B450M mobo & m.2 SATA expansion card compatibility

[Franky Lynn]

I plan to purchase the MSI Arsenal Gaming AMD Ryzen 1st and 2nd Gen Micro-ATX Motherboard (B450M Mortar), which has a dedicated M.2 NVME port between the CPU and PCIe 3.0 x 16 slot. This Mobo only has 4 SATA III ports. If I added the Syba 4 Port SATA III to M.2 M+B Key NGFF NVMe and SATA Socket Adapter Converter Card SD-ADA40118, would I now get 8 SSD SATA III ports? Can I set up the 4 SSDs on this M.2 expansion card as two RAID 0,1 sets? Thanks ahead of time.

 

[kanewolf]

Could you get 8 SATA ports. Maybe. If you have a graphics card it would be very difficult to get the SATA cables out from under the card. I don't think that Syba card has any RAID capabilities.

 

[Franky Lynn]

Could you get 8 SATA ports. Maybe. If you have a graphics card it would be very difficult to get the SATA cables out from under the card. I don't think that Syba card has any RAID capabilities.

Hey, thanks for your answer, Kanewolf. I don't think the SATA cables would be a problem as the M.2 NMVE slot is on the back side of the GPU card, between the PCIE 3.0 x 16 slot and the CPU. This whole RAID thing is new to me, but it is exciting to think of the incredible speed possibilities. I always steered away from it in the past because I didn't understand it and was afraid to risk my OS messing around with it. But since I am contemplating a new build, just thought I would explore the possibilities. Per what you are saying, I would need to purchase a dedicated RAID controller card in order to have 2 or more drives (that do not plug into the Mobo SATA ports) set up in RAID. I understand that. Is there any problem setting up a 2 SSD disk RAID 0,1 with the onboard SATA ports and using that for my OS (Win10)? Are there any booting issues?

 

[USAFRet]

What's the desire for the SSD + RAID?

It isn't as magical as it would appear to be.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449.html


If it were, we'd all be doing it.

 

[Franky Lynn]

What's the desire for the SSD + RAID?

It isn't as magical as it would appear to be.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449.html


If it were, we'd all be doing it.

 

[Franky Lynn]

I want to use the RAID configuration for high speed (ier) CPU for video editing. I know a lot of people use this for configuration for storage, but I am quite happy with my storage disks, but am exploring the possibility of speeding up the CPU. Am I pissing in the wind?

 

[USAFRet]

I want to use the RAID configuration for high speed (ier) CPU for video editing. I know a lot of people use this for configuration for storage, but I am quite happy with my storage disks, but am exploring the possibility of speeding up the CPU. Am I pissing in the wind?

As noted in the above links, it can be even slower than individual drives.

I don't know how intense your vid editing is.
But I'd try it first with just two drives, and see if you see any actual benefit.
Rather than going all out with a bunch of drives.

Those tests are a couple of years old, so maybe the CPU/motherboard situation has caught up, and won't choke the RAID situation. Maybe.

 

[Franky Lynn]

What's the desire for the SSD + RAID?

It isn't as magical as it would appear to be.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449.html


If it were, we'd all be doing it.

That sounds like good advice. Thanks!

 

[Franky Lynn]

That sounds like good advice. Thanks!

 

[Franky Lynn]

I want to use the RAID configuration for high speed (ier) CPU for video editing. I know a lot of people use this for configuration for storage, but I am quite happy with my storage disks, but am exploring the possibility of speeding up the CPU. Am I pissing in the wind?

As noted in the above links, it can be even slower than individual drives.

I don't know how intense your vid editing is.
But I'd try it first with just two drives, and see if you see any actual benefit.
Rather than going all out with a bunch of drives.

Those tests are a couple of years old, so maybe the CPU/motherboard situation has caught up, and won't choke the RAID situation. Maybe.

 

[Franky Lynn]

I really appreciate you taking the time to find those two articles on SSDs and RAID 0, USAFRet. I read them in their entirety and was able to get a basic understanding of the issue. I haven't yet had the experience of using NVME SSDs, but I can see the throughput is much higher than SATA SSDs in RAID 0. I think I will purchase the MSI B450M Mobo and put a 1TB Samsung SSD in NVME port #1 as my OS disk (C:/ drive) and clone it on regular occasions to an identical drive in NVME port #2. Using NVME port #2 takes the PCIE 2.0x4 slot out of operation on this Mobo, but can't think of any need for it. I think that will be more than fast enough for my purposes. Now I understand that RAID 0 was originally intended to speed up storage disks, not OS disks. It might be helpful in video editing when using two SATA SSDs versus one SATA SSD, and then it may not. Thank you for your kind advice. I think you have saved me a lot of money and grief!!!

 

[USAFRet]

...and clone it on regular occasions to an identical drive in NVME port #2

You're referring to backups here, right?
A backup is only as good as the last time you made it. And if you're doing it manually, you WILL forget. Usually, when it is most inconvenient.

Read here for my procedure and others...
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

Recently, I had to recover the data for a dead 960GB SSD. 605GB, poof gone. Don't know why it died, and mostly don't care.
Click click, recover the entirety, exactly as it was at 4AM that morning when it ran the automatic backup for that drive.