[SOLVED] Blew $4k on a custom build. Twin 980PRO NVME Raid 0 does NOT deliver!

[tt6368]

just got a new rig with I9-10850k, asus z490-A, and in the pursued of sheer speed, decided to get two samsung 980PRO NVME and run them in Raid 0. Was hoping to get 7000m/s x2 =glorious 14000m/s read speed. Turns out it maxes out around 3500-3800M/s. No other SATA sharing the lane and mode set to pcie. Weird thing is if I run a single 980PRO speed is almost the same. Nowhere near the claimed 7000m/s. Something is bottlenecking these fast NVMEs and I just can't figure out where. Pls help.

 

[SkyNetRising]

1. Asus z490-A is PCIE 3.0 motherboard. 980 PRO requires PCIE 4.0 connectivity to achieve full speed.
2. RAID 0 has never been a thing for NVME drives. It simply doesn't produce desired performance increase.

 

[USAFRet]

Was hoping to get 7000m/s x2 =glorious 14000m/s read speed.

Even with the right motherboard (yours isn't), that was never going to happen anyway, except maybe in artificial benchmarks.

From several years ago:
RAID 0 + NVMe drives
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449.html

That has not changed.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

$230 for a 1TB 980 Pro...
$250 for a 2TB 970 Evo Plus (my purchase price)

If Intel CPUs currently supported PCie 4.0 I'd have still went with the 3.0 SSDs.

 

[tt6368]

Do you think it makes sense to buy a pcie 4.0 raid card to host two 980pro? (Assuming money isn’t an issue), Will it and the video card run on x16 at the same time?
I just want pure, unmolested ssd speed. Otherwise my life has no meanings

 

[USAFRet]

Do you think it makes sense to buy a pcie 4.0 raid card to host two 980pro? (Assuming money isn’t an issue), Will it and the video card run on x16 at the same time?
I just want pure, unmolested ssd speed. Otherwise my life has no meanings

No.
Especially if you're going to continue down this RAID 0 path.

Well..you DO get bragging rights among your clueless friends.
"Look at this! I have the uberest SSD's in a RAID 0!"
'oh cool! How much faster does it do anything?'
"well...it doesn't really. But its still cool"
'Neato'

What do you use this system for?

 

[tt6368]

No.
Especially if you're going to continue down this RAID 0 path.

Well..you DO get bragging rights among your clueless friends.
"Look at this! I have the uberest SSD's in a RAID 0!"
'oh cool! How much faster does it do anything?'
"well...it doesn't really. But its still cool"
'Neato'

What do you use this system for?

bragging rights. To my imaginary friends.

but won’t it be at least twice as fast given the pcie bottle neck is removed ? I mean if I give up on the raid just get a pcie 4.0 m.2 card does it make sense to jump from 3500m/s to 7000?

 

[USAFRet]

bragging rights. To my imaginary friends.

but won’t it be at least twice as fast given the pcie bottle neck is removed ? I mean if I give up on the raid just get a pcie 4.0 m.2 card does it make sense to jump from 3500m/s to 7000?

The only thing that would approach "twice as fast" is the artificial benchmarks.
Actual user facing performance, not at all.

 

[tt6368]

The only thing that would approach "twice as fast" is the artificial benchmarks.
Actual user facing performance, not at all.

But won’t it shave a few seconds off windows boot time?

 

[USAFRet]

Even the non-RAID difference between PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 is almost zero in actual use.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YoRKQy-UO4

 

[BlueMicrobe]

I get 3576Mb/s on my 500Gb 970 Evo (Not pro it was $98 AU) from M.2 slot, in PCI-E 3.0. Don't worry about RAID If anything I would run it in RAID 1 So you've at least got a use for that second expensive ass drive lol. I don't think it matters, because my windows is installed on my 250Gb Sata SSD and its fast enough to beat every other pc I know irl, im sure with an M.2 Its fine and plus, if you get a new motherboard with drives in RAID 0 already and with Data on them good luck.

 

[DSzymborski]

RAID has some very specific professional uses.

For 99% of consumers? Nope.

It doesn't even really work for bragging rights because it won't impress experienced hobbyists either. It's a bit like buying pre-torn jeans or showing up to a group of skateboarders or surfboarders with the price tag still on your board.

 

[Flayed]

You could buy an optane drive before they are discontinued a few grand spent should shave a second or two from loading times lol

 

[SkyNetRising]

Do you think it makes sense to buy a pcie 4.0 raid card to host two 980pro? (Assuming money isn’t an issue), Will it and the video card run on x16 at the same time?

You do understand, you'd have to build completely new Ryzen (or Threadripper) based pc for this? Don't you?

 

[geofelt]

95% of what windows does is small random I/O
For that, there is negligible difference among all ssd devices including sata and pcie(excepting optane)

If you want to save boot time, do not boot at all.
Use sleep to ram(no hibernate)
sleep/wake becomes a handful of seconds.

 

[tt6368]

Thanks guys. I haven't been in the pc building game for a while and it just bugs the crap out of me that my $5k computer takes ages to boot while the $500 mini pc I bought for my wife off aliexpress uses a recycled laptop motherboard and a 5th gen mobile core and it boots in literally 6 seconds from button press. My POST takes longer than that. ( I understand a custom board bios might skip everything but enthusiastic board should at least give you that option)

My wife measures how fast a computer is by boot time (from button press). So she laughs at my shiny new toy. Plus I'm the kind of guy that gets a high from specs and benchmarks....the z490 was a mistake but it was handled to me as a gift so i didn't have a choice to go to x570 or ryzen....

 

[SkyNetRising]

it boots in literally 6 seconds from button press.

6 seconds from power button to desktop? It waking up from sleep (not booting up).

Shutdown your wifes pc and disconnect it from power for 1 minute. Measure boot process after that.
If that is a laptop with internal battery, then this will not work obviously.

 

[tt6368]

Well maybe 8 seconds now with all the crap installed on windows but on a fresh install 6 flat. It’s a custom board intended for commercial use with the processor soldiered on there. There’s literally no options in the bios

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks guys. I haven't been in the pc building game for a while and it just bugs the crap out of me that my $5k computer takes ages to boot while the $500 mini pc I bought for my wife off aliexpress uses a recycled laptop motherboard and a 5th gen mobile core and it boots in literally 6 seconds from button press. My POST takes longer than that. ( I understand a custom board bios might skip everything but enthusiastic board should at least give you that option)

My wife measures how fast a computer is by boot time (from button press). So she laughs at my shiny new toy. Plus I'm the kind of guy that gets a high from specs and benchmarks....the z490 was a mistake but it was handled to me as a gift so i didn't have a choice to go to x570 or ryzen....

6 seconds is almost certainly just coming out of sleep/hibernation.
NOT from an actual full power off.

Want real fast boot? This...
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fastest-windows-10-boot-time,5810.html

Basically, strip out everything usable, in search of that one particular boot time measurement.


Your system, with all its uber features takes more time to initialize. One part in particular, the RAID array.

 

[Karadjgne]

You are assuming absolutes, that if you hit something harder it will break faster or a car traveling 80mph on 104 octane race fuel should be faster than a car doing 80mph on 87 octane pump gas. Doesn't work that way.

Boot process takes time. Drivers read, processes inititiated, start up sequence decided and processed, equipment searched for, tested for power and accessibility etc. That takes time, and has very little to do with pcie storage speeds, has more to do with cpu ability, motherboard communication speeds, amount of startup drivers and processes, network accessing etc.

You want faster boot times, streamline your boot process. Delegate certain processes and startups to a delayed startup, turn off windows shop tiles, clean out the registry for orphans, temp file allocations, get rid of hibernation entirely etc.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

Thanks guys. I haven't been in the pc building game for a while and it just bugs the crap out of me that my $5k computer takes ages to boot while the $500 mini pc I bought for my wife off aliexpress uses a recycled laptop motherboard and a 5th gen mobile core and it boots in literally 6 seconds from button press. My POST takes longer than that. ( I understand a custom board bios might skip everything but enthusiastic board should at least give you that option)

My wife measures how fast a computer is by boot time (from button press). So she laughs at my shiny new toy. Plus I'm the kind of guy that gets a high from specs and benchmarks....the z490 was a mistake but it was handled to me as a gift so i didn't have a choice to go to x570 or ryzen....

LOL very entertaining thread...

But can your wife's 6 second boot monster run CP2077 and MSFS2020 in 4K ultra like mine can?

6 seconds is almost certainly just coming out of sleep/hibernation.
NOT from an actual full power off.

Exactly... I just powered mine down and from power on to desktop was 23 seconds.

I get the same 6 second numbers when coming out of sleep mode.

 

[USAFRet]

Exactly... I just powered mine down and from power on to desktop was 23 seconds.

I get the same 6 second numbers when coming out of sleep mode.

23 secs from a full power off is quite typical, and absolutely nothing to worry about.

Although, its only about 5 secs "faster" than my 5 year old platform booting from a SATA III SSD.

"boot time" is a very poor thing to worry about, especially if you think faster drives = faster boot time.
Once we moved from HDD, there is not that much difference. Many many other things are happening beyond the raw sequential speed of the drive.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

"boot time" is a very poor thing to worry about, especially if you think faster drives = faster boot time.
Once we moved from HDD, there is not that much difference. Many many other things are happening beyond the raw sequential speed of the drive.

Oh absolutely. I only brought it up because OP did. That was the first time I’ve actually timed it to see how fast it boots... boot time is definitely not the reason I went with nvme drives. It was a combination of overall performance and Black Friday pricing.

 

[Flayed]

Under 30 seconds to boot from cold is very good I think.

 

[tt6368]

Hey guys, let's say it boots in 8-9 seconds. shut down in about 2. I made a video to show you guys.

Note this is on a 5 yr old ssd too (ssd is older than the computer, i took it out of a old machine).

View: https://youtu.be/p2sZlk5gbKs