Don't the PLX ExpressLane PCIe Switch Family products all start with PEX followed by a number? I've seen them referred to several times on this site as PXE instead... Are the chips themselves marked PXE?
Sure it may not be a high-end RAID controller, but the thing is, if you have 4 dual-slot GPUs installed (which asrock is betting you might), you wouldn't have room for a RAID card so you don't give up that capability with this board. Definitely catering to a niche within a niche here, but it makes sense. It's also probably a lot better than the Marvell controllers most boards use to add SATA ports.
If you need serious storage, this board might be worth it. That LSI chip probably has great throughput, and even if it's not doing RAID, it's all about software raid these days.
You could go the route of buying a cheaper board with 6 sata (not SAS) ports, then put add-in sata cards, but unless they are cheap cards, the costs actually gets pretty high depending on how many ports you need.
Right Now I've maxed out my x58's 8 ports, and it would be nice to keep my existing RAID during the transition to bigger drivers rather than backup and restore the data.
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QChronoD - Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - link
...atleast that's what it looks like in the picture. According to the product PDF is only supports RAID 0, 1, 1E, and 10.repoman27 - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
Don't the PLX ExpressLane PCIe Switch Family products all start with PEX followed by a number? I've seen them referred to several times on this site as PXE instead... Are the chips themselves marked PXE?soloburrito - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
Sure it may not be a high-end RAID controller, but the thing is, if you have 4 dual-slot GPUs installed (which asrock is betting you might), you wouldn't have room for a RAID card so you don't give up that capability with this board. Definitely catering to a niche within a niche here, but it makes sense. It's also probably a lot better than the Marvell controllers most boards use to add SATA ports.hechacker1 - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
If you need serious storage, this board might be worth it. That LSI chip probably has great throughput, and even if it's not doing RAID, it's all about software raid these days.You could go the route of buying a cheaper board with 6 sata (not SAS) ports, then put add-in sata cards, but unless they are cheap cards, the costs actually gets pretty high depending on how many ports you need.
Right Now I've maxed out my x58's 8 ports, and it would be nice to keep my existing RAID during the transition to bigger drivers rather than backup and restore the data.