New Upcomming Asrock Board

[b0ssman]

This looks very interesting for future setups.

http://www.asrock.com/server/overview.a ... l=C2750D4I

8 Core 2.4 Ghz
Ecc Support
Aes-NI
12 Sata Ports

Supposed to idle at 16 W.

[chrisf4lc0n]

Nice find mate. Will check it out when becomes available in the UK. Hopefully it will not be too expensive

[sodalimon]

I wonder how it will perform using those Marvell SE9230 and SE9172 controllers...
The specs are amazing until one plans for further expansion (e.g. one pci-e slot)...
Has anyone used this one?

[lindsay]

About the price you can comapre at newegg wich have it.

[Earendil]

Yikes! I personally would reconsider as for that price (I saw $370) I can get a solid six SATA MB with a couple of cheap but reliable Silicon Image PCI-e cards with money to spare. I mention it somewhere in this forum and I am not home to verify but I have a MB with six SATA (one eSATA but looped back into the box)(~$80), a 4 port (~$40) and a 2 port (~$20) SATA cards. That's 12 SATA ports for about $140 if I remember correctly.

This is a personal decision but I only have AMD systems so I wouldn't get it anyway.

[b0ssman]

yes cheap is always possible.

but it wouldnt be a system which is itx and 12 ports plus an expansion slot free.

[sodalimon]

Thanks for sharing the link and the alternative...

But I have to say this over and over...
Prior to installing my current server, I had the opportunity to test with several hardware.
I mean, 6 seagate sv35 2tb + pci-e marvell controllers. I remember, that combination sucked on both performance and cpu usage (on various array topologies).
Only then I decided to move on to LSI cards (no need to mention, the intel sata ports perform really well too)...

At this moment I seriously doubt on the performance of those additional Marvell ports.
Has anyone got any experience or information on the subject?
I might be wrong, cause it sounds weird for such a product to depend on those controllers.

(I have marvell controllers on my desktop PC too. And I know for sure, they lack the performance of Intel ports too..)

[b0ssman]

there are some reports about this board with terrible performance on the unraid forum. and some reports with fine transfer rates.

[sodalimon]

Thanks for the information b0ssman...

I checked and found out that my experience was with the 9128 and 9130 series.

So I was wrong coming with such a claim on 9172 and 9230.
Actually, browsing the web shows there are claims otherwise...

On the other hand, is 2x mode PCI-e 2.0 enough for 4 SATA 3.0 drives? (5Gbps on 1x and 10Gbps on 2x)
Kind of 1000MB/s for 4 drives. If it performs that well (and on 2x) at all...
And what about SSD's? And what about IOPS?
And CPU consumption is another concern...

http://www.marvell.com/storage/system-s ... -Brief.pdf

Yet, I would like to have that CPU/Board And might go well with an LSI controller

I'll order a couple of 9230 and 9235 boards soon, just to find out...

[b0ssman]

well about the pcie speed.

even though you can get very close to 1000mb/s with 4 drives (exceeding it with ssd).
you won't be transfering it over the network at that speed.

[sodalimon]

Well, I hope it works 2x PCI-e and gets close to the theoretical figures...
Cause, 91xx sucked really badly.

But just because a single NIC is limited to ~100MBps doesn't mean, the system would not benefit from the performance of disk access.
Besides; Copy / move / backup / clone, multiple requests, LAGG, MPIO, all benefit I guess..

But, as far as I'm concerned, no consumer grade SATA drive keeps up above 220MBps on average, anyway.

So you're right. Once again