Silk I7 Bundle ASUS P6X58D Premium SATA 6 question

[Tony2cakes]

Hi Folks,
After knocking the Edge I7 Gigabyte bundle into touch,
Now looking at the Asus P6X58D Premium mobo in the Silk I7 Bundle.

Can anyone confirm if the 2 SATA 6 ports can be configured for boot up in the Bios?
Also can they be used in a Raid 0 configuration?

Looking at the few screen shots of the bios screens on the web, or the asus manual, this does not seem clear if this can be done. These are key features I would want. so I need to 100% sure this can be done.

I have also contacted asus vip support but have yet to recieve a response.

Thank you all in advance :-)

[leepen@scan]

Tony2cakes,

Thanks for your query.

The 2x SATA 6Gb/s ports are JBOD only and as such, do not support RAID configurations I'm afraid.

I have recently done a system with the P6X58 and the following RAID card;

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Highp...ontroller(card)

Great results from that one. It's still early days for SATA 6 and USB 3.0 and I'd always put more faith in a dedicated controller card than an onboard software solution.

Any queries, give me a PM - we can do a custom bundle such as this I'm sure.

All the best

[Tony2cakes]

Tony2cakes,

Thanks for your query.

The 2x SATA 6Gb/s ports are JBOD only and as such, do not support RAID configurations I'm afraid.

I have recently done a system with the P6X58 and the following RAID card;

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Highp...ontroller(card)

Great results from that one. It's still early days for SATA 6 and USB 3.0 and I'd always put more faith in a dedicated controller card than an onboard software solution.

Any queries, give me a PM - we can do a custom bundle such as this I'm sure.

All the best

Hi Lee,

Thanks for the link, it is coming up 404 NF for me can you send to again or email it? Paul has my addy
What's your prefernce on the mobo Edge (Gigabyte) or Silk (Asus) I also noticed you have dropped back to the 920 cpu on the bundles. Problem with the first batch of 930's ?


Regards Tony

[Philipp]

Hello Tony,

No problems with the 930s as such, the 920s overclock just as well as the 930s and are about £50 cheaper.

If you would rather have a 930, feel free to contact our sales team as this is not a problem.

Cheers

[Tony2cakes]

Hello Tony,

No problems with the 930s as such, the 920s overclock just as well as the 930s and are about £50 cheaper.

If you would rather have a 930, feel free to contact our sales team as this is not a problem.

Cheers

Hello Philipp,

My original quote by Paul was for a 930 bundle worked out to approx £32.00 more than my current selection. However by the time I had finally placed my order the bundles were reverted to the 920. I have been informed by Paul that the 930 generates more heat than the 930. Based on his advice and the fact I had gone over budget, I went for the 920.

Looking at the Intel specs the 930 is electrically identical to the 930 with the exclusion of the clock multiplier. (20 vs. 21X) I can only assume that this is the cause of the higher temps due increased v settings? I also felt I would gain very little or nothing at all by my first choice of the 930.

Although with 30 years in electronics repair to component level, I have found the task of a PC self build quite daunting and somewhat of a minefield. I very pleased with the professional level of quality customer care and guidance I have received from Scan thus far.

Tony

[Pete the Painter]

Hi Tony,

Just to let you know the Marvell 6 Gb/s ports can be configured as a Raid 0 or Raid 1 array and can be select as the first boot device for Windows.

[Tony2cakes]

Hi Tony,

Just to let you know the Marvell 6 Gb/s ports can be configured as a Raid 0 or Raid 1 array and can be select as the first boot device for Windows.

Hello Pete,
Well that is good news but Asus tech support said this was not possible. Ref email below dotted line Have you seen this configuration running somewhere?

This is why I went with the gigabyte UD5 which uses the 9128 Marvel controller vs. 9538 on the Asus? The Spec sheet on the Marvell site states the 9128 supports raid

However as of Tuesday Paul has informed me that my UD5 bundle currently in the good hands of Rick is failing after 12 hours test cycle.

Which is a little strange as he told me they had not had this issue with the UD3 bundles they sell?

I will give him a call Mon or Tues and see if they have resolved the issue. If not I will have to go with the ASUS bundle. Not happy about that but what can you do?

Already I went over budget. Now shelling out more money to switch to ASUS plus the additional cost for an off board Raid controller is not something I wish to do. Plus there would be no guarantees I would be able to boot from that.


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WTM20100426222438379 Re: Motherboard P6X58D Premium [ID=RWTM20100426222438379-171] 2010-04-26 22:10:08
Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service.
My name is Jany and it's my pleasure to help you with your problem.
You could use them as bootable disks. But I am afraid to say that there is no RAID function for the ports.
Welcome to refer Troubleshooting & FAQ for ASUS products in ASUS website:
Troubleshooting - http://support.asus.com/troubleshoot...Language=en-us
FAQ - http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

If you continue to experience issues in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best Regards,

Jany

ASUS Customer Service

[Pete the Painter]

Hi Tony,

It appears that I've been misinformed which controller was on the Premium version

I've put my test samples on a bench to make sure you have the correct info.
The Asus P6X58D Premium doesn’t support raid as it uses the 9123 Marvell Controller however there is some good news, the newer Asus P6X58D-E board which uses the Marvel 9128 controller definitely supports raid, either Raid 0 or 1. I have two WD 1TB 6GB/s drives configured as Raid 1 and it boots no problem off these two drives.
Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Pete