Dual onboard RAID for Z170 motherboards

[overclucker]

I am attempting to find a motherboard that has at least dual 16x pcie, and at least 7 SATA ports. I found two boards, but cannot find specifics on their RAIDs.. I need to use two disks for RAID 1 and five disks for RAID 5.

Does anyone know if these boards have dual RAIDS that support 1 and 5?

Asus Z170-A

Or

Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero

Or

ASRock Z170 Extreme7+

Or

MSI Z170A Gaming M7

Or

Supermicro MBD-C7Z170-SQ

 

[Woomack]

I can only tell you these boards have no dual 2x 16 pcie. All Z170 boards will have 16+8 pcie config ( without any PLX chip ) but more pcie lanes for last/additional slots than older chipsets.
Intel controller is providing RAID 0/1/5/10 on 6 SATA ports and/or M.2 ports which usually share SATA port/bandwidth. Additional controllers usually support 2 drives but even ASRock with 4 ASMedia ports is not supporting RAID on them.
All depends from board config but in ASUS boards there is a lot of relations between all these ports. Simply I wouldn't count on anything else than SATA RAID on 6 drives.
Storage specification in on every product site in specification tab.

Z170 boards are designed mainly for home users and gamers who don't need more than standard storage setup. If you need something more then take a look at X99 platform.

 

[tachi1247]

You'll have to look at the spec sheets for those boards to see how many sata ports each one has. 6 of those ports will be, as stated above, run off the Intel chipset which allows for raid 5. Any other ports will be run offs a separate controller and cannot be part of your array, but should still be bootable.

Edit: missed the part where you need the other two drives in raid 1. Only looked at the asus boards, but the hero is the only one that has enough ports. Still not dual raid though. You should consider buying a cheap sata6 add in card that supports raid, will probably be much cheaper than buying a higher end mobo and with all the extra pcie lanes in z170 it won't slow anything else down.

For the pcie slots, again look at the spec sheets for each. I'm sure most of them will have at least two x16 slots, but again woomack is correct in that they won't both run at x16. If you're planning to run two graphics cards they will likely run at x8/x8 (check the spec sheet). If you're running a graphics card and something else you need to read the manual to see which slot to use for the second device to keep the gpu running at x16. Note though if you aren't running a second graphics card I don't think there are any add in cards that require a x16 slot. I've never seen a device requiring anything above pcie 2.0 x4 besides a gpu.

 

[EarthDog]

Yep, you will not find dual 16x without a board that has a PLX chip. The only board I can think of that has one is the ASUS Maxumus VIII Extreme or the classified, but I don't think it is out yet. Why are you concerned with 2 16x? The performance difference is nearly none (1-2%).

m not sure of any Z170 board that can handle two separate RAID array's via their software. Maybe something like the ASUS Z170X Deluxe does, but typically, your third party controllers won't RAID as Woomack has said.

 

[Woomack]

There are no 2x pcie x16 Z170 boards without PLX. All boards will work at max 16+8 mode but probably max will be 8+8 as this is max supported by CPU or chipset ( 16+20 lanes ).
Max pcie lanes = 36 what means that after setting 2 graphics cards at x16 there will be 4 lanes left. 4 lanes for storage, additional devices, M.2 ports, other pcie slots and some more .. it simply won't happen. Other pcie slots have already linked some of these lanes and can't be disabled.

That's why I said earlier that pcie lanes setup in Skylake is great on paper but users won't see any difference between Z170 and older chipsets like Z87/97 or even Z77.

Other thing is that I have Maximus Hero and for some reason when I put GTX960 in x16 slot then it's working as x8. When I put the same card in x8 slot then it's working as x4. Maybe faulty board, hard to say as I'm on 5th BIOS with the same effect and BIOS settings are not changing anything.

 

[EarthDog]

Riiight. I agree with you/what I just said... not sure why you repeated yourself, LOL!

 

[Woomack]

Well, I'm also not sure ... I guess I'm already tired or something. Finished most work for today and browsing forums right now ... ( it's 2 pm here ).

 

[tachi1247]

Specs on the asus website says the asmedia controller supports raid. Pretty positive you still can't span an array across two controllers tough. If I read things right he could set up the 5 drive array on Intel and the two drive array on the asmedia.

If it was me, I would do that 5 drive array in an nas.

Edit: fixed erroneous information....see below.

 

[EarthDog]

Specs for which ASUS board? There were 2 in the OP and I mentioned another...

If I read things right he could set up the 5 drive array on Intel and the two drive array on the asmedia.

+1. That would be the only way anyway as you are correct in that you cannot span controllers and RAID.

 

[tachi1247]

Specs for which board? There were 2 in the OP and I mentioned another...

+1. That would be the only way anyway as you are correct in that you cannot span controllers and RAID.

I was talking about the hero board, but I went back to look again and post the link and I definitely read it wrong. The asmedia controller does NOT support raid. I'm betting none of the boards will then since the hero is about as well featured as boards get