Motherboard with 5+ PCI ports

Hello everyone,
I'm looking for a motherboard that has a minimum of 5 convectional PCI ports. I need to replace one of the computers in
the lab that has died.

We have 8 expasion cards (all PCI and they cannot be replaced with anything else since nothing else works) to capture high frequency data from several optical detectors. The cards have been split between two computers so far, but I want to see if it's possible to have them in one or at least have as many as possible on the same computer.

I have looked all over and could not find anything with a reasonable price. There are many "industrial" boards but they are all on the wrong side of $1000 - I work in a small research lab and we can't afford that.

The other requirement is that the board should support SATA and have room for at least 4GB ram (recording data takes around 3GB).

I'm hoping one of your suggestions may point me in the right direction.

Thank you for your time.

There are tons of used Advantech PCE motherboards and backplanes on ebay for little money that would accomodate all the cards at once.

Thank you for the suggestion, I was not aware of Advantech at all. Do you have any experience with any of their products?

Supermicro makes some boards like this. They're high quality and a lot cheaper than industrial boards, not to mention you get a lot of nice server features (IPMI for example). This one will run you under $200: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SLA-F.cfm

PICMG is the name of this game:

1. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lanner-IAC-...179699?hash=item41c999e2b3:g:eHMAAOSwawpXsSJe Core2 E6700 single board computer w/ 2GB RAM and 4 SATA ports. Note the price of these things are all over the place http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lanner-775-SBC-Single-Board-Computer-IAC-F850-E4700-1GB-Ram-/262464564764
   
2. http://www.ebay.com/itm/PBP-14AC-R3...402172?hash=item2120c06bbc:g:IxgAAOSw~AVYo-a9 14 slot backplane -- 12 are PCI.
3. http://www.ebay.com/itm/iStarUSA-D-...164794?hash=item3ae95b197a:g:PikAAOSwzqFY9j~8 14 slot 4U case.

That gives you 12 PCI slots. That'll be $250 altogether. You need to change the memory to 2x2GB and add an ATX PSU but I believe even with those your outlay for the whole computer is still below $300.

Alternatively, this is http://www.ebay.com/itm/Advantech-P...665693?hash=item544a7886dd:g:R24AAOSwLsBZWQp~ P4 but it has 4GB installed.

not the most elegant solution, but you can try 3 of these (+2 onboard PCI) if there is space to fit all the risers
http://www.dx.com/p/pci-e-to-dual-p...-to-pci-mainboard-panel-set-black-blue-376620

Wow, thanks a lot!
Didn't expect to have that many options since the requirements are very specific and somewhat odd.

I think I will go with chx's suggestion since it allows for all the cards to be consolidated into a single computer. If that was not requirement then the Supermicro boards would be very enticing.

Once again thank you all for your great suggestions.

How did it go?