Tested: HighPoint's RAID card makes me wish I had a need (and the money) for 50GBps storage

Price When Reviewed

$999

Best Prices Today: HighPoint 7604A RAID card

If you need as much as 32TB of lightning-fast storage, there’s no higher strategy to get it than HighPoint’s 7604A — a four-slot, PCIe 5.0 x16, NVMe growth card. It can switch information as quick as 50GBps in RAID 0, and can be a good way to up your depend of PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots from the one slot offered by most motherboards.

But you want software program that does direct I/O to reap the benefits of the RAID efficiency and the 7604A is costly — this pet will set you again a cool $1,000. If you discover that scary, it was listed at an astronomical $2,000 once I began this evaluation. Fortunately, the corporate got here again to low earth orbit, nevertheless it’s nonetheless not what most individuals would think about an impulse purchase.

Read on to study extra, then see our roundup of the best SSDs for comparability.

What are the 7604A’s options?

As already mentioned, the 7406A is a PCIe 5.0 x16 card with 4 x4 NVMe M.2 slots on board. With every slot allotted 4 lanes, you get prime bandwidth out of each SSD on the cardboard, not like many cheaper playing cards the place 4 or eight lanes are divvied up.

In idea, throughput might be as excessive as 56GBps in RAID 0. Depending in your system, the 7604A can get near that. Yowser!

As you may see above (and under with the heatsink/fan on), the 7604A is of high quality building. Not proven are the standing LEDs on the endplate. These present suggestions on the state of the cardboard. The 7640A may also yelp (a loud beep) at you in the event you attempt to use it with out the heatsink/fan. You can guess how I acquired that specific piece of information.

The 7604A can perform as 4 particular person full-bandwidth x4 PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, or in varied RAID modes (0, 1, 5, 10). The RAID is {hardware}, but in addition dependent upon HighPoint’s driver, in addition to the corporate’s configuration and monitoring software program. I.e., there aren’t any dip switches or jumpers.

The driver was rock stable and the configuration software program works fairly nicely. The admin interface is HTML-based — i.e., it opens in your net browser, and is barely gradual to answer instructions. It additionally gave me a can’t-connect error requiring a few reloads earlier than the interface would seem. Communications lag, little doubt.

The configuration interface can be a bit geeky in language and ideas, so in the event you don’t learn about RAID, bone up on the ideas earlier than making an attempt to create an array or in any other case configure the cardboard.

Note that neither the driving force or configuration software program are required in the event you merely need to add 4 x4 M.2 NVMe ports to your system. Slap the populated 7604A into an x16 PCIe 5.0 slot and the drives will merely seem below disk administration, the place you could in initialize and format the drives appropriately.

How does the 7604A carry out?

While I didn’t get the numbers that HighPoint says are doable, they had been nonetheless fairly darn good on our new check mattress. You can learn concerning the new check mattress on the backside of this text.

Of course, to get prime efficiency out of the 7604A, two issues should occur: It have to be populated with PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs and it have to be in a 16x PCIe 5.0 slot and really connecting with 16 lanes and at 32GT/s. This might be a difficulty with some motherboards and CPUs, so test the variety of lanes you could have and the way your motherboard allocates them (bifurcation).

I populated the 7604A with two Crucial T705 and two WD Black SN8100 2TB SSDs for testing — among the many very quickest of their PCIe 5.0 ilk. The single SSD check was with a WD Black SN8100.

Note that the single-queue efficiency is what you’ll see from Windows Explorer transfers (theoretically, actual life is way totally different) and most software program, whereas the multi-queue efficiency is what you’ll see from software program that does its personal I/O. Regardless, 44.3GBps is a enjoyable quantity.

The 7604A’s CrystalDiskMark 8 random check outcomes spotlight the information that RAID 0 just isn’t significantly good for random entry, and that the 7604A can be an excellent host for particular person drive efficiency.

What is clear from the subsequent charts is that you simply’re not going to see huge enhancements with the bare eye in relation to Windows file transfers. Note that we have now modified this check to incorporate DiskBench (DB) and Xcopy (XC) alongside our conventional Windows Explorer drag-and-drop (backside of the chart).

Xcopy is considerably quicker than the Windows Explorer drag-and-drop, which raises the query: Why would Microsoft optimize a command line program whereas leaving Windows Explorer comparatively gradual as molasses?

Xcopy may be value studying and utilizing in the event you greater than sometimes have loads of information to repeat. Big trace: batch information (x.bat).

The 7604A turned in good numbers in our 450GB write check in RAID 0; nonetheless, it was truly quicker with a single drive on this check in line with the faster Xcopy and FastCopy. If you need quick file transfers inside Windows Explorer, take the latter for a check experience.

The 7604A was significantly quicker with single drives than our Z890 check mattress motherboard’s M.2 slots — a recognized situation with the chipset, NVMe, and sure processors akin to our i5 Core Ultra 225.

In RAID 0, the 7604A shall be a boon for any software program that may’t reap the benefits of it. That means any software program utilizing multi-queue, multi-thread disk I/O. Such software program is uncommon within the client market, however not extraordinary.

Caveat: If you’re a fan of utmost peace and quiet, be warned that the 7604A’s fan kicks in fairly a bit when it’s below stress, and it’s not significantly bashful. Just saying.

Should you purchase the HighPoint 7604A?

I like the 7604A and it’s a implausible performer. Would I pay $1,000 for it? Yes, if I had the necessity and the software program to take full benefit. Even with out the software program to leverage the 50GBps RAID 0, having an extra 4 full-speed PCI 5.0 NVME slots is very engaging.

For the typical person, although, which incorporates me — the 7604A is a troublesome advocate because the real-world advantages in on a regular basis utilization don’t fairly add as much as $1,000 in my estimation.

But that’s completely not a knock on the 7604A as a product. As I stated, it’s a implausible piece of package. Nice job, HighPoint.

How we check

Drive checks presently make the most of Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit operating off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence whole). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. SSDs concerned within the check are mounted in a HighPoint 7604A 16x PCIe 5.0 adapter card. (Yes, the topic of this evaluation)

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8, AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks to search out the storage system’s potential efficiency, then a sequence of 48GB and 450GB transfers checks utilizing Windows Explorer drag and drop to point out what you’ll see below Window, in addition to the far quicker Xcopy to point out what’s doable.

The 48GB switch checks make the most of an USFMount RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB of whole reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from an SSD on the HighPoint card.

Each check is carried out on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency might lower because of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This might be much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with far quicker late-generation NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can fluctuate by capability because of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND out there for secondary caching. Vendors additionally sometimes swap parts. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.