Broadwell E

[Chalenge]

Usually, the manufacturers will create a more stable board on their top end items. The power will be composed of better electronics and so on. I have been wanting to try dual M.2, but eSata onboard is another option and you might also opt for U.2 which is faster and has greater capacity options. Most people will not opt for U.2 because of the associated costs. I'm not up on what OCZ is offering, but if the one you mentioned is in fact a U.2 device than a 400GB capacity if just an early offering. I expect the cost will come down quickly and the capacity will increase at the same time. Right now they are not worth the price being asked unless you need the speed.

If you are talking about the OCZ SAS devices than you could build a redundant backup system at a much more cost effective level.

I have been look at the ASUS STRIX X99 Gaming today. I still have more looking to do, but that looks like a great board at the moment.

[MADe]

M.2 is a form factor, meant for laptops.
AIC adapter allows the M.2 form factor SSD to plug into PCIe 3.0 slot
U.2 is specifically for the Intel 750 SSD, some kind of new synergistic thing.????????????? expensive!
SATAe is using 4 PCIe lanes....????????
None required for day to day pc use. but! I feel the need for speed..........
All get 32GB/s speeds, all just different form factors of the various SSD's for PCIe lanes. I generalized a lot, but I read some stuff just yesterday about this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820228165&ignorebbr=1
I'm considering 2 in RAID 0.

As far as mobo question, the 2 boards are practically the same. the g1 has dual lan, 3.1 usb. The UD gigabyte boards are tough, I am using their basic boards, nothing fancy, now. I learned my lesson with an ASUS Stryker Extreme mobo, It was the ethusiasts, OC board of its day. I could hardly get it to run at defaults. unstable, rma'ed  4 times cuz it just quit. So why do I need the G1 if the UD4 will do same with less things that can break.
same sound, lan, ports, chipset, dimms, pcie slots, bios, mostly the same yes?....

Broadwell having 40 PCIe lanes means a whole new line of hardware changes. SATA is done except for storage and backup spinner drives where you want redundancy x10. As long as the base file is saved elsewhere, when an SSD dies u lose nada.

[Pudgie]

M.2 is a form factor, meant for laptops.
AIC adapter allows the M.2 form factor SSD to plug into PCIe 3.0 slot
U.2 is specifically for the Intel 750 SSD, some kind of new synergistic thing.????????????? expensive!
SATAe is using 4 PCIe lanes....????????
None required for day to day pc use. but! I feel the need for speed..........
All get 32GB/s speeds, all just different form factors of the various SSD's for PCIe lanes. I generalized a lot, but I read some stuff just yesterday about this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820228165&ignorebbr=1
I'm considering 2 in RAID 0.

As far as mobo question, the 2 boards are practically the same. the g1 has dual lan, 3.1 usb. The UD gigabyte boards are tough, I am using their basic boards, nothing fancy, now. I learned my lesson with an ASUS Stryker Extreme mobo, It was the ethusiasts, OC board of its day. I could hardly get it to run at defaults. unstable, rma'ed  4 times cuz it just quit. So why do I need the G1 if the UD4 will do same with less things that can break.
same sound, lan, ports, chipset, dimms, pcie slots, bios, mostly the same yes?....

Broadwell having 40 PCIe lanes means a whole new line of hardware changes. SATA is done except for storage and backup spinner drives where you want redundancy x10. As long as the base file is saved elsewhere, when an SSD dies u lose nada.

Ahhh I know how you're feeling...................... ......

 

 

[MADe]

Ahhh I know how you're feeling...................... ......

 

 

the newegg cart is at $1450 +/-, without the 1070 or psu.
so its gonna be 32GB or even 16 gb or ram. $/2
6850 ain't getting lower
2 drives is $250..................
decisions decisions......

[Chalenge]

All get 32GB/s speeds, all just different form factors of the various SSD's for PCIe lanes. I generalized a lot, but I read some stuff just yesterday about this.

I'm going to suggest you read even more. HDDs are far from extinct. NVMe is (I think) the way to go in a case you want to stay cool. The whole point in buying a board that supports all of the various formats is to use what you have. If you are going to buy it all new then go for it.

I will be using an external cabinet of He SAS HDDs (HGST Ultrastar He10) for a long while to come.

I don't have a lot of electronics fail me. When things fail it is usually a weak electronic component, like the capacitor that failed on my Z87 MB after two years. What fails me more often are the companies like EVGA that survive on a reputation that they don't deserve. It took them more than a year to patch the X99 FTW BIOS and even after that wait not all the slots are functional. ASUS just works and when you do have a bad moment they cover their products.

[Chalenge]

This is more than two years old, but it pretty much covers my interest in any storage faster than current SSDs. SATAe seems to hard to nail down even now.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7843/testing-sata-express-with-asus

[Pudgie]

I know Gigabyte X99 series mobos are using SATAe thru a switch thru the X99 chipset for the M.2 connector(s). Good to know that the bandwidth thru SATAe vs dedicated PCI-E has been tested to be virtually the same so this will make the choice between the 2 paths a moot point from a capacity standpoint.

My Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5 mobo's M.2 connector runs thru the X99 chipset thru SATAe (the lower row of SATA connectors in right block where the left connector is for a true SATAe drive cable but also takes the next 2 SATA ports (SATA 4 and SATA 5) to get to x4 lanes and 10Gb\s bandwidth requirement for a PCI-E 3.0 x4 spec so if a M.2 SSD is installed in the M.2 slot or a SATAe device is installed in the SATAe connector the lower row of SATA ports are blocked out and can't be used so you would drop from 10 SATA ports to 8 thru the X99 chipset.......

If my comprehension of all my reading is good, if you want to RAID0 M.2 SSD's you would either need a mobo that has multiple M.2 slots installed and routed thru the X99 chipset (to use the built in RAID controller in the X99 chipset) OR a PCI-E riser card w\ multiple M.2 slots and a RAID controller along w\ a PCI-E controller on board to use in a dedicated PCI-E slot......especially in a x4 up to x16 PCI-E slot to ensure adequate bandwidth. I could be wrong but I think this is correct.............

Note: If you look at any of the PCI-E 2.0 x8 SSD's out in the market they are essentially multiple SSD's mounted on a riser card w\ an onboard RAID0 and PCI-E controller to get the speeds that are advertised (close to a single NVMe M.2 SSD). I was looking on Newegg and found a PCI-E riser card that had 2 M.2 slots mounted on it so that 2 M.2 SSD's can be used on it but it didn't have a RAID or PCI-E controller chip mounted on it......but it may be possible to still use this in a PCI-E x4 and up slot that routes thru the X99 chipset to RAID0 the 2 M.2 SSD's on the riser card using the built in RAID controller.

At least from my perspective.............

 

[Chalenge]

I have never been really happy with the proprietary controllers, especially for RAID. I like the option of being able to use the equipment I have, vis-a-vis drives, but when it comes to RAID functions I like to add cards with hardware controllers. The software solution that MBs offer has never been ideal and I think adds to problems like MADe is just now coming out of.

[Pudgie]

I have never been really happy with the proprietary controllers, especially for RAID. I like the option of being able to use the equipment I have, vis-a-vis drives, but when it comes to RAID functions I like to add cards with hardware controllers. The software solution that MBs offer has never been ideal and I think adds to problems like MADe is just now coming out of.

I know of what you're saying, Chalenge..........

Why I gave up on doing RAID0 back in 2008-2009 using the mobo chipset RAID controller on a purely gaming computer as its just too much of a hassle after working w\ them for a few years, especially when the HDD's were already fast enough on their own (was using WD 74Gb Raptor 10,000 RPM HDD's back then and WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM HDD's before that), especially when I used the 2nd HDD to mount the page file on instead of the HDD that I had the OS installed on (a practice that I still use today w\ my SSD's w\ an added purpose of "protecting the boot SSD" from massive rewrites\overprovisioning) to reduce HDD read\write latency in games\apps that tend to perform a lot of small writes (page out) to disk (some game stuttering is due to this occurring in the background....not always a vid card issue) but also due to the way Windows handles this (tends to perform paging regardless of amount of system mem installed....coded to do it). I know that better written software will preemptively perform these tasks ahead of time by taking advantage of HDD idle time or have enough system mem installed to allow as much\all of a game and its files to be addressed into system mem to reduce\alleviate paging at all but I've always adhered to the practice of covering all the angles as feasibly can be done to attain\sustain maximum performance. Not always the most cost-effective practice but it is the most satisfying from a pure performance standpoint.

I almost bought a PCI-slot RAID riser card to set up a dedicated RAID0 array by-passing the onboard chipset RAID controller but decided to give up on it entirely and haven't looked back since.

But more power to those who love to run a RAID0 array...............

 

The advent of NVMe SSD's to me is like having RAID0 performance w\o all the hassles of RAID0 array setup\maintenance.

My small 2 cents on RAID.................

 

[MADe]

tbh I am not interested in RAID'ing them for speed. Its an experiment for longevity. My current SSD's have been RAID'ed from the get. I always over provisioned them on top of there own built in. Anyways there still going. I want to combine 2, 128GB drives to make a 256 boot drive, then only allocate 200GB of it for OS.
only 1 manufacturer appears to support, ASROCK. They have a UEFI bios with RST for RAID.. They have dual m.2 key slots.

[Chalenge]

Well, in my opinion speed is the only reason to do RAID, but if you use an onboard controller for RAID you probably won't meet with a very reliable system. Reliable controllers are not cheap, but if it is reliability you are after that's the way to go. I would even push it out of the case and go with a separate storage cabinet.

SAS cabinets make a great price point over SATA solutions performance-wise at smaller capacities, so . . . that is the direction I am going.

[MADe]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157719

Alright then, expanding POV and narrowing focus.

dual ultra m.2
dual lan
only 3 PCIe expansion slots
bios designed to RAID M.2 ssd's
reasonably priced...........

Anyone with ASROCK experiences?

[Pudgie]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157719

Alright then, expanding POV and narrowing focus.

dual ultra m.2
dual lan
only 3 PCIe expansion slots
bios designed to RAID M.2 ssd's
reasonably priced...........

Anyone with ASROCK experiences?

Now Asrock is going in the direction w\ that mobo that I've always thought an enthusiast product should go..........I do like that layout!
Gonna put Asrock in the vetting process on the next core upgrade that I undertake.

 

Let me know how it all goes if you do go that route.................

I'd appreciate it.

 

[MADe]

cc 

Thing is I really luv the gigabyte dual bios. This ASROCK board tho is very attractive. The Fata1ty ver is very sweet as well, but way more expensive.
Prelim read says it should OC well to.

Tink abot it, a 5GHz cpu clock w/ 40 pcie lanes, a GTX1070, and RAID0 NVMe ultra m.2 drive, 3000+/-MHz ram. I mean dern it! This should give me a reach around faster than I can blink. And its not cost prohibitive.

Whats ThunderBolt 3.0 mean for monitors? I read some stuff and it helps with 4K and the future, will it make a diff for a led hdmi HDTV?

[Chalenge]

Thunderbolt 3 RAID box (40Gbps) with DisplayPort out.

https://www.amazon.com/Akitio-Thunder3-Duo-Pro-Thunderbolt3/dp/B01BL0CKIM