LSI MegaRAID Internal SAS 9265-8i 6Gb/s Dual Core ROC w/ 1GB cache memory RAID Controller Card, Kit

Pros: - Seriously fast, easily the fastest card I've owned! - Complete and utter overkill for home use, which is perfect! - Completely compatible with Solid State Drives - A much better solution for workstation use than the REVO-Drives I have used in the past when you need incredibly fast solid state storage - I found the software to be very useful - 1GB DDR3 Cache (many cards have 128-512MB DDR2) - IOPS are through the roof, and as I do professional Audio, Video, and Photo editing (from home), this is extremely beneficial I currently have this card in my newest workstation build, which consists of a 3930K, 32GB DDR3-2200 9-11-10-28, 3x GTX680 4GB cards in SLI, Rampage 4 Extreme MB, 1500W primary PSU + 850W secondary PSU, and a Case Labs TH10 with the 85mm Ventilated Top and the Pedastal, amongst others. 3x Dell Ultrasharp U3011 2560x1600 monitors and a Onkyo 11.2ch receiver with McIntosh amps, and Behringer Bi-Amped Studio Monitors/Definitve Technology Bi-Polar Towers/KEF Omni-Directional Speakers/2x Pioneer Dual-Subwoofers and multiple sets of Studio Monitor headphones from Grado/Denon/Etc. Easily pulls over 2GB/second read AND write speeds with a 6x256GB Samsung 830 RAID100 array, and I couldn't be happier. For the first time I am not bandwidth limited by my storage, and I have 3 different dedicated home servers running a total of 52 SAS/SATA drives in various arrays (including a 12-drive RAID50 with 15k7 600GB SAS drives, and an 8-drive RAID0 array with WD 1TB Velociraptors). I can even stream full-bandwidth 1080p videos to all 5 HDTV's in my home, with full uncompressed Blu-Ray surround sound audio tracks, and not notice any slowdown while working.

Cons: - Expensive for anyone outside of a server room - Requires the BBU for full performance Overall, very few Cons, but one big one.... IT RUNS VERY HOT! In fact, I got tired of the noise from the 4000rpm 120x38mm fan that was mandatory to keep it under control, so for the first time ever I have liquid cooled my RAID Card! Using a Watercool HeatKiller universal chipset block along with a few packs of EnzoTech copper Heatsinks, I got it into my primary loop and now the card runs at 3-6C over ambient. That's an order of magnitude less than on air! I do have 4x 560 rads + 2x 420 rads + 3x 280 rads, all in push pull, so that has a great amount to do with it, but I didn't even increase my Delta-T by 1C, so I am quite pleased.

Overall Review: I highly recommend using the most powerful cooling you can get for this card as it runs insanely hot! After putting it in my loop, I noticed that the average speeds/IOPS increased by around 2-3%, a significant amount at these high numbers, which makes me think that the dual-processor throttles itself thermally. Overall, though, I recommend this over just about anything. If you can't justify the cost, however, the Dell PERC5/i and PERC6/i cards can be had at a popular auction site for under ten-thousand pennies... They are extremely capable cards for any price, and will likely be a better option for the vast majority of home users. There is an amazing guide at OCN.

Pros: Installed it and all the optional components (Battery Unit, FastCache and CacheCade) and it works really great. It has two SSD's attached to the RAID and a three year old server runs faster than anything new by Dell.

Cons: The support line doesn't always know the right answer so sometimes you have to get through to the right person. The original key that was ordered was incorrect and we had to go through a lot of work to get the right one. The CacheCade 1.0 is being discontinued but they don't have 2.0 for this card yet.

Pros: This is my first hardware RAID card. (I've been limited to software RAID for budget reason) I bought it to power an array of SSDs for a new ESXi box. All the reviews I have read pointed to this card as the only one able to take advantage of all the IOPS an SSD can put out. This card is listed in VMware's HCL and has drivers available. The card works well in this capacity (4xIntel 510 R5). Server 2008 in a VM boots in seven seconds. I've benched sequential reads at 2 GB/s. Very fast card. Found the included SAS cable was plenty long to reach the 5.25 -> 4x2.5'' backplane I put the SSDs in. I like that the card has a passive heatsink, one less fan to fail. Has a VERY loud alarm for when a disk falls out of the array. I was able to hear it through the server room wall at my desk 40 feet away. Don't need to worry about a drive falling out and not knowing. I found the "Web BIOS" configuration to be very good. I was able to build the arrays without fuss

Cons: I really really really don't like that LSI requires you to pay extra to "enable" features like CacheCade and FastPath. I haven't needed those features yet, so I can't speak to how well they work. Getting this card to work with ESXi 4.1 u1 was a bit tricky, this being my first time ever building an ESXi host. The card is not supported out of the box, so one has to build a oem.tgz file to be able to have the boot volume on the array (I ended up using the onboard ICH10R for this) To get it to work after install one has to get the driver package from VMware and use the vCLI to install it on the host. Works great after that. I also bought the battery cache backup. I was under the impression that the battery mounts to the card somehow, but it seems the 1GB ram daughterboard takes its place. The battery pack has a long cable, so I ended up taping it to the cover over the CPU and RAM in my case.

Overall Review: System specs: 2x Intel Xeon Westmere 48 GB RAM, ECC SUPERMICRO SYS-6036T-6RF 4x Intel 510 in RAID 5

Pros: Fast. Very fast! (Even with cache disabled)

Cons: Memory went bad within 24 hours of use. Had to disable all of the cache to get around the single and multi bit ecc errors until I can get a new one. Which is the reason for the 4 eggs. I understand hardware does occasionally get shipped DOA. It's unfortunate, but it happens. The cables were also only compatable with SATA and not SAS. Just an oversight on my part.

Overall Review: Some people complain about the WebBIOS thing, I thought it was easy to use. Also, if you're going to use SAS disks, be sure to get the cables for them as well. The cables included in this only work with SATA and not SAS.

Pros: Excellent Raid Card. Excellent Software and Linux Compatability.

Cons: This thing runs hot! Too hot to touch.

Overall Review: Had it for about 6 months with no issues. Running on Linux with a Raid 5 configuration of 4 3TB drives. Used heavily for virtual machines and Nas.

Pros: Been running for over almost 18 months without a single hiccup. Had to replace the original SSD drives because of space concerns. Worked OK with consumer drives but one of them failed within one year. The larger drives I replaced them worth have been fine. Really, really fast.

Cons: Had to figure out what cables to use. Other than that nothing hard.

Overall Review: Overall a great raid card. Running raid 10.

Pros: Wicked fast, solid, very configurable.

Cons: Expensive.

Overall Review: I had an issue with the first card (cache DRAM ECC error), but LSI's support people in Atlanta sent me a replacement without hassle. Replacement card has been working non-stop with a full complement of drives (6 HD in a 5-drive RAID5 array + hot spare, plus a 2-drive RAID0 SSD array as my boot drive). Zero errors, ridiculously fast speeds in both RAID5 and RAID0 configs. I've used 3ware (bought by LSI), LSI, and Promise controllers...so far, very pleased that I went back to LSI for this build.

Pros: No problems posting, Raid setup was simple. Asus Rampage IV Extreme 2011 i7 (X79) chipset. Latest BOIS update for the Asus MB. 2.57 GB/s read / 3.3 GB/s write... using ATTO bench 32 on 2 90G OTC vertex3 drives, Raid 0 without the BBU.

Cons: Post time... and this thing is a toaster, I need to find a way to cool this card down.. I took a snapshot with a digital thermometer it was @ 185 F. Yikes I hope this thing was designed to handle this heat.

Overall Review: Wish LSI would update their compatibility list, it took weeks of research to find others using this card on the X79 chip set.