How can I add SATA 3.0 to my rig ?

[tweakboy]

Because eventually when I get a SSD its gonna be 3.0 version...

like a pci card or something, soo I can have some nice 3.0 inputs.. hmmm

 

[shabby]

Plenty of pcie sata 3 cards on newegg for $20-40 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...e=SATA III (6.0Gb/s)&Order=PRICE&Pagesize=100

 

[Shmee]

most of them seem rather crappy, and will be bottlenecked at least somewhat by the single PCIE lane. Intel native is much preferred.

 

[tweakboy]

Thanks for reply guys. What is Intel Native shmee ?

Oh 20 bucks ,, nice I thought it was this big expensive thing 80 bucks but ya ,,,, if your gonna get a sata 3 ssd ,,, its essential to get this too,, to achieve top performance...

 

[paperwastage]

native Intel SATA 6 = intel's physical version/implementation of the SATA 6, but I haven't seen them selling for 3rd party add-ons like on a PCIe x1 card, only on the Intel Chipsets (eg H67, P67...), therefore "native"

if you look at 3rd party add-on reviews, most of them are crap, and you're better off just using the SATA 2 connector... you'll just lose the consequential write/read speeds, but the random / small files write/read will still be fine

 

[wpcoe]

The cheap PCIe SATA3 add-in cards are all x1 (single lane) which on PCIe 2 is only 500Mb/s theoretical speed. Allowing for even minimal overhead, and your actual speed will be less. So, if you want to see those nice 500+ Mb/s read/write speeds, you'll be disappointed with those x1 cards.

If you move up to the next tier -- and I think they are around $100? -- then you should be able to find an x2 (or x4?) card which would be better for speed.

I have a new PCIe 2.0 x1 SATA3 card with a 120GB Intel 520 SSD, and I do not see above 400Mb/s speeds in any benchmark tests.

 

[palladium]

Don't need one. You gain about 10% from random r/w going from sata 2 to sata 3. The only thing that sees a huge gain is sequential and to some extent, high QD r/w, so unless this matters to you, you're better off using the motherboard's sata2 port. This coming from an Intel SSD 520 user on a sata2.

 

[wpcoe]

+1 to what palladium just posted.

The overall performance of my Intel 520 on the SATA3 add-in card is not much better than on the native Intel shipset SATA2 ports on the motherboard.

 

[beginner99]

Agree with previous posters. All affordable add-in cards suck. They usually all come with the same Marvell controller that has certain limits.

See:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2227791&highlight=marvell+sata

However they realeas a new one:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2232773&highlight=marvell+sata

but no idea if that is better or affordable

 

[Old Hippie]

How can I add SATA 3.0 to my rig ?

You're in this forum every day and haven't read the other 89 threads discussing the same thing with the same solution?

 

[tweakboy]

Very nice thanks guy... I will 86 the raid card and connect to mobo SATA .. thx

Soon gotta get a 320GB ssd ,

 

[Old Hippie]

Very nice thanks guy... I will 86 the raid card and connect to mobo SATA .. thx

See what a little research will bring ya.

 

[taltamir]

Plenty of pcie sata 3 cards on newegg for $20-40 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...E&Pagesize=100

Which are all crud.
You want SATA3 that doesn't suck, you buy an intel CPU & Mobo that has it on the intel controller (avoid the ones that use a third party SATA3 port. those all suck)

 

[bryanW1995]

Haha, most 3rd party sata 6gb/s controllers included with a motherboard are actually weaker than the intel sata II controllers.

 

[billyb0b]

my x58 sabertooth mobo has a marvell sata3 controller on board and my corsat force gt ssd which is advertised with 500+ mb/sec read/write speeds i pushing just over 400 mb/sec on both

 

[Coup27]

You're in this forum every day and haven't read the other 89 threads discussing the same thing with the same solution?

It's a shame a few more people haven't worked this guy out yet. I'm sure I've even seen him post in one of these SATA 6Gbps card threads as well.

 

[exdeath]

Onboard controllers for the win. It doesn't get much faster than when your onboard SATA 6g controller is sitting right on the QPI or HyperTransport primary back bone at 20+ GB/sec only one hop away from your CPU.

If you want a comparable add in card, you'll need to spend $200-300 for something like a LSI RAID card that uses a PCIe 8x slot.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Because eventually when I get a SSD its gonna be 3.0 version...

like a pci card or something, soo I can have some nice 3.0 inputs.. hmmm

You want something like this. A bit on the expensive side, but you get what you pay for.

 

[taltamir]

You want something like this. A bit on the expensive side, but you get what you pay for.

No you don't. Someone running a datacenter wants this.
You can, for less money, upgrade your mobo and CPU to get a proper intel controller coming off your intel CPU.

 

[Magic Carpet]

No you don't. Someone running a datacenter wants this.
You can, for less money, upgrade your mobo and CPU to get a proper intel controller coming off your intel CPU.

This has standard SATA connections (with the use of cables). Nobody said, it's going to be cheap, - if you want to build a high-performance multi-SSD SATA3 RAID, make no compromise. Good luck finding a motherboard with more than 2 SATA3 Intel ports.

 

[Old Hippie]

I'm sure I've even seen him post in one of these SATA 6Gbps card threads as well.

Yep.

 

[groberts101]

This has standard SATA connections (with the use of cables). Nobody said, it's going to be cheap, - if you want to build a high-performance multi-SSD SATA3 RAID, make no compromise. Good luck finding a motherboard with more than 2 SATA3 Intel ports.

I think that you may have misinterpreted the OP's original question or have taken it to the extreme for what he's trying to achieve here. That's like recommending a Ferrari for his first car. I would also be curious if tweakboy even has his license yet(an SSD) to even be in this raidcard market?

And you don't "need" more than 2 Intel 6G ports since there are plenty of people around the net who have spanned Intel's 6G and 3G ports with excellent results. In fact, those solutions will typically beat even the most expensive raidcards all to hell where it really counts down low. Drivers and caching to ram is excellent with Intel and the raidcards really only start beating it up in the sequentials after about 16-32k file sizes. Not to mention that Intel's 1400MB/s saturation limit is nothing to sneeze at.

Plus, anything more than about 2 fast 6G SSD's is getting into "looky me" territory with very little use/real world gain for those who would not have fast enough storage speeds to ever even make use of 1GB/s sequential speeds. I myself would prefer 4 fast 6G SSD's.. but I'm well known to be pretty silly by now.

Cheapest half way decent raidcard that will have a fast enough sata chip to make use of 6G SSD will be the Highpoint 2720 at around $150. I would guess that we should be seeing newer version cards using the newer Marvell 6G chips later this year.

 

[Old Hippie]

That's like recommending a Ferrari for his first car. I would also be curious if tweakboy even has his license yet(an SSD) to even be in this raidcard market?

I thought he bought an SSD but like many he's a "tire kicker".

 

[groberts101]

I thought he bought an SSD but like many he's a "tire kicker".

LOL.. I think that is the case here. IIRC.. he even made a comment in another thread about "300GB just not being enough for his needs" and needing 320GB's instead.

Funny stuff.

 

[taltamir]

if you want to build a high-performance multi-SSD SATA3 RAID, make no compromise. Good luck finding a motherboard with more than 2 SATA3 Intel ports.

Not a single person in this thread wanted this. The question was how to get a single SSD, not in RAID, connected via SATA3.
The 2 intel ports are 1 more then you need for that.