Is the Dell PERC 5i SAS controller card any good?
Any links to reviews etc would be appreciated, since I haven't been able to find any.
It seems they go for quite cheap on ebay at the moment so it's raised my interest.
Looks like the ddr2 cache is easily upgradable as well. How much difference would there be by getting more memory for the card?
I've found the Perc 5/i to work well for my use. I haven't upgraded the memory from the 256MB stick it came with yet, but I may soon. One work of caution though...many of the cards on Ebay don't come with the necessary cabling. You'll need a SAS x4 connector, which splits down to 4 SAS x1 connectors. The Dell cable comes with the built in interposers. The cable is a pain to order from Dell to try and get the right one.
Also, ensure the mounting plate (bracket) is included with the card...I've seen many of the cards on Ebay that don't have it included.
Server: HP Proliant ML370 G6, 2x Xeon X5690, 144GB ECC Registered, 8x OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 240GB on LSi 9265-8i (RAID 0), 12x Seagate Constellation ES.2 3TB SAS on LSi 9280-24i4e (RAID 6) and dual 1200W redundant power supplies.
Gamer: Intel Core i7 6950X@4.2GHz, Rampage Edition 10, 128GB (8x16GB) Corsair Dominator Platinum 2800MHz, 2x NVidia Titan X (Pascal), Corsair H110i, Vengeance C70 w/Corsair AX1500i, Intel P3700 2TB (boot), Samsung SM961 1TB (Games), 2x Samsung PM1725 6.4TB (11.64TB usable) Windows Software RAID 0 (local storage).
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Thanks for the help (or lack thereof) in resolving my P3700 issue, FUGGER...
can you tell me please where to buy cables for a good price?
4x SAS cable for this I've found for at least $40.. and 4x SATA cable for around $20.. if you've found a better source please let me know.. I need to buy soon, my 4x36MB Fujitsu 15K SAS ar on the way, and I'm planning a Raid-0 with 'em
And another thing.. what motherboard you are using with this controller ? I have ASUS P5K Premium, but it doesn't work well with this one because it has only PCI-E X4 for the additional slot.. I will try MSI P6N Diamond or DFI with Nvidia Nforce 680i chipset. They 2 x 16X and 1 x 8X PCI-E slots..
What do you think ?
The 4x pci-e has more than enough bandwith up to 6 drives.
SB Rig:
| CPU: 2600K (L040B313T) | Cooling: H100 with 2x AP29 | Motherboard: Asrock P67 Extreme4 Gen3
| RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1866 | Video: MSI gtx570 TF III
| SSD: Crucial M4 128GB fw009 | HDDs: 2x GP 2TB, 2x Samsung F4 2TB
| Audio: Cantatis Overture & Denon D7000 headphones | Case: Lian-Li T60 bench table
| PSU: Seasonic X650 | Display: Samsung 2693HM 25,5"
| OS: Windows7 Ultimate x64 SP1
+Fanless Music Rig: | E5200 @0.9V
+General surfing PC on sale | E8400 @4Ghz
I'm not worried about the bandwidth but for the compatibility.. I had P5K Premium with x4 slot and it didn't work well on it.. it blocks at detecting USB devices. After I disabled USB in motherboard bios, it blocked after the PERC detected hard drives, and I pressed CTRL-R to enter in its config and it didn't work... but it seems to work fine on MSI P6N Diamond who has x8 slot.. I will have to do more tests but it seems so.
it depends on the motherboard bios, its not related to the mechanic of the pci-e slot.
SB Rig:
| CPU: 2600K (L040B313T) | Cooling: H100 with 2x AP29 | Motherboard: Asrock P67 Extreme4 Gen3
| RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1866 | Video: MSI gtx570 TF III
| SSD: Crucial M4 128GB fw009 | HDDs: 2x GP 2TB, 2x Samsung F4 2TB
| Audio: Cantatis Overture & Denon D7000 headphones | Case: Lian-Li T60 bench table
| PSU: Seasonic X650 | Display: Samsung 2693HM 25,5"
| OS: Windows7 Ultimate x64 SP1
+Fanless Music Rig: | E5200 @0.9V
+General surfing PC on sale | E8400 @4Ghz
there's a thread at 2cpu on which boards actually work with the card.
in addition, these are nowhere near as powerful as Arecas but, that's pretty much assumed anyway/
dave
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