The only thing in life that’s better in life than one Gen 4 SSD is two.
Even better than that?
Three Gen 4 SSDs in RAID.
Yes, I know, I know, this isn’t 2002 when everyone still used hard drives in RAID 0.
All the experts today in fact tell you it’s just not worth it with today’s fast Gen
4 M.2 SSDs.
What those experts don’t tell you is sometimes you just have to have the need to show off
to your friend who only has one Gen 4 drive.
Yes, they got 1Gig Internet, I got 10Gig Internet.
They got a 3080, I got a 3090.
Yeah, I’m that guy.
This video is sponsored by SK hynix, the maker of fastest-in-class SSDs.
The new Platinum P41 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD exhibits technical excellence driven by unmatched speeds
and reliability.
The Platinum series represents the company’s flagship retail lineup geared towards gamers
and content creators looking to turbo-boost PC performance.
Check out the link in the description in order to grab the Platinum P41 today and give your
PC a huge upgrade.
More than a decade ago, PC enthusiasts ran dual 10,000 RPM hard drives in RAID 0 for
that extra nitrous boost of performance for their PCs.
Modern day SSDs, however, have mostly made such configurations obsolete with a single
M.2 drive capable of hitting seven gigabytes in read speed and six and a half gigabytes
in write speed.
Basically so much speed and so little latency the conventional wisdom today is to just skip
RAID entirely.
But wait, if RAID is such a waste, why do all performance-oriented motherboards offer it?
Are they just marketing cynics exploiting our need to have something better?
Or do they know some of us still want to have the absolute fastest thing there is even if
we won’t ever use it?
It would have been like asking George Mallory there’s no need to climb Everst because
the view down here was just fine.
So to celebrate the spirit of old school enthusiasts, I decided to sit down and make a three gen
4 RAID array worthy of bragging to my fellow nerds about.
Well, to specifically brag to my co-worker who only has one Gen 4 drive.
My platform of choice is the most modern one available: Intel’s Core i9-12900K on an
Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero.
The board features three PCIe expansion slots, and three onboard M.2 slots.
For those who need more, Asus also includes a Hyper M.2 PCIe add-in card with slots for
two additional M.2 drives that can be run in RAID.
See, Asus wouldn’t include the Hyper card if you didn’t crave RAID right?
If you’re wondering why not just populate the three onboard M.2 slots and call it a
day, it’s not that simple.
In fact, nothing is simple with configuring an SSD RAID on an Intel Z690 motherboard.
Performance with the three onboard M.2 slots was simply unimpressive when I tested it.
And because of how PCIe is divied up on Z690, it was difficult to achieve performance and
even get the M.2 drives to appear sometimes.
It was like a game of whack-a-mole where I found myself having to build and rebuild the
RAID array more than two dozen times as I moved drives and the Hyper M.2 card around
the system to find the best combination.
Even more perplexing, I found performance on Z690 actually got worse trying to add a
fourth M.2 drive to the mix so three it is.
And for those used to installing Windows from a USB key with nothing else needed, installing
RAID isn’t as simple.
First, you’ll have to stumble yourself into the correct M.2 slots to use--it’s different
for every motherboard--and then you’ll have to enable Volume Management Device features
in the BIOS as well as create the RAID array.
For this RAID 0 project, I used a 128KB stripe size which storage experts say is an irresponsible
size since most files you access are far smaller.
To them, I say if I’ve already ignored you about creating a RAID array already, why start
listening now?
During install, I had to separately download drivers from the motherboard maker and manually
point the installer to the drivers--just like F6 floppy disk drivers in 2002 on hard disk
RAID builds.
In the end though, I ended up with a massive 5.4 terabyte RAID 0 array that is indeed brag
worthy.
Here's a hint. You can backwards brag about how fast your RAID is by telling friends how hard it is to set
up a Gen 4 drive array and how it took you all weekend to get just right.
How fast?
A single P41 drive can hit about 7 gig reads and 6.6 gig writes.
My three drive RAID array could reach sequential 21 gig reads and 16.8 gig writes with a frankly
silly queue depth of 32 in Crystal Disk Mark 8.
At this point, my Negative Nerd friends will just sputter “What do you need 21 gigabyte
read speeds for anyway?”
The argument, they say, is it’s just overkill.
They’ll also cite such benchmarks as 3DMark’s Storage test that shows the performance difference for gamers
is minimal.
But I was prepared for that argument, using the also real world AJA Test which tells me
while a single P41 gives me just under 6 gig read and writes, my RAID array will reach
14 gig read and writes using Sony 5K 16 bit RAW CODECs.
And no, I don’t have a video camera that shoots at 5K and have no plans to buy one,
but sometimes you don’t do things because it’s practical--you do it to show off.