LSI 9265 raid controller - is it compatible with C5F?

[360fusion]

This is directed mainly at Raja or anyone else at ASUS who may know... but if you've got this card and happen to see this thread, please don't hesitate to chime in.

I just want to know if this (LSI MegaRAID Internal SAS 9265-8i 6Gb/s Dual Core ROC w/ 1GB cache memory RAID Controller Card) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118160 controller is compatible with the Crosshair V Formula. I'm looking at upgrading to a real raid controller card and this seems to be the best without totally breaking the bank.

Any other input is appreciated, but I'm not considering the low cost "budget" raid controllers since their performance is rarely above that of onboard sata/raid controllers. I'm looking for an actual (and significant) performance increase.

[xeromist]

Why *wouldn't* it work? The controller card is handling everything as hardware so to the rest of the system it is merely a disk controller. The important thing is that you make sure you can connect the drives(assuming consumer grade drives) to those mini-SAS ports. I'm not sure if you need adapters or if some are provided with the card.

[360fusion]

There are actually several raid controller cards that dont get detected by systems because of a BIOS level incompatibility.

If you look at some of the higher end raid controllers, you will see that some cards are "server only" cards, but they're not always clearly indicated as such. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true.

[xeromist]

Hrmm, in that case I don't know as I've never seen anyone try. Are you sure that the "server only" cards aren't PCI-X cards? PCI-X is a physically different interface than PCI-E and only available in servers so that definitely wouldn't work.

[360fusion]

I'm quite sure they are not PCI-X. They're PCI-E 2.0 x8 cards (the good ones, anyway) and I think there were a few other LSI ones where reviewers on Newegg could not get them to work with consumer desktop motherboards. Many had received responses from LSI that they were intended for workstation/server use.

I honestly don't know why they'd make a card that didn't work in a consumer motherboard... but they do, apparently.

I'm not sure yet at this point whether I want to go with LSI or Areca, but someone on the Mushkin boards used a LSI 9265 with fantastic results, so I thought I'd ask. Hopefully someone from ASUS can verify.

[pvt_joker]

360fusion wrote:
I'm quite sure they are not PCI-X. They're PCI-E 2.0 x8 cards (the good ones, anyway) and I think there were a few other LSI ones where reviewers on Newegg could not get them to work with consumer desktop motherboards. Many had received responses from LSI that they were intended for workstation/server use.

I honestly don't know why they'd make a card that didn't work in a consumer motherboard... but they do, apparently.

I'm not sure yet at this point whether I want to go with LSI or Areca, but someone on the Mushkin boards used a LSI 9265 with fantastic results, so I thought I'd ask. Hopefully someone from ASUS can verify.

I seem to remember reading on some other forums someone having issues with a full fledged raid card and the consumer boards inability to function properly with it. Something about the bios level interrupts not polling the card correctly (i think the guy could get the card to work with the raid card bios disabled but then couldn't use it for any boot drives.) Then again, I could be remembering something not entirely related. But I do remember something about x8 pci-e issues on consumer boards (believe in this case it was about the C5F) Have a friend running the C5F and an adaptec midrange card, can't remember the model # off hand though, and he's running fine. Then, I'm not sure if his was a x4 or x8 card.

[xeromist]

I'm doubtful that anyone at ASUS has even tried this scenario but I'd happily be wrong if you did get an answer. Personally I would go with a merchant that doesn't have a restocking fee or make pre-sale contact to inquire about compatibility with desktop boards. If they say it should work then get them to promise (and get their name) to waive the restocking fee if it isn't compatible so you don't have to pay for experimenting.

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