I am building a video NVR and initially was going to connect my 6x HDDs (12TB WD Purple) through the onboard MB SATA connectors for video storage. This would max out the capacity of the board and force me to use a specific M.2 slot (for an NVMe SSD OS drive) that didn't share bandwidth with the SATA ports which isn't an issue. I'm rethinking my build and ordered a 16 port PCIe 3.0 x8 add in RAID card to support expandability or a 2nd RAID array. My MB has 3x x16 physical slots that are (x16/8/4) electrical. I will be using the CPU's built in graphics and an NVIDIA graphics card to support the NVR software's analytics capability. The NVR will function strictly as a server and not a server/client so the CPU graphics capability is adequate. My current NVR shows less than 10% analytics load and I am not expanding the number of cameras, etc. in moving to the new NVR so dont anticipate the analytics load to be any higher. The MB is the Gigabyte Z490 Vision D. The first 2 PCI Express slots are controlled by the CPU and the 3rd PCI express slot is controlled by the Z490 chipset.
So with that background out of the way and with the understanding that I will have a graphics card in the first x16 slot should I:
A) connect the RAID adapter card in the 2nd x16 slot and force the graphics adapter to run x8 but allow the RAID adapter to operate at it full rated x8 speed or
B) connect the RAID adapter card in the 3rd x16 physical/x4 electrical slot, allow the graphics adapter to run at x16 but reduce the RAID adapter to half its capable bandwidth at x4
I am leaning toward putting the RAID adapter in the 2nd slot unless there is no way that up to 16x SATA 3 HDDs can saturate the x4 electrical interface the RAID card would be connected to.
Thanks in advance for your recommendations and your expertise.
-M
So with that background out of the way and with the understanding that I will have a graphics card in the first x16 slot should I:
A) connect the RAID adapter card in the 2nd x16 slot and force the graphics adapter to run x8 but allow the RAID adapter to operate at it full rated x8 speed or
B) connect the RAID adapter card in the 3rd x16 physical/x4 electrical slot, allow the graphics adapter to run at x16 but reduce the RAID adapter to half its capable bandwidth at x4
I am leaning toward putting the RAID adapter in the 2nd slot unless there is no way that up to 16x SATA 3 HDDs can saturate the x4 electrical interface the RAID card would be connected to.
Thanks in advance for your recommendations and your expertise.
-M