Originally Posted by
MrToad
Well, is all "situational" really...
In my case I'm very limited (albeit by my own doing)
I have a micro-ATX board, and moving to ATX would involve changing case and modding/redoing the WC loop.
On the other hand the board's storage solutions are seriously crippled, the Marvell SATA III controller is less than stellar (even with "unofficially" update firmware and ROM) and the Intel RAID controller's ROM is grossly outdated and unusable with Sandforce drives, the manufacturer doesn't seem keen on releasing an updated BIOS (despite countless requests in the past three months) and it can't be "unofficially" updated because it doesn't support ROMs bigger than 64k.
So if I get one of these I can put an Areca controller on the other x16 slot, and chances are a single waterblock (however expensive it may be, as there won't be much demand and is going to be one either huge or complicated block due to the design of the board) is going to be cheaper than 2 x 6970 waterblocks.
For me on paper it looks an easier solution than changing computer case, board, board block(s) and modding/redoing the whole thing... And the money saved on those can be invested on the Areca controller, which will always perform better than the Intel RST and frees me from the tyranny of manufacturer's shoddy after-sales support...
So perhaps is a niche product, but not a purpose-less one...