Raid card or Onboard raid...

[ribbon13]

Go Tyan! Dual opt 242 is goodness. Corsair CMX512re-3200ll would be my choice for ram, but that board only has 4 ram slots.

If you have $2k just for what you listed, why not a Thunder K8W or K8WE? Then as your business expands you can get a PCI-X controller.

 

[jameslwhitfield]

I guess I am concerned about only one PCI slot which would hold our second nic. We would also need to run several fax modems for our business. We would receive regular faxes from clients into the server.

Not sure I want to search for pci-x modems.

James

 

[ribbon13]

down clock PCI-X bus A to 33mhz... run pci cards...

 

[jameslwhitfield]

Did not know that. I think that sounds like the better option now. Is the onboard Raid a good controller option or do we need to buy a hardware based card.

James

 

[jameslwhitfield]

Also what are the best places to purchase. I would buy from Newegg but we have to pay them taxes so I have looked at ZipZoomFly for some of our needs

 

[ribbon13]

Tyan K8WE (S2895A2NRF) ($480)
http://8anet.com/merchant.ihtml?pid=2417&lastcatid=5&step=4

Enlight EN-8950B00 ($120)
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s...55094&Type=PE&Category=Comp&dcaid=1688

Corsair CMX512re-3200ll x4 ($180x4)
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80097-33

Opteron 242 retail x2 ($235x2)
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80302-R

Raptor 74s ($180x2)
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101222

$2150

that's not even getting to the psu, monitor or such.

even dropping down to a Tiger K8W isn't going to save you a whole lot in the long run.
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=241895

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: aeternitas
1. Truth is raptor WERE made for server enviroments.
2. Truth is I know from _experiance_ not silly testing, that RAID0 on some dual drive setups is significantly faster than a single of the dual. Games loaded faster, applications loaded quicker things installed faster levels loaded quicker, and I didnt need a stopwatch to show me. That was the improvemnet of a RAID0 setup gone right. If you want proof, get your ass away from all the measurebateing and do some real work.

So you're saying StorageReview and AnandTech are wrong, and you don't need to do any testing to prove they're wrong. Bah! Testing is for noobs! You just KNOW everybody else is wrong. Of course, I would never dare assume it's just because you're afraid to find out you wasted some cash.

Yeah I was wondering if anyone was going to throw some facts at Mr. Computer there. RAID has no benefits so we're not arguing about it Mav. It's been proven time & time again that it does not help. That's the funny part about spending thousands of dollars on something, it will appear to work faster when it actually isn't. Money spent has a way of fooling the senses, especially if it was a ton of money.

 

[necine]

I'd sell 3 of the raptors and make a little profit.

 

[ribbon13]

I use striping all day long and it's night and day, but I will call bullshit on anyone claiming it helps desktop users.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I suggest the broadcom RAIDCore BC4452 in this review Too many upsides to RAID5 to ignore imo.

 

[sharkeeper]

Oh my GAWD I cannot believe this.

The Raptor is hardly a server product. It's an enthusiasts product labeled as an Enterprise market. I don't know of any Enterprise that would use such a product for anything other than a kiosk or single user desktop PC.

Second, Adaptec is hardly the best HBA. Their performance is pitiful at best. In some cases, their RAID0 read speeds are the same and LOWER than a single drive. It's like JBOD with stripes! :Q

Now that this is out of the way, there are several HBA's with decent performance available. If you plan to use all five disks in the system forget about hitching them to an HBA stuck in 32/33 land. They will sit there and spin and spin and that is about.

Time to start thinking about a real workstation board with PCI-X 133MHz OR purchase a PCI-E based SATA intelligent HBA when they become available.

Cheers!