SSD Upgrade questions

clsiii said:

Victek,

I have the same motherboard and chipset. I recently bought a Samsung 850 EVO SSD and in doing some research before installing it came to find out that the 790i Ultra SLI does not have SATA 6.0/Gbs capability (which I was aware of prior to purchase), but also doesn't have AHCI... I knew that I would be limited to SATA 3.0/Gbs in using this SSD, but was completely unaware that I wouldn't have the ability to place it in AHCI mode.

What has been your experience using the Jmicron? Have you tried using the SSD in IDE mode? Thanks in advance.

It's been a while, but IIRC the Jmicron embedded controller worked OK. It didn't make a difference performance wise though. What I wound up doing was installing a PCIe SATA 6 controller card. That improved the "numbers" noticeably, but again I didn't perceive a big difference. Here's a link to the message I posted with my test results using the PCIe controller.

Show us your SSD performance 2

The controller was inexpensive, so if you have a free slot it might be worth it, but as others have pointed out part of the performance boost of SSDs comes from the dramatically reduced seek times, and you get that regardless.

clsiii said:

Thanks very much for the info! Which controller card did you get, if I may ask? Thanks!

I got this card:

SYBA SY-PEX40039 Controller Card - Newegg.com

Unrelated to your thread but I did notice this in your specs.

Antivirus Avast Free Antivirus , Microsoft Security Essentials
Browser Chrome

It is not wise to run two antivirus programs on the same computer at the same time.

clsiii said:

Thank you. I'm a bit of a noobie. Would you be able to tell me how you went about setting up your SSD on it and booting from it? Which drivers did you use and where (if you can remember) did you get them (website, CD?)? Does using the card allow you to operate your SSD in AHCI mode?

It's been a while and I'm not remembering all of the details. After installing the PCIe SATA 6 controller I would connect the SSD and boot into the BIOS. Make sure booting from an external device is enabled (you might want to make it the second device with CD/DVD as the first boot device). The card comes with a driver on a mini-CD so put it in the drive. I don't remember if it "just worked" or if I had to boot the Windows 7 DVD and do a Start Up Repair (search the forum threads for more info). According to the card's specs AHCI is supported.

clsiii said:

In a separate but related note, I was debating whether to go with the controller you used SYBA SY-PEX40039 PCI-Express 2.0 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card or this one SYBA Combo USB 3.0 + SATA III 6Gbps, v2.0 PCI Express, x4 Slot Controller Card Model SD-PEX50055. I only have 1 free PCI-e V 2.0 slot free. I do have other PCI-e slots available but they are all V 1.1.

I understand that you're trying to get optimal performance from all of the devices. You might want to try the combo card for the USB 3.0 support, but I wouldn't use a PCIe v1 slot for either device. If the combo card doesn't work well enough I would go with the dedicated PCIe SATA 6 controller in the v2 PCIe slot and just plug the external hard drive into a USB 2.0 port.

Hope this helps