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Make me understand little about PCIe slots on mainboard and PCIe cards.
Have search and look at lots of stuff, but it do not sit entire. So maybe you can help me understand this once for all time.
I'm upgrading some small portions of some of my computers. I have added two PCIe USB 3.0 cards to two of my computers that did not have USB 3.0
The card I did buy is this...and it only says PCIe, so I have to assume it's only PCIe 1.x?
For my last computer I want to buy this card...that's a PCI-E 2.0 card. So the speed can be up to 500 MB/s with that card. On PCIe 1.x it's only max 250 MB/s.
I also want(need) to buy a SATA3 PCI card, so I can get SATA3 ports on the computer (it's a old Asus P5E, X38, Socket 775 mainboard) I have found this card... thats it's a PCIe 2.0 card.
So to my issues.
On my old computer I have 2 x PCIe 16x slots (one are in use with GPU). Can I use the SATA 3 card with PCIe 2.0 on the second PCIe 16x slot, and get 500 MB/S via SATA3 (if I use a SSD that support 500 MB/S or more?)
Comments
All are backwards and forwards compatible afaik, I have a 16x graphics cards in the 4x slot with the back pins on the card chopped off
The type of PCI-e can be identified just by looking at how long the gold pin stripe is. That short one is 1x PCI-e.
Comparing transfer speeds between interfaces isn't always accurate. Each one uses different protocols, and sometimes the data can be manipulated/compressed for better performance. Other times it just has less overhead for things like error correction.
PCI-e cards "scale up" as far as slots go. You can use a PCI-e 1x card in any PCI-e slot (1x,4x,8x,16x). You can use 4x cards in 4x, 8x, and 16x. PCI-e cards work in slots equal to their size or larger.
You can sometimes go the other direction too, but you have to modify the slot to allow the extra PCB to slide in. This allows you to do something like put a PCI-e 16x card in an 8x slot, if the card doesn't need too much bandwidth or power to work properly.
All in all, yes, you can use the SSD with that card. Some motherboards don't support booting from PCI-e, however. Solutions like OCZ's "RevoDrive" were plagued with PCI-e booting issues because of this.
Only down side is that booting problem, and possibly slightly limiting the performance. Sequential read/write speeds don't really matter for desktop use anyway. SSDs feel so much faster because of their almost instantaneous access times.
The first card uses a VIA VL800 chipset - This seems to be a PCIe 2.0 x1 chipset (via-labs gives 404 on the link on the press release so can't check, Chinese website is Mandarin and not Cantonese so i can't read it). It lists 5Gbit/s which is impossible with PCIe 1.0/1.1 x1 which is limited at 2.5Gbps Net (2.0Gbps Brt).
The second card does not list the chipset but the picture is a VIA chip - Likely also the VL800 as it is the cheapest option in the market (~2$ per chip on 1k QTY OBO from Taiwan).
Socket 775 boards SHOULD all have PCIe 2.0, your board lists 2.0 with ASUS so good to go.
The X38 chipset lists 2x 16 PCIe lanes so the slots should be fully connected.
The Marvell card should provide 5Gbit/s to the SATA ports, without (negligible) overhead this is around 4.8Gbit/s Brt and should provide around 450MB/s to the SSD if only one port is used.
About your issue, yes you can. PCI-E is backwards compatible i.e 8x will work in 16x slot, but not vice versa. Also make sure not to mix PCI and PCI-E, they are not the same.
Here's what PCI-E slots look like.
Here's what PCI looks like.
PCI-E v1, v2, v3 are all compatible with one another and will work in any combination.
In your case, if you're using PCI-E 1x v2 your maximum theoretical (! PCI-E has ~20% overhead ) bandwidth will be 500MB/s, which is pretty close to your goal. In my opinion the bottleneck here won't be the bandwidth, but the chipset on the IOCREST card.
More on the issue.
http://www.amazon.com/review/RLQVR4IUM9C86/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00AZ9T3OU&nodeID=541966&store=pc
Did not think about the boot issue. That can be the main issue here.
I think I will use the SATA3 card on one of the other computers ( I have ordered two, but I have got the first one now in the mail). The computer is working good now, slow when I use Vmware on normal SATA2 disks. (only get around 90 in MB/s read speed and 60 MB/s write now). So with the SATA3 PCI card, and SATA3 disk I will get at least 100-150 MB/s from that disk.
When I first got it, I tested it against a HDD docking station I have, that gives me max 250 MB/s with 500 MB/s SSD disks in it. I got 250 MB/s so the speed is the same as always.
But when I connected the power to the card (it has a power connector inside) the speed dropped to around 160 MB/s. When I removed the power, the speed was back to normal at 250 MB/s.
Since I don't have anything to test it for full speed (this card are in a x16 slot) so I should get 500 MB/s with a SSD disk and a docking that support 500 MB/s or higher.
So for me, IOCrest seems to work as it should. And I hope so, for I have one more SATA3 card coming, one 4x SATA III card coming and one 8 x SATA III card coming, all from IOcrest.
On the order I says that it's Marvell 88SE9215 Chipset on the SATAIII cards from IOCREST.
I meant the second USB 3.0 card, not the SATA card.
Aaa, sorry. My bad.
In the end instead of adding all these cards wouldn't it be easier to just replace your whole system with one that has USB3 ports on board + enough SATA ports? Socket 775 is quite old generation already.
I have a pci-e 16x video card in an adapted for pci-e 1x and it works. I did not want to remove the pins, even when I have to insert it without adapter, i prefer to cut the slot, not to cut the pins. This is, of course, if you need only basic stuff, not high performance mining and all.
I had sata adapter with via chips (cheap ones) and did not boot in any combination, lucky i had a cf card to put in 128 MB and have GRUB on it.
After a nigh without sleep, just thinking about the issue, reading reviews, checking products etc, I came to that conclusion and just ordered me a new desktop computer that will work as a NAS (the cabinet can take 10 HDDs), but also run a couple of virtual VmWare servers on it. I will so move most of my disk from my MediaCenter pc into the new "NAS", and also of course have some TB to backups and other things.
I have then got me a Intel NUC with Core i5 CPU that will be my new MediaCenter computer. The good thing, is that I will get away the big and ugly computer I have there today, and place the NUC in my other living room, using a long HDMI cabel and wireless keyboard and mouse. I will have a line of sight to the NUC.
Here is the complete shopping list I just paid for. (it's on Norwegian, but you get the picture) (13.000NOK= around $2000) but the low price is because I reuse most of my HDD from two computers, and use some new 3 TB disk I have in reserve.
Will use my new IOCREST SATA III (6Gbps) 8-Port PCI-Express Controller Card (PCIe 2.0) so I can suply the mainboard that only has 6 SATA3 ports.
I will fill this new computer up with 10 HDDs and SSDs.
You'll need a faster network. 1 gigabit will be insufficient...
@msg7086
To see a movie, a full Bluray HD movie (40 GB) use only 5.8 MB/s on a two hour movie.
So I think a 1 gbit connection with around 100 MB/s will do. I only have one TV, so can only see on movie at the time. I will put the full movie disk in the USB 3.0 docking station, and then when I rip/copy new movies it's direct on one of the disk on the "NAS".
Server2 takes some backups etc from time to time, but I can schedule it to do that on the night. So no abusing of the 1 gbit connection there also.
What had you in mind when you think my 1 Gbit connection is to low. Remember this is only my home setup, not sharing a file with the outside.
Edit: Will also of course download some from intenett, surfing etc. But I only have a 100mbit internett connection in, and 20mbit out, so it will use max 12 MB/s if I have full download from a torrent site or something. But again, it can be schedule to be done at night.
Just get a decent mobo and problem solved.
When you start to copy / move large files around.
Modern HDD can do up to 200MB/s IO speed, which means you'll actually need 2x1Gbps to saturate the IO.
I agree this is really occasional operations. But when you need it you'll feel it ... slow.
It will feel like today.
But since I move the disks from my old Media Center pc to the "NAS" and the Intel NUC just have 120 GB SSD disk inside, there will be no reason why I would, or could move any large files between the two computers.
When I take backup of Server2 to the "NAS" I know it will peak at around 120 MB/s.
But again, I have used a setup like this for 8 years now, so I'm used to the cap on 120 MB/s. Actually, since the disk on Server1 (that will be the new NAS) just i SATA2 disk, and several of them more then 5 year old, I'm used to speed around 60-70 MB/s.
I'm on a limited budget here, so can't afford some fancy network solution that give me better speeds then 1 gbit. My switch is 1 gbit, my router is 1 gbit, and my network cards is 1 gbit. So to do something with the issue, it will cost allot I'm sure of.