller cards

[Casualrascal]

If you've ever gotten interested in running a RAID array on your desktop PC you might have done a google search to figure out which RAID level is most appropriate for your use case scenario.

You must have read how everyone swears to stay away from IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) AKA fake-RAID, non-RAID or whatevs-RAID, in favor of dedicated RAID controllers with a dedicated processor and memory, and perhaps a battery.

If you are like me and need fast and reliable storage for work, you might have thought about buying one of those dedicated RAID controllers and just do what everyone suggests to do, however things are not as easy as they seem: here are my issues with discrete RAID controller cards

• Cost

These cards are not cheap, a new 4 slots SAS/SATA 6Gb/s (which is effectively 3Gb/s per SATA connector) such as the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9266-4i start at 299 US dollars, and that is without a battery. The additional battery kit is 80 more dollars. EU people, remember you have to add VAT to these prices.

• Heat

Discrete RAID controllers are meant to be used in server environments which usually have strong airflow. This means the small airflow in your desktop is unlikely to be enough to cool these cards, in fact they easily reach temperatures near 100 degrees Celsius. Overheating is a big deal as it can and will kill your expensive controller and possibly corrupt the entire array.

Many suggest to use PCI blower-style fans placed the slot directly under the RAID controllers to extract the warm air, to be effective these fans are going to be noisy, even if they are rated 20dB at full speed they are not so quiet. If they are quiet they're likely too weak for the job.

In addition, the extra heat will reach your graphics card and make it warm up more easily potentially reducing the performance of any GPU intensive task, including gaming.

• Aesthetics

Green PCB, SAS cables running in front of the motherboard and the additional ugly PCI fan required are definitely not going to look great through your tempered glass side panel

 

If you have money, extra noise will not disrupt or make your job impossible and aesthetics is not a problem, by all means go with a discrete controller solution.

 

The other options:

• NAS

Everyone suggests NAS storage however transfer speeds are slow (limited by gigabit Ethernet) and most of them have 4 bays only limiting the RAID arrays to level 5

• DAS

Directly-Attached Storage exists, even though Network-Attached Storage (NAS) are infinitely more popular. These have faster transfer speed and can host 5 bays or more for RAID 6 and more complex RAID arrays. However transfer speed is still slow compared to the performance you could have with an array within your system.

• Sofware-RAID and Non-RAID

Everyone claims they're unreliable, bad performing and evil. I would like to see performance comparisons. These will use your CPU and RAM to handle the arrays, but how much does it really matter to our 8700K, 32GB DDR4 systems? How badly does a RAID 5 perform on software-RAID or fake-RAID compared to a discrete controller?

• DIY server

You may be crazy but I respect that

 

 

What do you guys think about discrete RAID controllers on consumer desktops/workstations?

 

 

Give me a black pcb discrete raid card that comes with a large passive heatsink and includes a battery kit. Avago, please.

[emosun]

28 minutes ago, Casualrascal said:

• Cost

These cards are not cheap,

Yeah well if you want cheap don't run any form of raid (which inherently requires more than one disk to exist)

29 minutes ago, Casualrascal said:

Heat

this isn't an issue , they make no more heat than the crappiest pci-e 1x gpu's. any case that contains a fan of some form can handle it

30 minutes ago, Casualrascal said:

Aesthetics

again nobody who's running a raid card cares about the pcb color. same reason nobody cares what color pcb their cnc controller card is. 

[Casualrascal]

4 hours ago, emosun said:

Yeah well if you want cheap don't run any form of raid (which inherently requires more than one disk to exist)

this isn't an issue , they make no more heat than the crappiest pci-e 1x gpu's. any case that contains a fan of some form can handle it

again nobody who's running a raid card cares about the pcb color. same reason nobody cares what color pcb their cnc controller card is. 

This is a very rude reply that contains no information whatsoever, but allow me to expand on the topic:

 

As I stated previously, I require a large amount of storage which has to be accessible at all times.

Being a musician and photographer I have reached a point where just running separate hard drives within my system is far from optimal, for waste of space and read speeds. A RAID 5 or 6 would just be safer, more cost effective and higher performing than running JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks). Retrieving RAW files from such an array in fact is supposed to be much faster.

 

And before you say it, yes I do also have an off-site backup that is updated on a regular basis. RAID is not a substitute for backup.

 

On the matter of cost: yes I care about cost because having a working RAID array within one workstation should be cheaper than having a workstation connected through a high bandwidth network to a dedicated private server - which could and could not be a NAS - running the same RAID array. It should be cheaper than having to buy a DAS.

The largest capacity WD Blue or WD Black are 6TB large and a couple of those are simply not enough to store my data while RAID (NAS or datacenter, enterprise rated, however you want to call them) drives are much larger in capacity in addition to being much more reliable.

 

Regarding heat: you are just lying with your statement. And it is not just my word against yours but a simple google search can support the fact that these cards run very, very hot.

Another person who has had troubles with overheating is santsys who cooled the card with a side panel mounted 140mm fan. While it seems like a good solution, I do not own a PC case with a side fan mount. My PC case is an NZXT Noctis 450 with 3x EK-Vardar 120 intake fans and 3x EK-Vardar 140 exhaust, and even though I have quality fans, I had my LSI 9260-4i die because of overheating exactly because I thought it would be "just fine".

In addition to frying, it constantly was at temperatures between 80 to 90 degrees Celsius which caused my graphics card to run warmer and lower the graphics performance just as discussed previously.

 

And regarding aesthetics: it certainly is not a strong point, but my workstation is expensive and is what I see every time I work, the RAID controller is expensive and it does not look any good. Sometimes I have guests in my office and the look of my gear is important, I care about what my workstation looks like and paying a large amount of money to make it look worse is discouraging to me, and I am sure it may be discouraging to others as well.

 

How would you add airflow to a RAID controller in my situation? Or how would you make it look better?

I am curious to know what you think.

[purple_rider]

1 hour ago, Casualrascal said:

How would you add airflow to a RAID controller in my situation? Or how would you make it look better?

I am curious to know what you think.

Make a shroud that covers the raid card entirely. Have one of the intake fans blow into it, past the card and out a PCIe slot cover (assuming yours have slits in them). It will hide the card entirely.

[ToastyBear]

Well i just blew money on a raid setup.

 

Cost: Yes its expensive. Why cant they sell us cards for $200 instead of $700. I bought used. 

 

Heat: YES!!! They overheat. Ended up gluing a $15 40mm noctua fan on the heatsink. It doesnt sound like anything. Super tiny. The heatsink is less than warm now

 

SAS cables. I bought external SAS. But honestly its just a cable dude. If you care so much about a single cable why do you even have hard drives? 

 

Honestly. I hear all your problems and i agree on almost all your points. But i would never rant about it because theres a term for these problems. "First world problems". 

 

Honestly ill tell you what to do. You buy a second PC or use spare parts (you must have a few extra spare computers lying around being a first world citizen). Build a seperate computer to stick your raid in. Then it can saturate your Gigabit LAN port but chances are, shit HDDs cant saturate it. On the off chance you have some super mega raid then i think the netgear 7200 wireless AD router has a 10gb port. You can buy a used 10gb network card off ebay and youre done. Super fast, super simple raid setup without any of the mentioned problems except price. 

 

If you want to be cheap and use IRST, thats perfectly fine. Except the first world problem with intel controller is its garbage. Literally my first world problem is its either 6 sata drives, 4 sata + m.2 or 2 m.2 + 2 sata or 3 m.2. I have like 4 SATA drives and 3 m.2 drives. Even my m.2 drives are bottlenecked because intel DMI 3.0 is 4 lanes only. Oh god what would i do. I honestly dont care and dont do anything. 

 

I shouldnt even have bought my silly raid card. I should have bought an USB C Raid enclosure which does the raid and connects via USB C which maxes out at 10gb/s. 

 

Yes, raid cards are dumb.