SCSI or NO SCSI?

[Atlas101]

I'm building my current project slowly but surely. I'm building mainly for the sake of having an extreme gaming machine.

I've never used SCSI before and wanted to implement it for years now but never did because of budget constraints.

Considering I'm willing to allot some funds to investing in that interface, should I or shouldn't I?

I can't seem to find an affordable PCI SCSI controller card running U320.

So far my items include: Thermaltake Armor case, TT 550W SLI PS, TT water cooling kit.

Im looking towards dual core, not sure what platform yet, 2+ gigs of ram, dual vid cards, etc, etc...Im just really stuck on either raid 0 with 2 raptor drives (stick with onboard raid or invest in external) or raid 0 scsi with 2 u320 15K drives.

I've read the AMD vs Intel thread which was informative, but I'd like to get your thoughts.

Please help!!

 

[BadFrog]

Don't let the title fool you. This thread should answer most if not all of your questions.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1213331&page=1

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein

 

[cdogg]

Especially for a non-server environment, it hardly makes sense to go with SCSI these days. There was another recent thread that discussed this:

thread602-1213331


With SAS on the horizon and SATA RAID 3Gbps already out there, SCSI is a thing of the past at this point. Some might swear up and down that certain SCSI drive models are more reliable and might run a hair faster here and there, but don't buy into it for a workstation. It's just not worth the money regardless. The WD Raptor on an SATA interface is much more affordable and quite competitive in that respect.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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[Atlas101]

Thanks guys, I'll read up on those and post back.

 

[KenB]

Don't forget to read this one:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/04/07/going_the_sas_storage_way/

HTH
Ken

 

[cdogg]

It's in the thread posted above, Ken, but thanks...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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[Atlas101]

Has anyone seen pricing on these SAS drives or controllers>

Being new im sure its out of control

 

[cdogg]

Well, the question remains...Do you need it?

If you buy top-of-the-line SATA, I'm sure it'll be plenty fast for your needs. Have you checked out the 10,000 RPM WD Raptor yet?

How many drives do you need?

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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[ceh4702]

If you are going to build a striping array you may want to have a way to back that up somehow.

Consider this logic:

You build a system with one drive and if 1 of 1 drives fail your system fails.

You build a system with a 2 drive array and if 1 of 2 drives fail all your drives fail.

You build a system with a 3 drive array and 1 of 3 drives fail all your drives fail.

Adding more drives might be faster but it increases the possibility of a drive failure. That is fine if you have a hot spare ready to replace it with immediately and have a backup.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[PRPhx]

Atlas101:
SCSI is a fairly old technology. And as you are finding out, it is expensive. I'd go with the new SATA/300 (or SATA 2, whatever you want to call it). This new technology is a lot cheaper (depending on the amount of space you want/need), supports Native Command Queing (makes data transfer intelligent and faster), etc.

Depending on the number of drives you wqant, there are controller that will handle 12 or more drives! (YES, they are rather expensive), can be hot swapped, etc. I have a server that will handle 24 drives (yes, that's 9 terabytes). We currently have 3.6 terabytes. The server is fast and we have as many as 75-100 users accessing the server (it's used to store digital images from our scanning application).

SCSI can be a real pain in the butt SCSI devices have to be powered up before the pc or server starts or they have a difficult time communicating.

 

[kmcferrin]

Honestly, if I had the money and were building the fastest PC I could possibly manage, I would just go with the WD Raptors in a RAID array. SCSI will add significantly more cost and significantly more complexity to the build, and though performance might be a little better than Raptors in RAID, I definitely don't think that it would be worth the cost.

If you want more speed, just add more spindles to the RAID. It's cheaper than SCSI and would work just as well. For the cost of a U320 RAID controller and a pair of 146 GB 15k RPM U320 drives you would be spending $1600-$1800 and have only 300 GB on non-fault tolerant storage. You could build the same thing for $550 using an on-board RAID controller and a pair of 150 GB Raptors.

Let's get crazy. For $1200 you could get a SATA150 RAID5 controller and three 150 GB Raptors. Then you get 300 GB of fault-tolerant storage. Or spend around $1000 and get 5 75GB Raptors and a RAID5 card. You've still got 300 GB of storage, but because you've got more spindles it will be even faster.

 

[cdogg]

And to cut some down on the budget since it's not a server, you could get away with just two drives in a RAID 0 array. Then you could rely on periodical backups using a program like Norton Ghost to a third drive which can act as a mirror.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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[Atlas101]

Sorry I didn't clarify in more detail:

Storage and redundancy isn't an issue here. I run a domain server in my house with fault tolerance. Sure the games and saved games would be lost (on the client machine)but Im really not that concerned.

I was definately thinking about the Raptor drives in a Raid 0..Its the cheapest and its pretty fast for the buck...I run raid 0 now but with 7200 rpm drives...Needless to say Im happy with the setup...

I guess I wanted to go a different route..It seems 8 out of 10 people are running raid 0 with raptors (cuz they're smart!, lol), but I was really leaning towards SCSI for the added performance...If its not that much of a difference then so be it. It's why I asked!

I think I'm gonna go with 2 36.7 raptors in raid 0...again space is no issue. The HD's will only hold games and the saved games they create.

Here's another question. Should I invest in an external raid controller? Is their any evidence an external namebrand controller is faster than the onboard types?

 

[kmcferrin]

It depends on what the obboard RAID controller is and what the add-on RAID controller is. Some chipsets are faster than others. I've heard people talk about most on-board RAID controllers being "fake RAID" in that it offloads the work to your CPU. Personally I don't see it, considering the minimal cost of putting a true RAID controller on the mainboard that does 0/1/0+1. Some people say that unless it has onboard hardware to do XOR calculations then it will offload the work to your CPU, but XOR calculations are only used in RAID configurations that have parity data (RAID 0 and 1 do not), so that shouldn't make a difference.

Google around and you might see a comparison between different RAID controllers, but I would be suprised if there were a significant difference in performance or CPU utilization among most controllers. I guess you could always build it with what you have onboard, and if you see problems switch to an add-in board.

 

[clav]

Hey Atlas101
All these replies are definitely on the right track for data integrity but, correct me if I'm mistaken, you want this particular machine as a gamer? The biggest bottlenecks are (1)addin cards with their lower bus speeds and bus jumps and/or (2)video processing. Maybe PCIX and really fast monitor(s) (CRT not LCD) areas would be worth a look too?

 

[Atlas101]

I'm definately not skimping on the add-on cards...the bus speed is slower but availability for PCI-X is pretty limited as far as products are concerned.

 

[cdogg]

There are lots of options for PCI-X just doing a search on google. Remember, PCI-X and PCI-Express (pci-e) are not the same.

This one looked decent for the price:

http://www.pcconnection.com/ProductDetail?sku=5543397&SourceID=k40132

Specs here:

http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/adsa3gx4r.asp

But for quality and some additional features, both Promise and Highpoint have a few models out there as well in the $200 range. PCI-X is not considered a slow, legacy bus by any means. Although it will eventually fade away in favor of PCI-e, it can support up to 1Gbps transfer rates which is more than enough for as many as 8 drives.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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[Atlas101]

CDOGG:

I was referring to vid cards not being PCI-X.

There are very few boards that will overclock well and have a PCI-X slot. Options will be quite limited.

 

[cdogg]

quote: "[blue]I'm definately not skimping on the add-on cards...the bus speed is slower but availability for PCI-X is pretty limited...[/blue]"

Didn't see the reference between "add-on cards" and "vid cards"


Oh well, none of that matters anyway. On your next motherboard, you're going to have PCI-E x16 and x4 slots (possibly even an x8). PCI-X is roughly equivalent to an x4 slot. Therefore, PCI-X shouldn't be a concern. Your next video card will be PCI-E.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884