PCI-X motherboards (looking to do hardware raid 5) or wait for PCIe?

djwang2000 · 11-13-2005, 04:04 AM

I am interested in using either 3wares 9500 series or the broadcom raid card to do hardware raid. As a newb, I thought I had a mb picked out, until I realized that these cards require PCI-X. Can any one suggest some reasonable budget mbs with PCI-X that I might look into or is it better to just wait for PCIe raid cards to come out?

David

PsychosisNode · 11-13-2005, 09:13 PM

The only 32bit PCI cards that can do proper hardware RAID5 that I know of are the Highpoint RocketRaid cards. These also have full open source linux support.

Really, unless you can find a second hand PCI-X board (assuming you mean 64bit PCI) then, well, a "reasonably" priced mobo is in the lower to mid £££s range. Unless you really need the boards you specified then personnaly I'd just use a PCI raid-5 card.

Check out these cards:
RocketRaid 454 (PCI/ATA)
RocketRaid 1640 (PCI/SATA)

Hope this helps!

Electro · 11-13-2005, 09:49 PM

It is possible that PCI-X (PCI Extended) can be inserted in a standard 32-bit with reduce throughput. I suggest calling or e-mailing each manufacture if you can do this. A PCI-X motherboard costs about $200 and up.

PsychosisNode, Highpoint controllers and as well as other manufactures like Promise creates only software RAID controllers.