Techy queries...

[9u10m]

Hello everyone,

I'm thinking about a new setup, built around an Asus P9X79 MoBo + i7 3930K proc.
Assuming all X79 MoBo come with only 2 SATA 6Gb/s ports, spreading questions come to mind...

The way I see it, I'll use a 128Gb SSD on a 3Gb/s port for Windows, so I can spread my libraries across 2 larger SSDs that will take advantage of higher transfer rates.
Would you rather have your system on the fastest port available, whatever it takes?
Common sense tells me having both Windows and some libs on the same drive (be it a SSD) isn't a good call. Any contradictory experience?

Those of you who took the PICe SSD approach, is it night and day compared to a good SSD on a 6Gb/s port when dealing with libraries?

About the spare 3Gb/s ports on the MoBo, do you find it pertinent to use them for a raid0?

Best

[Dstorfer]

That MB actually has 3 6gb ports if you count the eSATA on the back panel. You can connect an external drive and get equal performance as if it was an internal drive connected to the MB ports.   If you are doing any digitial audio recording, like vocals or other instruments, you'd also want that drive to be separate if possible.  I would say that your libraries and DAW tracks would be best served by the faster ports more than the windows drive.  You'd be well served by using RAID for the windows drive. I also wouldn't bother using SSD for windows/program installs, instead get two cheaper 2 TB hard drives and run a RAID mirror so that if your drive goes, you don't have any downtime of setting up windows, customizing all your apps again, etc...  Your libraries are replacable data - you can always re-download, reinstall from DVD and/or back up that static data to the mirror.  You could also backup the DAW tracks to those larger mirrored drives, but keep the active tracks on the SSD. And/or backup all data to an external cloud service or some other device of your choice.

RAID is also useful if you can't afford multiple SSD drives and need lots of very large data to perform well while reading or writing.  You can setup various configurations that will perform better when reading, better when writing, or are fault-tolerant (prevent data loss).  The fault-tolerant ones tend to be better at reading until you get into a lot of drives.

[Bill]

I'd get a MB with more 6gb ports. Stay away from RAID for samples and audio and go for lots of independant drives.

[9u10m]

Thanks for your replies.

Good point about the eSATA port.

I do not wish to invest in a workstation class motherboard for a slave computer, though. That said, X79 is limited to 2 SATA3 ports, but allows for LGA 2011 sockets and quad channel memory compatible procs.

Do chime in if I'm wrong, but quad channel memory looks more important to me than more SATA3 ports, if I can spread libs accross say 4 SSDs.

Best

[Bill]

The ASRock X79 has 5 6Gb/s ports...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157289

[9u10m]

I stand corrected, although these additional ports are not handled by the X79 chipset, which by desgin supports only 2 SATA3 ports.

MoBo specs say the same:

- 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors by Intel X79, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10 and Intel Rapid Storage 3.0), NCQ, AHCI and "Hot Plug" functions
- 3 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors by ASMedia ASM1061, support NCQ, AHCI and "Hot Plug" functions

Thanks for the info anyway