AMD Enabled NVMe RAID upgrade for AMD X399 chipset

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Oct 2, 2017.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

    Messages:
    48,391
    Likes Received:
    18,560
    GPU:
    AMD | NVIDIA
    varkkon likes this.
  2. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    7,974
    Likes Received:
    4,342
    GPU:
    Asrock 7700XT
    How exactly do you hotswap an NVMe drive? Or is that more of a misnomer? When I think "hot swapping" I think adding/removing a device while the computer is still operating.
     
  3. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

    Messages:
    48,391
    Likes Received:
    18,560
    GPU:
    AMD | NVIDIA
    I know in the server segment it actually is possible to hotswap NVMe units. But with a consumer grade M2 .. nope I would not really recommend that.
     
    rl66 likes this.
  4. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    7,974
    Likes Received:
    4,342
    GPU:
    Asrock 7700XT
    True, though once you get to server level stuff you can hotswap PCI/PCIe cards, power supplies, and in some rare cases I think you can hotswap CPUs and RAM.
     
    rl66 likes this.

  5. The Average

    The Average Guest

    Messages:
    42
    Likes Received:
    0
    GPU:
    RX470/4GB
    It is not only the m.2 drives you can raid1 with. There are PCIe cards that take m.2 drives or PCIe SSDs like the Intel SSD 750. Perhaps you can do some karate with those.
     
  6. varkkon

    varkkon Member Guru

    Messages:
    140
    Likes Received:
    24
    GPU:
    Geforce 1080 Ti
    Amazing! My body is ready :) , AMD owns.
     
  7. rl66

    rl66 Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    3,924
    Likes Received:
    839
    GPU:
    Sapphire RX 6700 XT
    yes i have worked in a 24/24 7/7 365/365 system for industry, very impressive to change a failed CPU with system ON... but it's like hotswap SATA for normal computer :)

    it should be tried (not on main system of course)... sometime the surprise is good (and sometime not i agree :) ).
     
  8. BLEH!

    BLEH! Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    6,402
    Likes Received:
    421
    GPU:
    Sapphire Fury
    This is how you do marketing. Intel could learn a thing or two, rather than putting out lame excuses all the time.
     
    Kaarme and jdc2389 like this.
  9. jdc2389

    jdc2389 Guest

    Messages:
    187
    Likes Received:
    13
    GPU:
    980ti 1408/3650
    Damn right, raid on Threadripper with 4 m.2 960 pros sounds amazing.
     
  10. Kaarme

    Kaarme Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    3,513
    Likes Received:
    2,355
    GPU:
    Nvidia 4070 FE
    It's just a matter of who's the recipient of the excuses. I'm sure AMD's stock owners had to cope with plenty of them during the past years, while Intel's stock owners were drinking champagne with the Intel execs.
     

  11. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    7,974
    Likes Received:
    4,342
    GPU:
    Asrock 7700XT
    I agree, though, keep in mind AMD got some flak for being so late support RAID. To my recollection, Intel supported RAID with X299 immediately, though you had to pay extra for full support (which is pretty scummy). AMD's RAID support came relatively late, but they're a lot more generous about it.

    In general, hardware/firmware RAID with NVMe is pointless for most users anyway (particularly RAID1) - I think it's a very niche case where any home users demand it for a boot drive. Keep in mind even on Intel's platforms, you can still do software RAID.
     
  12. D3M1G0D

    D3M1G0D Guest

    Messages:
    2,068
    Likes Received:
    1,341
    GPU:
    2 x GeForce 1080 Ti
    Well, I'm not sure if I'd say they supported it immediately - after all, the VROC key didn't launch with the platform (I'm not even sure of it's availability now). It'd be more accurate to say that they made a lot of noise about it ;)

    I didn't care too much about RAID, but seeing der8auer's video has piqued my interest somewhat. I'm already using a Samsung 960 Evo on my X399 system, and have another one of the same capacity in my other system. I dunno - if I get really bored one day then I might just try it.
     
  13. Timoo

    Timoo Guest

    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    GPU:
    MSI R6850 Cyclone
    I tend to disagree on that. Personally I'm running an SSD RAID0 and that gives your system a bit more responsiveness.
    I can imagine that 4 M.2's in RAID0 would boost your video editing speed quite a lot; real-time saving & editing.With so many YouTubers these days making enough money to afford these kind of machines, I can see a decent market for it.
    RAID1 is for the safety systems; where data preservation is important.
     
  14. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    7,974
    Likes Received:
    4,342
    GPU:
    Asrock 7700XT
    I find that really hard to believe, but, I welcome benchmarks to prove me wrong. M.2 SSDs are almost as low-level as you can get (besides PCIe SSDs) and offer plenty of bandwidth for everyday tasks. RAID, regardless of the method you choose, will always increase the minimum latency, but, it doesn't always increase transfer rates. Whatever peformance differences you notice could easily come down to:
    * Specific applications that benefit more from sequential reads/writes.
    * Faster CPU and/or chipset (chipset doesn't really affect performance as much as it used to, but it can make a difference).
    * If you're using Windows, having a freshly formatted drive tends to make a big difference. Windows is usually pretty bad at drive maintenance.
    Like I said - there are niche uses where RAID is necessary. But except for people who work with high-speed cameras or raw 4K@60FPS content, most video editors aren't going to need even 2x M.2 drives. That being said, most Youtubers don't even do 2K@60FPS, and we all know Hollywood likes to stay below 30FPS. So for most video editors, RAID isn't a necessity.

    RAID1 or RAID10 is pretty much a necessity if you're handling important data on HDDs, but I find it to be a total waste of money on SSDs. Data integrity and drive failure rates are pretty much a non-issue with modern SSDs. Having separate backups is far more practical while costing less and being less intensive on system resources. RAID1 should never be treated as a backup.
     

Share This Page