These days, I just don’t dabble in hardware the way I use to. Once, there was a time I would spend my evenings researching the latest hardware trends and spec’ing out my next bad ass gaming rig. Overclocking, liquid cooling, all that fun stuff. But it’s been a while and it’s clear I’m rusty. This weekend I violated one of the most important rules when upgrading your system: research compatibility before you purchase.
See, I recently upgraded my Ubuntu desktop, replacing striped raptors with a shiny new OCZ Vertex3 120Gb SSD. The SATA 3 drive is, in theory, capable of speeds up to 6Gbps with the right controller. I installed the card and things were instantly faster, from install to boot, Ubuntu 12.04 screams with an SSD.
I ran to the Disk Utility and ran a quick read-only benchmark. The results were nice, but not what I expected: 280 Mb/s. No worries, I had the feeling my older motherboard was likely SATA II and I was peaking out at 3Gbps.
So I ran to the store this weekend and picked up a cheap $15 PCIe SATA 3 controller and slammed it into one of my PCIe slots, rebooted and waited to be wowed.
I was sorely disappointed. I expected about 500Mb/s due to limitations in PCIe, but what I found was 200Mb/s. It got slower! Well, I immediately started suspecting some sort of motherboard bottle neck. I wasn’t far off: apparently my mother board (DG33FB) has generation 1.x PCIe slots — and those top out at 2.5Gbps, explaining my disappointment.
The bottom line: research your purchases before you make them and when it comes to eeking out the most from your new SSD, make sure you’ve aligned all the stars. 😉