***31/12/2007 UPDATE
Installed the Highpoint 3520 Controller last night on my 2nd PCIe Slot on a GA-EP45-DS3.
The Highpoint 3520 is a 8x PCIe Controller witch fits also in a 16x Slot. Thanks God that the Gigabye Board supports the full 8xPCIe Speed.

I've read the MacPro's only supporting a lower Bandwith on their 2nd PCIe Slot. Can anyone confirm this?
See the Teste here at www.dv.com - It says: "...these features and more are found in the RocketRAID 3522 ($560), an 8x PCIe 1.0 card that works in any PC or Mac with PCIe slots. Note that in a Mac Pro (early 2008), it will work at 4x speeds in either of the 4x slots but will only work a 1x speed in the 16x slot (which only supports PCIe 2.0 cards at full speed). I tested the card in a Mac Pro (early 2008), dual 3.2 with 14GB RAM running OS X 10.5."

1st Try - So far so good. Did a clone of my existing OS X 10.5.6 Retail, booted up from the Clone. Installed the RAID Driver Restart.
Hang! No way to boot up! No Idea what the probleme is here. Will figure that out in another Test.

2nd Try - Cloned a Backup of an existing OS X 10.5.5 Retail. Installed the Driver and reboot! Conected 3 Samsung F1 320GB SATA HDDs to the Highpoint.
Made an Array via Highpoint RAID Webinterface (easy to use - very fast Array setup!) Went to DiskUtility - formatted the RAID Array into one Partition.
Voila - the RAID comes up (Unfortunatly with a Folder Icon, but with the Function of a Partition!).

Next Step - Cloned the Exitsting OS X i was on to the new RAID Array.
After that I used Xbench on the Raid Array. Amazing Performance - but I think Xbench is not the right Tool to Measure that Kind of Setup.
Had Write Speeds arround 750MB/s and Read Speads arround 500MB/s. Overall Points: +-750!

Restart - Next Step Booting from the RAID Array.
Quick check with CTRL+H in controller setup choosing the RAID Array as Boot Device.
Restart and WOW. System comes up much more faster than with a single Disk (20 sec.) even than with a RAID0 Softraid i had with the 3 HDDs before.

So far so good. Don't want to waste the Time in testing the HDDs. I wait for the SSDs coming up an concentrate for that test.

Conclusion so far:
+ The Highpoint 3520 works on a OSx86 Hackintosh and seems to have a great Performance
+ The Controller was only handwarm (have to Test a Raid5 with the SSDs!)
- Had Problems with driver install and reboot on 10.5.6 but I think this should be solved quickly, maybe someting was wrong with the DSLT Patch...


***29/12/2007 UPDATE
Cause Supertalent ws not on stock I decided to switch form the Super Talent SSD to the new OCZ Vertex SSD Drive
I hope this one will be shipped early January...
Highpoint 3520 arrived today - will test this one with 3x F1 Samsung 320GB HDDs tonight
Fantec Housing also arrived, unfortunatly it was defect. 2 Slots did not close in the aluminum cage... Cheap Plastic!
More Infos coming up...


***27/12/2008

Hey guys,

here i am preparing a little report of a SSD-RAID-Setup I ordered one day before X-Mas.
8x Super Talent 32GB SSDs (approx. 150MB/s read, 100 MB/s write) 76,- EUR each
1x Highpoint 3520 SATA Raid Controler for OS X 445,- EUR
2x FANTEC MR-SA1042-1 Backplane for the 8 SSDs 68,- EUR each


What I like to test:
1st - Highpoint 3520 Raid Controller under OSX86!
2nd - Speed of 8 SSDs in a Raid-5 Array on the Highpoint 3520 Raid Controller

The Highpoint Contoller should be able to max out the speed and performance even of cheap MLC SSDisks, cause of his 256MB Cache.
I would be very happy to achieve read-rates from 120-130 MB/s and write-rates round about 60-70 MB/s.
In a Raid-5 this should be something about +-800MB/S read and 420MB/s write. The Raid 5 should give me overall aprox. +-200GB of Diskspace

I will give you all the details in setting up the stuff, installing OSX etc. in details when the hardware arrives.

If i can get that the speed out of the SSDs it think it is worth the price I paid! And I use this workstation for work not for private purpose!

By the Way, here are some links who gave me the inspiration to try this:
Thanks to drmanic - Video on youtube
Battleship Mtron

...to be continued

Hope that your stuff will be there soon. Did you buy on Mindfactory.de?

Other interesting SSD's at the moment

A-DATA XPG SSD 32GB (read: 170MB/s • write: 100MB/s)
Patriot Warp SSD 32GB (read: 175MB/s • write: 100MB/s)
Super Talent MasterDrive OX 32GB (read: 150MB/s • write: 100MB/s)

This is not a tutorial, it is not even a review yet. It's being moved to the 'buying thoughts, reviews, recommendations' until it actually becomes a tutorial.

I formyself had a HighPoint 3520 for a few month. This card abhsolutely rocks! I had 2 WD Velociraptors 150 GB as RAID 0 and 6 500 GB HDs as RAID 5. This setup screams like hell!!!! Simply stunning! I sold them 2 month ago but not without tears in my eyes because i needed money for a brandnew macbook pro. I miss them. If you move alot of data or in audio/video you absolutely need something like this. They never let me down! 2 times i changed disks, resilvering took up to 3 days but worked like a charm!

So, if you need real RAID, every bit of performance you can get then go for one of the highpoint cards. I think only SAS could beat them.

'nuff said!

Bernie

@realityiswhere
sorry for that. i will make a brief tutorial if the hardware arrives and my installtion is done!

@theotherone
thats why i choosed the 3520. I think the onboard cache gives an extra boot, espaccially for MLC SSDs.

@Stellair
I ordered at computeruniverse.de!

We will see what I'll get...

Stay tuned!

11 jan: any news ?

Thats FUcxin' sick!@@@@

You could run 20 porn movies at a time. Before it was just 4 or 5.

Hi,

does anyone using Highpoint 3520 in snow leopard?
I've use this card in SL, there is no drivers at highpoint web for download,
but the SL can recognize the raid as a portable drive, and disk utiltiy can recognize it too, the only problem is that it is extremely slow, I setup 1.5tb x 8 with raid6, while running aja system test to test the bandwidth, only less than 5mb/s for read or write!

Please help to give me the solution to use it at snow leopard, thanks a lot!

streamboy