The Monster! (last updated: 25.02.10 - power usage numbers)
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
DAMNIT
No wonder the damn thing didnt work as it should, the P5E WS PRO card has the same CRAPPY NEC uPD720400 PCI Express - PCI/PCI-X Bridge that the Asus M2N32 WS Pro cards a friend of mine has had major problems with, getting the exact same symptoms, shite write speeds. Only he's getting 6MB/s, not 40MB/s...
I'm just gonna write it out in plain:
Do not use 3ware PCI-X cards with Asus M2N32 WS Pro or Asus P5E/P5K WS (Pro) cards because of bad PCI-X bridge on said mobo's
Nick: how is your 3ware card hooked up? is it a PCI-X or PCI-E ? and what performance are you getting if its PCI-X in a PCI2.2 slot?
No wonder the damn thing didnt work as it should, the P5E WS PRO card has the same CRAPPY NEC uPD720400 PCI Express - PCI/PCI-X Bridge that the Asus M2N32 WS Pro cards a friend of mine has had major problems with, getting the exact same symptoms, shite write speeds. Only he's getting 6MB/s, not 40MB/s...
I'm just gonna write it out in plain:
Do not use 3ware PCI-X cards with Asus M2N32 WS Pro or Asus P5E/P5K WS (Pro) cards because of bad PCI-X bridge on said mobo's
Nick: how is your 3ware card hooked up? is it a PCI-X or PCI-E ? and what performance are you getting if its PCI-X in a PCI2.2 slot?
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My card is a PCIe based 9650SE-8LPML running in the second PCIe x16 (x4 electrical) slot on my P5B-Deluxe motherboard. With my 6x500GB setup, I'm usually getting about 275MB/s reads - writes I'm not so sure about. I'll have to test that later on tonight.
The 9650 series is actually now a second-gen card. You should see if you can find something like that for sale second hand. PCIe is the way of the future.
The 9650 series is actually now a second-gen card. You should see if you can find something like that for sale second hand. PCIe is the way of the future.
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Nope - not at all. PCI-X slots are like long PCI slots with added bandwidth, while PCIe is a completely different protocol.Myth! wrote:isn't pci-x the same as pci-e ? both standing for express?
Wikipedia - PCI-X
Wikipedia - PCI Express
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The raid card supports staggered spinup, but I dont know if it works properly... the Corsair psu doesnt seem to have any problems no matter, tho
I havent tested power consumption yet, havent dared...
But I'm dropping the Q6600 and P5E mobo this weekend, getting a P5WDG2-WS card and a celeron 3GHz instead, then I'll see if I can get around to measure the power usage
I havent tested power consumption yet, havent dared...
But I'm dropping the Q6600 and P5E mobo this weekend, getting a P5WDG2-WS card and a celeron 3GHz instead, then I'll see if I can get around to measure the power usage
Code: Select all
Version 1.03 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
monster 6G 121408 24 71692 18 433873 33 121.4 0
Started mirroring all the data from oberon to monster:
EDIT:
The stock E6600 HSF I had laying around was fracked, one fastening clip broken and the fan bearings shot, so I had to put in the new xigmatek cooler I was saving for WS2...
Installation took 10 minutes, painless really, works like a charm, load temps around 57C with cpufan at 860 rpm
EDIT:
The stock E6600 HSF I had laying around was fracked, one fastening clip broken and the fan bearings shot, so I had to put in the new xigmatek cooler I was saving for WS2...
Installation took 10 minutes, painless really, works like a charm, load temps around 57C with cpufan at 860 rpm
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This looks like a lot of fun mate! I look after all the IT at my company, but we're just not big enough to justify these kind of toys. Only four hard disks and software RAID for us. What business are you in?
Interesting to hear your experience with the NEC chip vs the Intel.. I'll definitely keep that in mind if I ever get a hardware RAID card!
Interesting to hear your experience with the NEC chip vs the Intel.. I'll definitely keep that in mind if I ever get a hardware RAID card!
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Also, you might be able to answer a question for me.
A guy I know built a similar system to yours, but a bit smaller (5 1TB disks, running Ubuntu, using software RAID5). He reckons the performance is great, but I always thought that your write performance suffers in a big way using RAID5 without a hardware RAID controller? Also the read performance to a lesser extent. Have you tried Linux software RAID5, and how did it compare?
One last thing - it seems like there are some PCIe RAID controllers coming out now.. hooray!
A guy I know built a similar system to yours, but a bit smaller (5 1TB disks, running Ubuntu, using software RAID5). He reckons the performance is great, but I always thought that your write performance suffers in a big way using RAID5 without a hardware RAID controller? Also the read performance to a lesser extent. Have you tried Linux software RAID5, and how did it compare?
One last thing - it seems like there are some PCIe RAID controllers coming out now.. hooray!
PCI-E cards have been on the market a long time now, its just silly to buy PCI-X if you dont get stuff from ebay for cheap, like I did...
software raid5 on linux will actually perform better than my setup, because the card I have is old, but on the other hand, my setup is 100% hassle-free once set up.
software raid5 on linux will actually perform better than my setup, because the card I have is old, but on the other hand, my setup is 100% hassle-free once set up.
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Ah I see.. ebay for the win. Do you mind me asking how much those 9500 cards cost from ebay?
I hear you on the convenience thing. The main problem my friend had was getting the machine booting from the software RAID5. In the end he gave up on that. I know from experience that booting from RAID1 is easy under Linux and Windows (since they are just mirrors), but haven't tried RAID5 before.
Also, you must be happy that you have two of the same card now. Personally I'm a bit worried about the idea of the controller card failing and turning my expensive RAID5 into an unreadable stack of drives.
Seems like you've spent some time researching this, I hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread a little
I hear you on the convenience thing. The main problem my friend had was getting the machine booting from the software RAID5. In the end he gave up on that. I know from experience that booting from RAID1 is easy under Linux and Windows (since they are just mirrors), but haven't tried RAID5 before.
Also, you must be happy that you have two of the same card now. Personally I'm a bit worried about the idea of the controller card failing and turning my expensive RAID5 into an unreadable stack of drives.
Seems like you've spent some time researching this, I hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread a little
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In addition to what Nick said, they knew that hard drive dimensions were probably going to shrink, thus the thinner plug!Cistron wrote:I'm completely puzzled as to why the design has been changed from Molex at all. Probably just to make everybody's life a little more complicated.Nick Geraedts wrote:Looking at your pictures, I'm guessing you have the same problem I've been having in my system - SATA power cables.
Interesting, but I bet there will be a long time before we see this, also in my experience, Hitachi (aka IBM) might be the first on the market with new and bigger capacity, but they're usually not the best..Cistron wrote:Hitachi recently presented 640GB per square inch platters.
Now with Seagate 1.5TB drives finally getting fixed firmware, upgrading Oberon (10x500GB) to 1.5TB drives is tempting, especially considering this..:
By that trend, I should run out of space in a few months...
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Wibla, how are you getting a data usage graph like that? Is it some app?Wibla wrote:Interesting, but I bet there will be a long time before we see this, also in my experience, Hitachi (aka IBM) might be the first on the market with new and bigger capacity, but they're usually not the best..Cistron wrote:Hitachi recently presented 640GB per square inch platters.
Now with Seagate 1.5TB drives finally getting fixed firmware, upgrading Oberon (10x500GB) to 1.5TB drives is tempting, especially considering this..:
By that trend, I should run out of space in a few months...