Z820 drives configuration

[echoout]

Ha! That's the exact one I had sitting in my cart until I heard back from you. There you have it.

And did you find issues with your SATA cables being crimped as the went into the back of the Icy Dock? Should I get 90-degree connectors while I'm ordering anyway?

Thanks again!

[wvillers]

I don't have any issue with the SATA cables, although 90 degrees would look much neater for sure... 

[wvillers]

OK, finally got the power cable, installed the drives and it is working like a charm!  

Here's what it looks like in action:

And a benchmark of the system, with 4x128GB SSD (m4) in RAID0, very nice performance:

For less than $80, this is an excellent solution IMHO...  Thanks to Curtis Olinger for a great suggestion!

[echoout]

Very nice! What controller exactly are you using? My brain is still getting wrapped around that end of things.

[wvillers]

Mine has the LSI 2308, the 9 series would be better as LSI has some extra software that could boost cache as well (not a free license, but reasonable).

[curt12345]

Looks great, good job, glad it worked out.

[wvillers]

Thanks!  The only issue now is I don't seem to be able to create a 3rd array with port 0&1...

I have 2&3 as a 2x256GB (for WIP stuff), 4-7 as a 4x128GB (for scratch I/O stuff) and I'd love to get a 2x256GB on 0&1.  Somehow, the LSI BIOS tool does not let me create any more volumes than the ones already created.  It lists my 2 attached drives, but doesn't want to do anything with that...

[curt12345]

Gotta buy a dedicated pci lsi controller. These intergrated controllers are very basic, maybe costs hp or a motherboard manufacture 5 bucks to add that chip to their motherboards, its deceptive in that you have so many ports, between intel and lsi you'd think you could run tons of drives, the truth is dedicated controllers with their dedicated memory, cache, battery backup and software options make these ssd really boogie. I still think you have to get to 250gb+ SSD's and controller with the fastpath and you will be amazed. I dont have my old system with that setup, sold on ebay but it was in the top ten for the world on passmark and it was mostly due to my disk performance, with dual xeons I was blowing past heavily overclocked extreme edition setups.

http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagesw/Pages/MegaRAIDFastPathSoftware.aspx

http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagesw/Pages/MegaRAIDCacheCadeSoftware2-0.aspx Cache cade is when you want to front end a large database full of mechnical disk with a few ssd's, this software stores most freq accessed data on the ssd's for super fast cache.

[echoout]

Hopefully this isn't a hijack but if I want to use the 4 3.5" bays with a PCIe controller that has a fan-out cable (8087-to-4 female SATAs) do I just get 4 SATA male-to-male adapters to connect said cable to the 4 black cables coming from the 3.5" bays?

Also, this thread helped me get my Icy Dock tied to my controller card in quick and neat fashion. Getting 1320 MB/s reads!

Thanks!

[curt12345]

Yes, thats correct. I have done this on the Z800, used sleeved NZXT Male to Males from the fan out of the 4 into one cable coming from the controller, disconnecting the satas from the motherboard that go to the 4 built in bays, then connecting each male to male cable between them.

These were alil long but once connected I zip tied them and it was a clean install.

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZDNY0C/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1