Fastest SSD RAID setup for max read?

[Kaido]

I am building a little project tower, primarily for testing some software that needs high-speed reading under Terminal Server 2008 - looking for some suggestions as to what the best drive setup would be. Don't need space so much as speed, primarily read speed. The goal is (1) have it be bootable, (2) setup as RAID 10, and (3) work under Server 2008. Options I see:

1. Onboard RAID
2. RAID card
3. PCIe SSD

The new X99 boards have like 10 SATA ports that can be setup in RAID 10, but I'm having trouble finding performance data on anyone who has setup say 10 SSD's in RAID:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128751

120gb SATA-III SSD's are like $75 each now, so 10 of those would be around $750:

http://www.amazon.com/Mushkin-Chrono...dp/B005CGFU4I/

I'm not sure what the bottleneck on the board would be (i.e. if 5 would max out the best, negating the need for 10 just to fill up empty ports). Alternatively, I could get a basic RAID card for say $450 like this Areca, which would use the PCI Express bus:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816151137

Third option is a PCIe SSD, either a card or like an M.2 stick. The Intel P3700 card looks nice, but at $1200+ for 400 gigs, ouch (haven't seen the cheaper P3500's available anywhere yet). Maybe I'm better off just doing a RAID 0 of a pair of SATA-III SSD's. Thoughts?

 

[Cerb]

Read speed is not one-dimensional. What do you actually need it to do?

 

[Kaido]

Read speed is not one-dimensional. What do you actually need it to do?

Various projects (test box), so it's pretty much all stuff across the board - everything from file transfers to database stuff. I'd say that I'm looking for the best I can get for under a grand (or even under $800). I forgot that G.Skill has a PCIe card out now as well for $700:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231819

Leaning towards that for simplicity. It does up to 2 GB/s with 245k IOPS (4KB random write). It's basically 4 SSD's in a RAID 0 array. But I'm curious if a modern motherboard's onboard SATA RAID can match that (especially since the G.Skill card only has official drivers available for Windows 7 & 8).

 

[Kaido]

G.Skill verified that the Windows 7 drivers will work for Windows Server 2008, so I'm going to pull the trigger on it & just keep a small drive for doing image backups since it's a 4x RAID 0 configuration on a PCIe card.