Highpoint Rocketraid 3520 with 8xMtron R0

[SteveRo]

I had originally posted this over in the intel i7 oc thread but I thought I might repost this here.
8x16GB Mtron SSDs in RAID 0 on Highpoint 3520.
I am pleased with the 3520 - I am thinking of buying another or the 3510.

[felix_w]

Excellent results.....

Is that max for the controller ?

[eva2000]

Got same 3520LF PCI-E controller - excellent

Shame no Mtron SSDs hehe

[SteveRo]

Excellent results.....

Is that max for the controller ?

yep, 8 maxes out the 3520 BUT there is the 3540 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816115052 - supports 16 drives!

[jcool]

Holy crap nthat must be a nice OS speed to work with
Seems the controller doesn't bottleneck at all, seeing as those are 80/100 rated.

[SteveRo]

Holy crap nthat must be a nice OS speed to work with
Seems the controller doesn't bottleneck at all, seeing as those are 80/100 rated.

Based on how the areca 1231 (with the same intel IOP341 processor) maxes out at 829 MB/s - I am probably close to max read at 780 MB/s. see - http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/battleship/ about a 1/4 way down the article - hdtach screen shot.

I also wrote up a review/comparison of the areca 1261 with the HPT 3520 - located at - http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=552010

[jcool]

Reading the start of your review, you need to flash the Controller to the latest firmware, as it enables stripe size setting. I had the same problem on a 3510 a while back
128kb or 256kb is optimal for a SSD raid 0, try both for optimum results.

[One_Hertz]

Can you please do some proper random access testing & Crystalmark? I want to see how much latency that controller adds (I know the adaptecs add a crapload).

[SteveRo]

Can you please do some proper random access testing & Crystalmark? I want to see how much latency that controller adds (I know the adaptecs add a crapload).

perhaps the atto runs here might help - http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=552010

also 5x16gb mtron R0 on 3520 crystaldiskmark -

[jcool]

Lol
You just ran the bench in the controller's cache. Select test size > controller cache (256MB)

[SteveRo]

Lol
You just ran the bench in the controller's cache. Select test size > controller cache (256MB)

very good, on my to do list.
this run was from late last year

[One_Hertz]

Thanks! But its like jcool said, the test size has to be more than controller cache or you are just testing the speed of the 256MB thats on the controller.

[Nizzen]

Nice setup!

Too bad i did not see controller that do over 1GB/s with SSD.

I got an average read of 785MB/s with raid 6 @ 10x 15k.5 sas. The accesstime is not SSD fast

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...6&postcount=60

I got 998,5 MB/s Average in raid-0 with the same setup

Looks like Areca 1680ix is the way to go if you want even faster system Good news is that the new 1.46 firmware is out for 1680 series! Maybe it's good for ssd?

Too bad i don't have many ssd

[SteveRo]

Nice setup!

Too bad i did not see controller that do over 1GB/s with SSD.

I got an average read of 785MB/s with raid 6 @ 10x 15k.5 sas. The accesstime is not SSD fast

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...6&postcount=60

I got 998,5 MB/s Average in raid-0 with the same setup

Looks like Areca 1680ix is the way to go if you want even faster system Good news is that the new 1.46 firmware is out for 1680 series! Maybe it's good for ssd?

Too bad i don't have many ssd

wow - that's some pretty impressive numbers - for just 6 drives too! - correction - ten drives? Still good numbers.

[Webster]

Curiously, how does this setup compare to 2 X-25Es in RAID0?

[Bobsama]

This setup is much, much faster. And much, much more expensive.

[SteveRo]

This setup is much, much faster. And much, much more expensive.

faster (write) then what I have here - the new mobi 3500 is approx 135 each - the controller is about 430 - for under 1k you could have 64gb at read/write of 400+/400+ MB/s at .1ms access time.

single mtron mobi 3500 hdtach below -

[SteveRo]

Reading the start of your review, you need to flash the Controller to the latest firmware, as it enables stripe size setting. I had the same problem on a 3510 a while back
128kb or 256kb is optimal for a SSD raid 0, try both for optimum results.

Yes, eva2000 turned me on to that a week or two ago - thanks for reminding me - another item on my to do list.

[One_Hertz]

This setup is much, much faster. And much, much more expensive.

Quite the opposite. It is a good deal slower in most cases (slower in anything but 100% sequential reads/writes) and I don't think the price is too different, of course considering both setups have raid controllers.

[SteveRo]

Quite the opposite. It is a good deal slower in most cases (slower in anything but 100% sequential reads/writes) and I don't think the price is too different, of course considering both setups have raid controllers.

what bench should i run to get a good random read/write assessment?

[jcool]

I really doubt 2 X25-E could beat 8 SLC Mtrons. Access maybe, but certainly not throughput and IOPS which makes that array a lot faster in general.

Edit: IOmeter, but its a to set up

[m^2]

Could you run also iPEAK?

[SteveRo]

I really doubt 2 X25-E could beat 8 SLC Mtrons. Access maybe, but certainly not throughput and IOPS which makes that array a lot faster in general.

Edit: IOmeter, but its a to set up

I have tried IOMeter before - yes, I never was able to figure it out.
Probably didn't try very hard either actually.

[SteveRo]

From the areca 1680 thread - is the everest disk benchmark easy to run?
Does it provide good assessment of randon read and write?

[SteveRo]

I don't have the 3520 on this machine but I do have a 680i mobo raid set up with 4x16gb mtron mobi's in raid 0 -