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areca ARC-1231ML-2G with P5Q Deluxe

You can use that Areca in either of the black PCIE x16 (physical) slots on your board. The first black slot gets up to x8 eletrical lanes and the second black slot gets up to x4 electrical lanes. I'm not sure if that card can make use of the additional bandwidth from an x8 electrical link, but if it can, you should use it in the first black PCIE x16 slot for the full x8 electrical lanes. Doing this however will reduce your first PCIE x16 slot to x8 electrical as well, so if you game with a high-end video card you may see some performance degradation as a result.

 
yes, it will work, and I would hook it up to a pcie x8 minimum, pci x16 will work (as previous poster noted, if it is a full x16 then you are fine. it should still work at x4 but with such a nice card, I don't think you want to limit the bandwidth. so... hook it up to the full bandwidth slot)
 
Thanks chizow and wired247 for your detailed explanation.

I use sapphire HD 2600XT graphics card, which is installed in the blue slot - which I believe is PCIe 2.0 x16. So to use the Areca 1231 raid controller card, I'll have to install it in first black slot (PCIe 2x16 slot, x8 link). So according to chizow the blue slot will downgrade to x8 link. I checked up the manual of the P5Q but couldn't confirm this fact, are you sure chizow that the graphics card performance will be reduced? won't it continue to be x16 link?

Only thing the manual says is if one of the PCIe x1 slots is occupied, then universal PCI express x16 slot will downgrade to max x1 speed, doesn't say anything about the slot we are going to use for the raid controller.


I don't play any games on the computer, so does it matter if my graphic card operates at x8? I just don't want any lack of general system performance on desktop with aero and photoshop etc.

Also, using the black slot x8 link will the Areca 1231 perform at 100% capacity or does it need the x16 link (blue slot) to unlock the full potential?


 
Yep, np. I just checked again and you're right, the manual doesn't say the first is degraded to x8 (my P5Q-E manual is probably very similar), however, its a limitation of the P45 northbridge chipset, which only has 20 PCIE lanes. When the 2nd slot is used the x16 link is split into 2x8 for the first two slots.

As for the graphics card, I wouldn't worry about it as a 2600XT doesn't require full x16 bandwidth to function at capacity. Also, your Areca is actually x8 physical, so its also x8 electrical link max, so you'll be capping capacity in that 2nd black slot at x8 electrical.

I'd go ahead and put the Areca in the first black PCIE slot, giving you 4 GB/s bandwidth, which should be sufficient for even 12 SSD in RAID 0. 2GB/s might limit you marginally, however I'm pretty sure I've seen benches of SSD RAID arrays hitting STR of ~200MB/s each, so 12 of those could theoretically break the 2GB/s bandwidth offered by an x4 PCIE slot.
 
hmm...that makes sense. I think it should be fine with the setup you suggested. Thanks again chizow for your help, much appreciated 🙂

 
Yep, np at all, are you planning to do anything really exotic with that card? Like a bunch of SSDs, SAS or VRaptors? If so you should post your results in memory/storage subforum, they really like seeing results of fast storage subsystems on quality dedicated RAID controllers.
 
haha..yep that's the plan, but not in the immediate future, when i do i'll surely post the results. thanks again chizow.
 
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