Storage on New Z97 Mobos - WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?

vladman

Junior Member
Dec 2, 2006
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Maybe I'm missing something, but with the new Z97 motherboards that just came out (BTW I got a Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H and it kicks ass!) all the review sites (including AnandTech) are going crazy for the new "high-speed" storage options that are being included on these new boards.

Unless I'm missing something, I don't see what the big deal is. Sure the M.2 SSDs & PCI-E connections on these boards combined with the appropriately fast drives for these connections are going to be faster than your average SATA SSD (about 50% faster), but 770MB/s as opposed to 550MB/s Read is still not much to get excited about.

If you want REALLY fast storage, here's what you do:
- Use your Z87 mobo instead of buying a Z97 board
- Buy yourself a nice Areca RAID controller (about $300 for one w/a single SFF-8087 to 4 SATA - OR - about $430 for one with 2 SFF-8087 to 8 SATA ports)
- Buy 4 or 8 decently fast SSDs (128MB @ $80 ea. X 4 = $320)
- Combine them into a RAID 0 array on the Areca controller for about 1500MB/s - 2000MB/s Read

Sure my solution is more expensive, but it's much faster and move expandable (not limited to 1 or 2 drives like the onboard M.2 or PCI-E connections.

I only bought the Z97X-UD5H because I was building a new system & wanted to be ready for the 5th-gen Haswell (i7-4790K), and I wanted something new. I will be getting an Areca controller & 4 SSDs for a RAID 0 as soon as I can scrape together some more funds.

Any thoughts?

PS: Back up your RAID 0 array.
 
Feb 25, 2011
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Yes. Spending more money often gets you more performance.

Want a simple system with one drive and fewer points of failure? Most people do. Last month, they were limited to sata3. Now they're not. That's awesome.
 

Deders

Platinum Member
Oct 14, 2012
2,401
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Raid seems to not benefit 4k read and writes which is where the performance of SSD's shine, the maximum read and writes are pretty much meaningless as no one will reach those speeds in everyday usage.

That is why for me the new storage standards on the z97 boards aren't that much to get excited about yet. I'll wait until they release hardware capable of taking advantage of NVMe which provides lower latency due to less commands needed to access and SSD compared to an AHCI hard drive.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
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Raid seems to not benefit 4k read and writes which is where the performance of SSD's shine, the maximum read and writes are pretty much meaningless as no one will reach those speeds in everyday usage.

That is why for me the new storage standards on the z97 boards aren't that much to get excited about yet. I'll wait until they release hardware capable of taking advantage of NVMe which provides lower latency due to less commands needed to access and SSD compared to an AHCI hard drive.
Software RAID on Linux, at least, does quite well. It's just that the random performance has already reached diminishing returns, by the time you've gotten to tens of thousands of IOPS on a single drive. NVMe won't change that, either, though it should improve performance across the board.
 

KentState

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2001
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You don't even need a dedicated controller on a Z87 to reach 1.5 - 2GBps speeds with RAID 0. I see that with my setup just using Intel's controller.
 

Revolution 11

Senior member
Jun 2, 2011
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Intel better increase their PCI-E lane count that can be used for M2 drives or I am going to have problems for their future products. Two lanes are ok for now but you can't mix SATA express (if you have a old SSD) with a newer M2 SSD right now.

Intel needs to provide more lanes for future chipsets. It doesn't matter if they are Gen 2.0 although Gen 3.0 lanes will be twice the speed so you need less of them.

Good on Asrock to provide 4 lanes for their Z97 motherboard.
 

Galatian

Senior member
Dec 7, 2012
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Intel better increase their PCI-E lane count that can be used for M2 drives or I am going to have problems for their future products. Two lanes are ok for now but you can't mix SATA express (if you have a old SSD) with a newer M2 SSD right now.

Intel needs to provide more lanes for future chipsets. It doesn't matter if they are Gen 2.0 although Gen 3.0 lanes will be twice the speed so you need less of them.

Good on Asrock to provide 4 lanes for their Z97 motherboard.


Actually you can also blame the mainboard manufactures to a point: they decide how to allocate the 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes from the chipset. They could use 4 lanes if they wanted to, but all of them instead decided we need 150 USB ports and 60 SATA ports (a little hyperbole here). Here is too hoping that ASUS will still release a ROG mainboard with a faster slot but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Bottom line: it is possible, but manufactures seem to be too concerned to have enough USB and SATA ports for their marketing department.
 

coffeejunkee

Golden Member
Jul 31, 2010
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Intel better increase their PCI-E lane count that can be used for M2 drives or I am going to have problems for their future products. Two lanes are ok for now but you can't mix SATA express (if you have a old SSD) with a newer M2 SSD right now.

Intel needs to provide more lanes for future chipsets. It doesn't matter if they are Gen 2.0 although Gen 3.0 lanes will be twice the speed so you need less of them.

Good on Asrock to provide 4 lanes for their Z97 motherboard.

Keep in mind Nvidia x8 lanes requirement for sli. If you use 4 cpu lanes you only have 12 left for gpu's so no sli. More lanes means more expensive mobos. Best option imo would be chipset pci-e 3.0 asap.

I don't get OP complaint. Yes you can get really fast storage for the price of nice mid-end pc. Adding an M.2 slot for the people who don't want to do that doesn't prevent you from doing so.