Asus' ROG RAIDR PCIe SSD Spotted
More details and images of Asus' ROG RAIDR Express have surfaced.
They were first spotted at CES back in January, but the folks over at SweClockers have managed to get a couple more images and a nice big spec sheet.
As was already clear earlier, the RAIDR is an SSD in a PCIe form factor, with support for the PCIe 2.0 x2 interface. It carries two SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration, which are each based off a SandForce SF2281 controller, running Toshiba-built 19 nm MLC NAND flash memory.
Because of the way the RAID array is built by Asus, the ROG RAIDR does support TRIM commands, SMART, and NCQ regardless of being a RAID 0 based SSD. Normally, when tweakers attempt to build a RAID array with two SSDs through the motherboard, these functions won't work. Moreover, the controller hides the RAID 0 array from the system, therefore not requiring any F6 drivers, appearing to be a standard AHCI controller and a single disk.
To start out with, Asus will launch two models, a 120 GB version and a 240 GB version, which offer sequential read speeds of up to 765 MB/s and 830 MB/s, and write speeds of up to 775 MB/s and 810 MB/s, respectively.
So far there has been no word on pricing or availability.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
-
firefoxx04 Im not up to date with current mobos... can we boot to a pci drive? That would make for a killer boot drive!Reply
-
Looks like a longer version of my XFI Fatality sound card. So basically 2 SSDs in raid put into a pci express card. Nice read/write speeds. If this is priced right it should do well. Thinking below $300 for the 240gb option?Reply
-
bryonhowley Reply10685545 said:Im not up to date with current mobos... can we boot to a pci drive? That would make for a killer boot drive!
Yes PCI-E does allow booting. I do believe the motherboard has to support it but it is allowed. I think most newer board already do support PCI-E booting.
-
JohnnyLucky Just in case readers haven't been keeping up with the latest developments, this is the beginning of the migration to consumer oriented PCIe solid state drives. The new SATA Express standard is in the very last stages of ratification. We should be seeing new motherboard SATA and PCIe connectors and new consumer PCIe ssd's sometime around the end of the year.Reply -
dark_knight33 Sexy device. Good solution for Sata II bound MBs (e.g. X58/Soc1366 MBs) that still have a lot of life left but could take advantage of faster primary disk access. I'll have to put one of these on my list.Reply