Info wanted on A8N-VM CSM

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zzipper

Has anyone seen one of these in North America yet? It looks like a nice
setup and I plan to build my next machine with one. If anyone has bought
one, I'd appeciate any feedback you would have about performance, the NVidia
RAID functions in particular. I plan to use the RAID5 feature.
Thanks
 
zzipper said:
Has anyone seen one of these in North America yet? It looks like a nice
setup and I plan to build my next machine with one. If anyone has bought
one, I'd appeciate any feedback you would have about performance, the NVidia
RAID functions in particular. I plan to use the RAID5 feature.
Thanks
Click to expand...

I read a very little bit about this motherboard in a forum at a
hardware review site. About all I can remember is that the OP in
that forum was looking for help in making his RAID 5 bootable -
with no replies.

I am considering this board myself, so if you read anything about
a bootable RAID 5 or 0+1 with this board, please post it here.

With the low processing power of the kinds of RAID controllers
that get integrated onto motherboards or chipsets, the CPU ends
up doing most of the work so I am skeptical about using RAID 5,
but RAID 0+1 should be a lot less taxing.

But then again, with a dual-core processor I might find there are
enough CPU cycles to spare for the processing RAID 5 requires.
 
I'm expecting my dual-core to do the work. I think it should be fine if
they've designed it right. I've seen the board listed at a US online store
but marked out of stock. I'm in Canada and hopefully it'll be here soon. I
waited for the C51 announcement to see if I liked what it had to offer
before upgrading. Now I'm ready, everything except the cpu and board is here
waiting to be assembled:-)
 
I read a very little bit about this motherboard in a forum at a
hardware review site. About all I can remember is that the OP in
that forum was looking for help in making his RAID 5 bootable -
with no replies.

I am considering this board myself, so if you read anything about
a bootable RAID 5 or 0+1 with this board, please post it here.

With the low processing power of the kinds of RAID controllers
that get integrated onto motherboards or chipsets, the CPU ends
up doing most of the work so I am skeptical about using RAID 5,
but RAID 0+1 should be a lot less taxing.

But then again, with a dual-core processor I might find there are
enough CPU cycles to spare for the processing RAID 5 requires.
Click to expand...

Still, if I were contemplating that kind of RAID setup today, I'd
definitely opt for the NetCell controller to completely eliminate
dependency on the CPU while eliminating the need for one hard drive,
as well. http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20031128/

Ron
 
It's nice but it's IDE. I got rid of all my IDE drives last year and really
wouldn't want to start buying them again. I'm going with Seagate 7200.9
SATA300 drives for the system.
 
zzipper said:
It's nice but it's IDE. I got rid of all my IDE drives last year and really
wouldn't want to start buying them again. I'm going with Seagate 7200.9
SATA300 drives for the system.
Click to expand...

The article at THG said that a SATA version of that controller
was in the works. Might be worth your while to check out the
manufacturer's site and see if it is available yet.

3Ware also makes some nice SATA RAID controllers.
www.3ware.com
 
I know someone who's got a 3Ware SATA controller, he is very happy with it.
Of course he wasn't very happy when he paid for it, it wasn't cheap but the
performance is excellent. I don't need that level of sophisitication, I'll
see how well the onboard does it's job.
 
The article at THG said that a SATA version of that controller
was in the works. Might be worth your while to check out the
manufacturer's site and see if it is available yet.

3Ware also makes some nice SATA RAID controllers.
www.3ware.com
Click to expand...

Cool. SATA 5 port. 5.5W power consumption. Looks like they glued
some SATA bridge chips onto the Netcell ?

http://www.netcell.com/productbriefs/NetCell -SR5103 Product Brief.pdf

But have a look in their forums as well:

http://forums.netcell.com/index.php

Also seen here. This implies you buy the board from a third party
board maker ?

http://www.evga.com/PRODUCTS/pdf/064-P1-SR51-BX.pdf
http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listConfigurations.jspa?seriesId=66

There is a review here, that is none too complementary. $230 USD.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816130002

Paul
 
I know someone who's got a 3Ware SATA controller, he is very happy with it.
Of course he wasn't very happy when he paid for it, it wasn't cheap but the
performance is excellent. I don't need that level of sophisitication, I'll
see how well the onboard does it's job.
Click to expand...

I put a P-ATA 3Ware controller in my last rig. It works fine except
for (1) slow backups using Drive Image in DOS (no DOS driver) and (2)
the computer has never been able to hibernate. Number 1 is no longer
a problem with the advent of Windows imaging programs like True Image
8 and Ghost 9. 3Ware tech support was never any help at all with
problem #2, and that crappy tech support would keep me from using one
of their products again.
Ron
 
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