Xeon Owners Club

[Edwired]

Yeah would have been nice to have the newer marvell controller but it usually not cost effective by Asus to use controllers that is limited therefore only been affordable back then. But only forced someone to buy pcie controller to overcome the limitation of the Marvell controller only to add more cost and finding the correct drivers to make it all work in harmony with the operating system without a possible bsod or weird issues.

As promised here the results with Intel and Marvell on ssd only (red line is write and grey line is read)
All this in AHCI mode on both controllers
Superspeed combines both ssd together as Raid 0 according to the bios which added up to 1.37tb as storage avaiilable. It interesting to note that the read is similar in normal mode on MX500 where it just one ssd on it own. Now saying this it not too much of an issue considering it on the motherboard knowing it limited to x1 but still can work normal every day usage. Isn't too shabby

But normal mode MX500 wins hands down on read performance and MX300 loses that by a good bit but if I have another MX500 1tb I would raid it without a doubt

Only drawback is that Crucial Storage Executive won't see these drives behind Marvell controller to check it health remaining so HDSentinel can see them no problem as it may report a different reading based on health remaining so take it with a pinch of salt

 

[Sora]

Only drawback is that Crucial Storage Executive won't see these drives behind Marvell controller to check it health remaining so HDSentinel can see them no problem as it may report a different reading based on health remaining so take it with a pinch of salt

This is the marvel raid driver at fault, not the controller.

 

[Edwired]

Well according to Crucial Storage Executive it can't see the ssd behind raid so it not the driver nor controller fault it don't matter what way anyone would try to debate this part it just the way it was designed it would show up just fine on Intel controller as a normal drive but not raid

My SSD Won’t Detect in Crucial Storage Executive

There are some instances when Crucial’s Storage Executive software will not detect a Crucial SSD. Let Crucial walk you through the most common way to resolve this issue.

eu.crucial.com

Bonus fact able to boot the cloned MX100 to the MX300 from Marvell controller with the same driver I found

 

[Edwired]

So far testing the reliability of the Marvell controller on the current board it actually working better than I thought games are working better on MX500 not a stutter in sight compare to my 7200rpm 1tb on Intel controller which lags abit from time to time. My view on the Marvell controller is quite positive not at all bad not a single bsod appeared considering people makes it out saying it terrible that it too slow and doesn't work correctly. Now the current set up that MX300 is the main OS and MX500 is the everything else that I had on 7200rpm 1tb all this on Marvell controller. What am I going to do with the rest of the sata 2 ports is a big question is do I start saving up to buy 5x 16tb hard drives to max out the availability in storage with 80tb is could be on my list sometime next year. Since I have a lot of DVDs and games including music CDs that I'm going to back up before getting rid half of the room of these to make space

 

[lexluthermiester]

This is the marvel raid driver at fault, not the controller.

Actually, it's neither. Drives in a RAID array have never been visible as an individual drive once added to a RAID array set. The drive has to be removed from said array for any and all drive servicing functions.

 

[Edwired]

Actually, it's neither. Drives in a RAID array have never been visible as an individual drive once added to a RAID array set. The drive has to be removed from said array for any and all drive servicing functions.

That the theory is what I was thinking earlier. It only visable once it connected to ahci as a standard drive to view current health. Spot on Lex

Doing abit of research based on the Marvell 9128 controller seems like the current firmware was out of date showing 1019 on bootup then was able to find a site that contained the latest firmware 1038 so had to find the modded bios that I used to flash the motherboard and the MMTool that I had somewhere on one of the drives so made a copy of the original modded bios and one edited with the updated Marvell firmware by replacing the module.bin that matched to the hardware id in question so was able to update the motherboard bios containing the updated module and it was successful so the changes I noted that the initializing screen is not showing but it listed the connected drives after few seconds other than that no other changes from what I can see

 

[Edwired]

Doing abit of digging about on using the Marvell driver vs Microsoft driver as it appears Marvell driver isn't allowing crucial ssd to do trim support including performance loss according to HD Sentinel reporting the performance is 80% so I swapped the driver around to see if any changes with Microsoft driver it shows that trim support is active on both crucial ssd including the performance is 100% according to HD Sentinel without any issues so it safe to use as a main os. Was able to clone the operating system under 37 mins as quick mode on aomei software than rather sector by sector as this mode tends to use too much write cycle degrading the ssd in the process

 

[uco73]

My first xeon was E5472 socket 771 on 775 socket. Today I have little better CPU.

 

[Edwired]

That nuts that it have 256,gb of ram nothing like a game can fill it LOL. Been dabbing with the latest Tiny Windows 11 pro iso as testing purpose on another hard drive with tpm, cpu and secure boot removed and surprisely it worked not the first time but a couple of hours later. Strange issues started with Rufus interfering with latest original windows 11 22H2 while installing and during the usb boot it took over an hour before the loading circle even turned then refused to install to the hard drive complains about the controller not enabled in bios so decided to start again with an older Rufus build without windows 11 options interference menu also loaded the cmd before set up to clean the disk and convert to mbr. Everything started to work normally for awhile seems snappy enough for Xeon X5675. As I do have a few complaints about windows 11 the interface is all over the place you have to go through a few menus to find the disk cleanup as right clicking it on the hard drive icon don't show the button. The task manager is horrible, the start menu is shocking, a lot or the setting menus is in combo menus with submenu took me awhile to find all the ones that I was looking for by going through the whole lot which is pretty annoying for me. But I think Windows 10 is more solid os in my own opinion does exactly what I need it to do including easily accessible where Windows 11 they are locking down a lot of the features for streamlined purpose certain things aren't customizable to the user. Just like to know as Xeon based setup have anyone else tested Windows 11 starting from X58 upward just to see some sort of comparison on per builds and what sort of issues that popped up

 

[lexluthermiester]

Just like to know as Xeon based setup have anyone else tested Windows 11 starting from X58 upward just to see some sort of comparison on per builds and what sort of issues that popped up

Yes. I have Windows 11 installed and running on my Dell T3500 with a W3680. Works perfectly.

 

[Edwired]

Yes. I have Windows 11 installed and running on my Dell T3500 with a W3680. Works perfectly.

Nice to know how you find windows 11 compare to 10?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Nice to know how you find windows 11 compare to 10?

I greatly prefer it. While it's no Windows 7, Windows 11 is very good, if bloated(a problem easily solved). IMPO, it is a much better experience. I will never go back to Windows 10.

 

[Edwired]

I greatly prefer it. While it's no Windows 7, Windows 11 is very good, if bloated(a problem easily solved). IMPO, it is a much better experience. I will never go back to Windows 10.

Interesting to know I wouldn't mind if there was some sort of mod to take the windows 10 interface and add it to windows 11 so it can be updated with the latest patches and still be working on older hardware it be a pity for some people having to spend so much to upgrade the hardware just to be on windows 11

 

[lexluthermiester]

take the windows 10 interface and add it to windows 11

Why do that? The improvements to the UI are a reason I like Win11.

 

[Edwired]

I find the UI on windows 11 somewhat annoying to be honest

 

[HBSound]

This is pretty exciting - M_ATX motherboard - W24/34 Xeon with 4 PCI lanes - Power in the smaller format - https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=W790D8UD-1L1N2T/BCM#Specifications

 

[Edwired]

Had a look at that there's a different power socket like 4 eatx 8 pin power socket but no atx 24 pin socket but have the atx adaptor to convert it

 

[HBSound]

Had a look at that there's a different power socket like 4 eatx 8 pin power socket but no atx 24 pin socket

It looks like they are spreading the power out a little bit.

The specs say the following -

Power Connector​

1 Micro-Fit (4-pin, ATX PSU signal) w/ ATX 24-pin adapter cable, 4 (8-pin, ATX 12V)

 

[Edwired]

It looks like they are spreading the power out a little bit.

The specs say the following -

Power Connector​

1 Micro-Fit (4-pin, ATX PSU signal) w/ ATX 24-pin adapter cable, 4 (8-pin, ATX 12V)

Seen that but seems abit like a cable management nightmare if bought second hand without the adaptor

 

[HBSound]

Seen that but seems abit like a cable management nightmare if bought second hand without the adaptor

I agree. I thought it out as getting some cables, that keep you from using the adaptor. Straight from the PSU to the motherboard without the clutter and adapter.

 

[Edwired]

I agree. I thought it out as getting some cables, that keep you from using the adaptor. Straight from the PSU to the motherboard without the clutter and adapter.

Only possible if you know which pinout does what on the board eatx socket as it may not be straightforward by getting cables that looks the same

 

[HBSound]

Only possible if you know which pinout does what on the board eatx socket as it may not be straightforward by getting cables that looks the same

I agree with you, and I would allow a professional company to create the cables. I have no issue with that.

 

[Edwired]

Cool to know

 

[HBSound]

Cool to know

I watched a video about making my own cables and following the cable run from start to finish. I promise it was not hard. The big thing for me is that I do not want to be responsible for something electrical like that which I will have to keep in mind. No moving those cables around.

 

[Edwired]

I watched a video about making my own cables and following the cable run from start to finish. I promise it was not hard. The big thing for me is that I do not want to be responsible for something electrical like that which I will have to keep in mind. No moving those cables around.

Do what I do is draw on the paper with the wiring diagram of each pin with voltages and colours. As the colors on come cables comes in black might be tricky to know which one does what but the standard atx is the same across the PSU board this is where the digital multimeter (DMM) can be useful to make sure the connections are made. And to custom make the cable shorten or lenghten can be achieved by cutting, soldering and heat shrinks and sleeving the overall cables involving using crimping the pins to the plugs this may not be available to buy depending where it located. So to be honest it a lot more work to achieve tidy cable management. Including measuring the cables and visualizing where everything should go before it even started. As it looks simple on videos but a lot more goes beyond this