950 pro questions.

[Zarathustraa]

Is there anyway to raid 0 950 Pros with this board? I'm guessing I'd need a PCIe expansion card to plug them into.

If I want to cut down on possible issues of increased boot times would using an ahci ssd for boot files be ideal? I think I'd put the windows boot manager and boot loader on the ahci, and the actual OS on the 950 arrays. I'd do the same equivalent for Linux boot volume.

Could there be any other issues with those drives?

[LiveOrDie]

No you can't RAID M.2 drives the only way would be to buy a PCI-e M.2 card with a controller which supports RAID, The card would probably have multiply M.2 slots to do so,

I run windows off my 950 and boot times are pretty much zero i mite get a second of the windows logo, so i wouldn't worry to much about boot times.

For Issues i've had none i run two RAID SSDS for my games drive and a 1TB HDD for Data with my storage controller set to RAID.

[Korth]

The performance of a single 950PRO would suffice for excellent boot times and general OS usage.

There are no driver issues with Samsung PCIe SSDs and NVMe SSDs and M.2 SSDs, although there are problems with Samsung's RAPID Magician software. Especially in Win10 and especially on "new" X99 and Skylake platforms.

If you want stable RAID then 850EVO/850PRO SATA SSDs are currently a better choice, similar performance, similar price, proven stability.

[Zarathustraa]

This is what I'm referring to by raiding them. I'd have to figure out how to do it for Linux as well. I think that Intel tool is windows only. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-ssd,4313-2.html

[LiveOrDie]

Zarathustraa wrote:
This is what I'm referring to by raiding them. I'd have to figure out how to do it for Linux as well. I think that Intel tool is windows only. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-ssd,4313-2.html

The board there using supports RAID M.2 drives as the board has 3x M.2 slots that run off a Intel controller which supports RAID, The R5E doesn't have that type of controller as its not needed seeing the board only supports the 1 M.2 drive, adding a M.2 addon card won't get around this problem as that's also runs off its own controller.

[Zarathustraa]

LiveOrDie wrote:
The board there using supports RAID M.2 drives as the board has 3x M.2 slots that run off a Intel controller which supports RAID, The R5E doesn't have that type of controller as its not needed seeing the board only supports the 1 M.2 drive, adding a M.2 addon card won't get around this problem as that's also runs off its own controller.

But, couldn't an add on card raid the drives, and communicate over PCIe? Don't know if an m. 2 card is out for that yet.

[LiveOrDie]

Zarathustraa wrote:
But, couldn't an add on card raid the drives, and communicate over PCIe? Don't know if an m. 2 card is out for that yet.

For RAID to work both cards need to be on ONE: a controller that supports RAID and TWO: the same controller which nether the R5E has support for. Its no different than how the onboard asmeida SATA ports can't be used to RAID with the Intel ports there both on there own controller which you can clearly see setup in the BIOS.



Well seems Asus's own addon card can be used to RAID two M.2 drives have a read here, I'm not to sure how this is setup the card would have to have some type of switch on it to enable RAID i would say.

http://rog.asus.com/361862014/rampage-motherboards/m-2-pci-express-ssd-raid-0-performance-on-rampage...

[Zarathustraa]

Looks like something should be out that'll let me do raid 0 with nvme drives by the time the 1gb model of the 950s comes out. Sm951s technically weren't nvme right?

[Korth]

Hmm, my laptop reports two 951PRO NVMe SSDs in RAID0 (but without any Magician caches) - although I haven't actually benchmarked drive performance yet and I have no idea how the IT guy set it all up. Running a Mandrake distro, not that Win10 trash.

[LiveOrDie]

If the addon cards supports NVMe RAID should work.

Here a video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhB7K13SXZ0