Question Anyone make an NVMe RAID-0 (striping) array of SSDs on an AM4 mobo? What steps do I need?

[VirtualLarry]

Curious to hear from someone that has actually done this before.

Looking at maybe putting together a 2x1TB 660p NVMe SSD RAID-0 array, on an ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F ATX mobo.

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-STRIX-B450-F-GAMING/

Will have a 4TB spinner for backing up the RAID-0 array to it daily. So no worries about RAID-0 failure. (Well, mostly none.)

Edit: Some specific questions that I guess I have off-hand:

1) Will the RAID-0 performance be badly affected, if one of the sockets is PCI-E 3.0 x4, and the other is PCI-E 3.0 x2, and both of the SSDs are PCI-E 3.0 x4?
Edit: I see that both NVMe sockets support PCI-E 3.0 x4, so this should be a non-issue, I think.

2) Will I lose the ability to monitor SSD health and lifespan, with the "Intel SSD Toolbox", if they are in a RAID-0 array controlled by AMD UEFI RAID?
Edit: I'm guessing that the answer to this is "Yes". I don't know how big a deal that is.

 

[UsandThem]

I haven't done it, but my question would be why? NVMe drives are so fast, running them in RAID would benefit very few people (outside of benchmark bragging rights).

This is the first Ryzen board I've seen that has 2 PCIe 3.0 X4 M.2 slots. All the others I've seen have a full speed one (through the CPU), and a PCIe 2.0 X4 (through the chipset). I wonder if it's a typo on Asus' part? Even on a top-of-the-line X470 board like the Taichi Ultimate, that's what it has: https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/X470 Taichi Ultimate/index.asp#Specification

So running RAID using both of the M.2 slots should drop the top speed down for both drives to what they discuss in thread: https://forums.evga.com/PCIe-30-x4-SSD-on-PCIe-20-slots-what-would-I-expect-m2531123.aspx

 

[VirtualLarry]

This is the first Ryzen board I've seen that has 2 PCIe 3.0 X4 M.2 slots.

Yeah, it's kind of nice.

Normally, the Ryzen CPUs have PCI-E 3.0 x16 available for video card slots, and an additional dedicated PCI-E 3.0 x4 for the primary NVMe socket, as I understand it.

From the slot configuration specs on that board, it lists the primary PCI-E slot / secondary PCI-E slot config as either x16, or x8/x4, which means that the additional x4 off of the CPU lanes is being redirected to the secondary NVMe PCI-E 3.0 x4 socket, along with the dedicated PCI-E 3.0 x4 being directed to the primary NVMe socket. At least, that's the best that I figure.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

i thought in your other thread about the Intel 660 (where you said you got 2, open box, etc) that you weren't going to Raid them!

I gave up on raid after SSD's came out. I just didn't see the benefit anymore since SSD's are so many times faster even than the WD Raptor. i last had 2x Raptors in Raid and it was the fastest we could do at the time.

How much real world benefit is there w/ 1x Intel 660 vs 2x660 in Raid?

 

[bigboxes]

What's the point, Larry? To say that you have done it? You're not going to see any tangible difference. Just adding more points of failure. IMO

 

[B-Riz]

What's the point, Larry? To say that you have done it? You're not going to see any tangible difference. Just adding more points of failure. IMO

Me looking sadly at 2 x EX920 512GB I wanted to RAID 0 on the X399 board.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What's the point, Larry? To say that you have done it? You're not going to see any tangible difference. Just adding more points of failure. IMO

I know, kind of like using a Ferrari to go to the corner store. Yeah, I just want to try it.

 

[killster1]

I know, kind of like using a Ferrari to go to the corner store. Yeah, I just want to try it.

More like a dual motor vw.. ,) why not buy one drive with better specs. I see inland 1tb on sale at microcenter for 90$ pretty sure the 660p is sloooow. Edit/ 660p isn't terrible as I thought good power usage and single cue random writes but the rest are sometimes half that of 970 evo

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA53D98B2261&ignorebbr=1

Insane IOPS on this SSD compared with others. 10/13/2018 7:22:38 AM

Pros: Love this SSD. Runs at the 1800 write and 3200 read speeds as was advertised. Put two in R.A.I.D 0 and the speed was 3000 Write and 3500 Read. Having the increased write speed felt considerably faster. 110 GB worth of Steam games transferred to a Platter Drive. The Speed, just unreal!

Cons: Only Negative is, that I was getting unsafe shut downs and restarts in R.A.I.D. mode. So I had to go back to single ssd. I can tell the difference. Wish I knew what I was doing wrong. Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 8 with i7 7700k at 4.8 GHz ,16 GB G. Skill 3200 MHz RGB memory and two of these M.2 SSD

Other Thoughts: Buy this SSD. It has the fastest IOPS I have seen on any of them.

Did you find this review helpful?



Ashraf K.

Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

Verified Owner

Great product! 12/2/2017 9:42:45 AM

Pros: I have 2 of these in a raid 0 setup, blisteringly fast.

Cons: They do get warmer while testing speeds, but regular everyday use these stay nice and cool.

Other Thoughts: I would recommend it but make sure it is compatible with your motherboard.

So, here's two examples of people that run NVMe SSDs in RAID-0. One got improved speeds, but has unsafe shutdowns, and the other makes no mention of problems, nor performance numbers (other than "blisteringly fast").

I guess I'm most interested, now, in information that AMD's NVMe RAID driver supports passing TRIM commands to each individual NVMe drive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I did finally figure out how (on BIOS/UEFI 1102) on my ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F Gaming ATX mobo, to set up a RAID-0 array of NVMe drives.

I enabled "AMI Native NVMe driver", then another option appeared after reboot, under the SATA settings, "NVMe RAID", which I enabled, and another reboot, and now another setting appears under "Advanced", under SATA and USB, keep scrolling down (it doesn't show otherwise), and you'll get to "AMD RaidXpert2", which will allow you to create the array.

Benchmark-wise, I got 1800MB/sec read on a single drive, and 3200MB/sec on a RAID-0 of two Intel 1TB 660p SSDs.

I couldn't figure it out at first, so I had to re-install Windows 10 again, after blowing away the drives and then creating a new array.