Need Help On Selecting Raid Card!!!!! and a random hard drive question...

[MrNintend0]

Hey guys, I'm hoping to start a new project this summer, if not this coming fall. If you aren't aware, I talked about it some a while back (last year sometime), and I've decided to go along with it instead of continuously procrastinating... Anyways... the computer will have 4 hard drives (sorry, I'm not going to waste my hard earned cash on SSDs until they get a really nice price drop (maybe half of what they are now?)). All of which will be in RAID 10 (aka 1+0), this way I get better performance and safety for my system... although I'm not sure if I'll get the same performance as RAID 0 or not, because mirroring is happening as well... Well, I've done a little research and have noticed that a decent RAID card gives better performance than the on-board RAID on a motherboard. My question is: What is one of the, if not the best RAID card available?

Specs I would like the card to have:
1) Cost <$150-$200
2) Can utilize 4 hard drives or more (e-sata excluded, don't really care if it does have it)
3) Interface is PCI or PCI-e x1
4) MUST INCLUDE RAID 10 (aka 1+0)

I have looked at this one on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124032

Now, the random hard drive question is: Are the Western Digital Velociraptors worth the cost and limited space, or would it be better to just stick with a higher capacity 7200rpm drive? Any opinions or views are welcome.

[Drum Thumper]

First off, make sure all the hard drives are the same model and revision. Less chance of a headache down the road by doing this.

As for the velociraptor debate, that truly depends if speed is going to be a factor or not. What are you looking to store on your server?

As I am sure you noticed, RAID cards can get expensive in a hurry. That Syba card might work well for you. The only thing that has me worried is the one lowly review. It is very hard to tell if that review was written by a shill (paid by Syba to positively review their products) or not.

[MrNintend0]

Alright, thanks, but it's going to be a high-performance gaming rig... I know it sounds funny with 4 hard drives just for gaming; I like performance, but I would like to have some sense of safety/redundancy just in case something happens instantaneously (it's a long shot, but it's happened before). Also, the shill makes sense... thanks for your opinion, I'll see what others have to say seeing as I have plenty of time anyways...

[d_stilgar]

Well, if you are building a new system, then odds are that the motherboard will support raid 1, 0, 10, or 5. I'm not really familiar with raid, so I'm not sure what the benefits of having a dedicated raid card are, but it might not be necessary. If you are on a budget, you might want to have the raid controlled by the motherboard and spend your savings on a nicer PCU and/or GPU.

Just my 2c.

[MrNintend0]

Well, if you are building a new system, then odds are that the motherboard will support raid 1, 0, 10, or 5. I'm not really familiar with raid, so I'm not sure what the benefits of having a dedicated raid card are, but it might not be necessary.

Thanks for your 2c. What I have been reading is that a dedicated RAID card is better, because it takes the strain off of the "main" processor. Let me see if I can clear this up; because it is an onboard RAID chip, it means that the main processor is the one that controls the functions of that chip, this in turn comes back as a "load" on the CPU. A dedicated RAID card has a processor all its own to control the functions and calculations, meaning that there will be no load on the main CPU.

That strain may not be much for some people, but others ,like me, want to squeeze as much performance out of our computers as possible.

[Airbozo]

Thanks for your 2c. What I have been reading is that a dedicated RAID card is better, because it takes the strain off of the "main" processor. Let me see if I can clear this up; because it is an onboard RAID chip, it means that the main processor is the one that controls the functions of that chip, this in turn comes back as a "load" on the CPU. A dedicated RAID card has a processor all its own to control the functions and calculations, meaning that there will be no load on the main CPU.

That strain may not be much for some people, but others ,like me, want to squeeze as much performance out of our computers as possible.

This is correct. Although there still is a load on the cpu, it is very minimal since all the calculations for striping and error control are on the raid controller. Also look into raid 5 (which most onboard controllers can not handle).

One other item to look out for is the ability of the controller to rebuild a drive in the event of a failure. Some cheaper controllers require that the system be in "recovery mode". This basically means that the system is unusable until the rebuild is finished in the event of a failed drive.

[Luke122]

+1 vote on a dedicated card. Controller failure? Replace the card. Onboard failure? replace the motherboard. Whoops.

Performance wise, cards will eat onboard alive.

[Kayin]

Yeah, but a GOOD card will set you back a good bit.

Go get a Dell PERC 5/i off Ebay. For your simple setup, get a single fanout cable, and you won't really even need to worry about memory or BBU.

I'm looking at RAID10, possibly even something like a RAID6 and so I'm getting one for my system, but it'll be running 8 SAS drives. There's a big difference there.

[x88x]

To answer a couple of your questions, MrNintend0, no, that Syba will not give you what you're looking for. To my knowledge, Syba doesn't make any RAID cards that actually handle all the calculations. Granted, with RAID1+0 (or 0+1 for that matter), there's not actually all that much calculations to do, but you will see a performance boost because there is less communication on the system bus.

Unfortunately, to get a real, dedicated RAID card, you're gonna be shelling out a good bit of cash. Like Drum Thumper said, they expensive fast. I'm pretty sure this LSI will do ($180) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118114), and I know this Highpoint will ($260) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115026).

For HDDs, I would not recommend the Velociraptor series. They were too little, too late, imo, and lately the Samsung F3 series has been consistently outperforming them, mainly because of their 500GB platters (not the 500GB drive though; for some reason they only put a 16MB cache in that one).

EDIT:
Also, I just realized I forgot to mention; you are definitely not going to want a PCI card. Go for at least PCIe x1, preferably x4 or x8. The reason for this is that the PCI bus is limited to 133MBps (1.064Gbps) max throughput, and you are going to want preferably at least 200MBps throughput assuming the HDDs in question have read/write speeds around 100MBps (I think this is about what the 1TB F3's get). PCIe 2.0 has throughput speeds of 500MBps per lane, so an x1 should give you the speed you want, but as always, more is better ;)

[XcOM]

both them cards are good, that syba isn't a real raid card, its just a controller card thus putting the strain back on the CPU,

depending on what you want depends which one is better for you,

for shear speed the LSI is good as it supports Sata 6GB/s so your future proof with hdd's, but i think the highpoint is the better of the two, a good RAID5 array will keep up with the other card no problem, it just seems a better card, and it supports live raid rebuilding which is a bonus,

Im using RAID0 on my onboard and the throughput isn't as much as i would of hoped for, but i plan to get a PCI-ex SATA controller soon and port my raid array over to get the little bit of extra peformance

[MrNintend0]

Thanks for all your help guys, but I'm still a little confused... x88x, you said that the LSI will do and that the Highpoint is better. I've looked at both and I'm curious, exactly how does a single mini-SAS connector on the LSI connect to four SATA hard drives? Do you need a special cable or something?

[x88x]

Yes, one mini-SAS connector will drive up to 4 SAS or SATA drives. You have to get a special cable, this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103193&cm_re=mini_sas_to_sata-_-16-103-193-_-Product) should work just fine.

[MrNintend0]

Thanks x88x, and to the rest of you who were also very helpful :D