Re: Motherboard with many SATA ports: MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum ?
On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 08:28:31PM +0100, Andre Majorel wrote:
> Sorry, yet another motherboard question.
>
> Looking for a socket 939 motherboard with a comfortable number of
> SATA ports (at least 6, preferably 8). The application is software
> RAID.
>
> Here's what I've found so far :
>
> NB PCI SATA ports______ Ethernet______________
> Asus a8n-sli deluxe nf4s 3 4(nf4) + 4(3114) g(nf) + g(marvel)
> Asus a8n-sli premium nf4s 3 4(nf4) + 4(3114) g(nf) + g(marvel)
> Gigabyte ga-k8n ultra-9 nf4u 3 4(nf4) + 4(3114) g(marvel) + g(cicada)
> Gigabyte ga-k8nxp-9 nf4u 3 4(nf4) + 4(3114) g(nf) + g(marvel)
> MSI k8n diamond nf4s 3 4(nf4) + 2(3132) g(nf4s) + g(88e8053)
> MSI k8n diamond 54g nf4 4(nf4) + 2(sil) g(nf4) + g(marvel)
> MSI k8n neo4 platinum nf4u 4 4(nf4) + 4(3114) g(88e1111) + g(88e8053)
> MSI k8n neo4 platinum sli nf3 4(nf3) + 2(sil)
> MSI k8n sli-fi nf4s 4(nf4) + 2(sil?) g(marvel)
>
> I'm not too hot for Gigabyte due to past experience with BIOS
> updates, or lack thereof. The Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe/Premium and
> MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum look good. The A8N-SLI Deluxe/Premium
> support SLI, which I have no use for, at the expense of a PCI
> slot. They're also more expensive than the K8N Neo4 Platinum.
Hmm, does anyone know if you can stick a 4x or 8x PCIe raid card into a
PCIe 16x slot on an SLI board configured to run 8x per slot (or even 16x
per slot on some of the new boards)?
> All other things being equal, I'd rather have AGP than PCIe16
> but I haven't found an AGP motherboard with enough SATA ports.
Forget AGP. It's history. I don't think you will see any new boards
made with AGP, and only new boards are going to have a lot of SATA.
> So it looks like it's going to be an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.
> Comments ? Suggestions ?
I am personally an Asus fan, but I have never used an MSI, and lots of
people like them, so it is probably a good choice.
Of course for lots of drives, one of the ports on the A8N32-SLI Deluxe
supports port expanders for I believe up to 16 SATA drives on one port.
And of course there is the choice of just get a board with 4 sata ports
and buy a cheap sata card for a pci slot to add more ports. After all
some sata controllers don't work in linux yet, so it may be required to
just get something that will work.
Len Sorensen
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