SCSI Contoller Advice

I have a dell precision 670 workstation with dual 3.6 xeons, and onboard scsi controller that runs three SCSI seagate cheetahs. The onboard SCSI controller just went out on me, and I am wondering if I should just get a scsi card and plug it into a mb that already shows signs of wear given the onboard contoller fail. dell has reconditioned mb's for 250-350 with a 90 day warrenty, which I don't think is worth the price...but I don't want the rest of the components in the workstation to go to waste just yet.

Has anyone tried getting a 3rd party mb and gotten it to fit in a dell case?

Could someone recommend a scsi card, as I'm really in the dark about that part?

Or would it be better to start working on building a new workstation rig, and just get a good 3rd party case, motherboard and psu, and use my old components...I hate for one thing to go out and not be able to use the other stuff in the box when they still work...and are expensive parts.

BTW, this workstation is for 3d animation development. vcard is a quadro fx4400, nothing else special...just regular dvd drives, burner, audigy2 zs for recording voice overs, a couple gigs of ddr2 ram...I think 800 fsb speed...that's pretty much it. Thanks for any guidence.

can you find one that will work from newegg?

Hi jfharper

Firstly you did not say if you were using RAID and what raid mode your using.

RAID0 or 5 I would not get my hopes up on recovering the Array. If your using RAID1 then you have one disk that's acting as either a standalone or hot spare, and you may stand a chance of recoving information.

Although this is all a mute point as you will probably to reinstall the OS when switching drive controllers.

Secondly assuming you've already accepted the worse and your going to scrub the drives then pick a controller that beets your specification, I've been using adaptec for a long time and i find htem quite a good make but It's entierly upto you what controller you want to use. there are three type of raid mode you need to be aware of

Software - Processor does all the interpretation of the raid array it's the cheapest but also the most unreliable and unstable, and you have to accept higher CPU load while reading or writing to the disks, I don't think you can get any true software SCSI raid anymore now anyway Can be problematic to get this to boot. Slowest Disk speeds

Hardware Assited - Hardware has limited support for RAID and can accelerate some of the functions but other raid functions that require the CPU's assitance and software. This is more expensive than software but faster and more stable. Genrally the array will be bootable.

Hardware - Fastest of all, all raid functions are done on board. most expensive. array configuration is usally kept either on the disks (IBM RAID) or in a flash rom on board. these are bootable disks and the machine is allmost unaware that it's dealing with a raid array as the card handels nearly everything.

As for model, i like the adaptec but maybe if you posted your requirements for a SCSI card we would be better able to identify a suitable card.

No Raid...sorry, I didn't mention this before.

Yes, I did look at newegg, but for the high price of a controller, I figured why not just put that towards a new mb instead...I thought I might get advice on a controller that was much less expensive, but maybe the price is really going for the raid support, which I don't use.

The reason I went with scsi to begin with, is I needed the reliablity and speed over IDE in 2005. I think SATA 2 had just come out a bit prior to my buy, and because of the short history with SATA 2, I had a longer more successful history with scsi...thus the reason...but now, it looks like, since the controller is so expensive, to just trash the drives and go with SATA 2, a new mb, instead of an expensive controller in a mb that already has an onboard contoller not working properly.

If you not needing RAID then a enthusiast board will probably do.