SATA RAID-5 onboard?

[imported_murph]

I'm looking for a good motherboard with SATA RAID-5 onboard. Does such a beast exist???

 

[Vette73]

There might be some high end board, but I doubt it.

That and you would probable not gain anything as the card would run on the PCI backbone and there is not enough bandwidth for that and everything else. That is why you need a card that will run PCI-X / 64bit/66Mhz so it can flow well enough to perform to needs.

 

[althes]

epox has a board like that check newegg and epox website, its not expensive abot 150.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: althes
epox has a board like that check newegg and epox website, its not expensive abot 150.

You sure that's with RAID 5, and not just 0, 1, and 0+1? RAID 5 cards are generally fairly large, to accomodate the complex circuitry, and processor needed to perform the rapid, and constant checksum calculations on all the data passing through the hard drive connectors. RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 are cake by comparison - a cheap, $15 RAID card can do the job adequately there, but RAID 5 cards are $100+. I too find it doubtful that you'd find RAID 5 on a consumer-level motherboard; it might even be tough to come by on server motherboards. But I could be wrong.

 

[Vette73]

^


Some of the NEW SATA chips that have 4 ports that can do Raid 5, BUT they run on the PCI bus, with the sound card, ethernet, etc... so yea SOME boards can do Raid 5, but I doubt you will see a LARGE gain being that it is still on the SHARED pci bus.

I think VIA, SiS, and some others are planning on putting 4 SATA lines in their south bridge, 2 more then most do now, and MIGHT allow Raid 5, and it would not be on the PCI bus.

 

[Josephus]

The Silicon Image SI3114 four port SATA Raid controller found ony may motherboards supports levels 0,1 & 1 + 0. The newer SI3124 does RAID 5 as well, but is a PCI-X chip

 

[mechBgon]

Asus is claiming RAID5 for their K8N-E Deluxe, whenever it finally reaches the market. It has four SATA jacks running off of a SI 3114 (if I recall correctly) plus another pair running off of the native nForce3 250Gb chipset.

Like Marlin1975 says, there's only so much bandwidth available to a PCI-bound controller, so keep it all in perspective.