I've acquired 3 37GB Raptors and want to put them in a RAID 0 array. I take it i will need a RAID card to handle the speeds so what would you recommend - preferably on a budget.
AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE @ 3.8Ghz on a Asus M2N68. Would i actually need a Raid card or will it be just fine without?
You should be able to use the onboard controller. You won't get any massive boost from using a proper card without spending big bucks.
With 3, I'd be inclined to use one as a 'boot' drive, and then set the other two up in RAID 0 for games and programs.. And yes, you should be fine with the onboard controller.
Agreed, you'll need to spend more than £100 to make a raid controller worthwile. The main problem with the old raptors is while they have low access times, they also have low throughputs. Raid0 should sort that
Not just low throughput but also low size Regardless, 3 of them in RAID 0 shouldn't be able to saturate the controller though CPU usage might increase, and for the price of a dedicated RAID card you could get an SSD.
I think (but I only remember vaguely) that you can get SATA 37gb raptors, they're just SCSI ones with a bolt on SATA interface no NCQ though? I know what your saying about ssd, for £190 you could get a 60GB OCZ Vertex, 230MB/s read, 60MB/s write, 0.1ms access time, 64MB cache. Thats probably around the cost of a four port raid controller.
