Are Raid Controllers worth it?

[Linnaeus]

Just found about it right now. Worth it or not?

My other questions is off topic but are capture cards worth it too?

 

[i7Baby]

Mobos come with them already.

Use Shadowplay for capture

 

[VincentP]

Motherboard chipsets support RAID, but it is a software solution.
This is OK if you just want use RAID 1 (mirroring) in case you lose a hard drive.
Using software RAID will be slower than no RAID at all.

Cheaper RAID controllers do the same job as the motherboard chipset.
If you want to use RAID for increased performance, you really need a hardware RAID solution which is server grade hardware.

For a desktop PC, the best disk performance increase you will get is from an SSD. Best to not use RAID.

 

[i7Baby]

You can raid SSDs but won't see much improvement. They're already running near sata3 speeds anyway.

Might soon match it - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-enterprise-ssd-sas-10nm-class,27399.html

 

[VincentP]

You can raid SSDs but won't see much improvement. They're already running near sata3 speeds anyway.

Might soon match it - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-enterprise-ssd-sas-10nm-class,27399.html

I wasn't suggesting using RAID with SSDs, rather to use an SSD instead of HDD in RAID for performance.
Using motherboard RAID solutions with SSDs will slow disk access down, not increase performance.

 

[i7Baby]

SSDs don't have disks

 

[VincentP]

SSDs don't have disks

I guess you are nit picking the sentence "For a desktop PC, the best disk performance increase you will get is from an SSD."
The term disk is often used for storage other than a mechanical hard drive.
Perfmon for instance has a counter like "Current Disk Queue Length", but this applies to a mechanical hard drive, SSD or RAID array.

 

[smitbret]

Motherboard chipsets support RAID, but it is a software solution.
This is OK if you just want use RAID 1 (mirroring) in case you lose a hard drive.
Using software RAID will be slower than no RAID at all.

Cheaper RAID controllers do the same job as the motherboard chipset.
If you want to use RAID for increased performance, you really need a hardware RAID solution which is server grade hardware.

For a desktop PC, the best disk performance increase you will get is from an SSD. Best to not use RAID.

This is the best answer here. Motherboard and cheap software RAID controllers are good for RAID 1 but I wouldn't trust or use them for anything else.

If you must have RAID and want to go the hardware route, then be ready to invest $100+ on a good hardware RAID card.

There are some software options that are much better than MB RAID setups like FlexRAID or SnapRAID that will give you the redundancy benefits of RAID but they don't use striping so you won't get a speed boost beyond the speed of your drives.