- Jul 17, 2011
- 2
- 0
- 18,510
Hi guys, long time reader but first poster here.
I'm planning on building my next PC but I have a couple of questions that I need to solve before I even start thinking about the components. I want to build a "killer" computer with a i7-990X CPU and a 3-way SLI made of 3 x GTX580 from EVGA but for the first time ever, I also want to have really good speeds from my disks.
The problem is that having 3 graphics cards will leave me only with one spare PCI-e left but what I want is the following:
- A fast SSD in RAID 0 as the OS drive (was thinking about the PCI-e RevoDrive 3 from OCZ)
- A RAID 5 made out of SATAIII 7.200 rpm HDDs for my files
As far as I can tell from all the reading I've done, having the Revo drive installed in a PCI-e slot will stop me from using the on-board RAID controller in the motherboard I'm planning to use (EVGA X58 Classified3). To make it worst, I don't even trust on-board RAID controllers (specially Marvell).
The only logical way to go seems to be a PCI-e RAID Controller. I've never installed one before so I don't know exactly how they work. For example I've been looking at the ADAPTEC 6 series but I don't know if one card can support 2 different RAID arrays (one in RAID 0 and the other in RAID 5). Another thing I'm affraid is the bandwidth with the host. Adaptec states that the maximum transfer rate on the series 6 controllers is 4 Gb/s which would give me a bottleneck right there, speccially if I'm using SATAIII drives. Won't it?
Of course I could go with only two graphics cards, a PCI-e Revo drive and a PCI-e RAID controller for my files but I really really want to have a 3-way SLI. What do you guys think about this? What would be the best way to go?
Thanks in advance for any tip!
I'm planning on building my next PC but I have a couple of questions that I need to solve before I even start thinking about the components. I want to build a "killer" computer with a i7-990X CPU and a 3-way SLI made of 3 x GTX580 from EVGA but for the first time ever, I also want to have really good speeds from my disks.
The problem is that having 3 graphics cards will leave me only with one spare PCI-e left but what I want is the following:
- A fast SSD in RAID 0 as the OS drive (was thinking about the PCI-e RevoDrive 3 from OCZ)
- A RAID 5 made out of SATAIII 7.200 rpm HDDs for my files
As far as I can tell from all the reading I've done, having the Revo drive installed in a PCI-e slot will stop me from using the on-board RAID controller in the motherboard I'm planning to use (EVGA X58 Classified3). To make it worst, I don't even trust on-board RAID controllers (specially Marvell).
The only logical way to go seems to be a PCI-e RAID Controller. I've never installed one before so I don't know exactly how they work. For example I've been looking at the ADAPTEC 6 series but I don't know if one card can support 2 different RAID arrays (one in RAID 0 and the other in RAID 5). Another thing I'm affraid is the bandwidth with the host. Adaptec states that the maximum transfer rate on the series 6 controllers is 4 Gb/s which would give me a bottleneck right there, speccially if I'm using SATAIII drives. Won't it?
Of course I could go with only two graphics cards, a PCI-e Revo drive and a PCI-e RAID controller for my files but I really really want to have a 3-way SLI. What do you guys think about this? What would be the best way to go?
Thanks in advance for any tip!
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