Chipset advice needed H61(+) vs H77

[Chry]

Not seeing much difference between the p8H77-I and the p8H61-I R2.0 ...
http://www.asus.com/Motherboard/P8H77I/
http://www.asus.com/Motherboard/P8H61I_R20/

Both these have USB3 and PCIe3 apparently. (special H61?! )

Only difference seems to be no SATA3 on the H61 (which tbh only the fastest SSD would utilise anyway?).
And maybe some Disk management technologies namely:
RAID
Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RAID?)
Smart Response Technology (SSD Cache?)

I plan to have a SSD + HDD combo (with OS on small (probably not crazy fast) SSD and HDD for storage).

Can someone who has used them/experience of them tell me - will I miss SATA3 and these other disk technologies?
[Difference is around $30 where I am (UK £20)]
What would you go for?

Thanks

 

[liangr]

Personally I would go with the H77 board, sata 3 is worth it. All of the SSDs on the market fully saturate the speed.

If you are looking to save a few dollars you might want to take a look at H67 boards which have sata 3. Also for lower priced boards I tend to buy Gigabyte boards more as they have more features.

 

[XcPNehVYlE4A3C]

I agree, unless budget is #1 priority, SATA3 is worth it.

Although that Asus H61 board doesn't look too bad - my gigabyte H61n only has 2 sata ports. (which is fine as I use it as an HTPC)

 

[WiSK]

I plan to have a SSD + HDD combo (with OS on small (probably not crazy fast) SSD and HDD for storage).

If you're only putting Windows on the SSD then the advantage of Sata3 is only at boot time. Moreover, a small SSD doesn't have the throughput that the 256+GB drives have so won't benefit from Sata3 bandwith anyway.

I have an H61 board with 128GB M4 over sata2, and a Z77 board with 256GB M4 over sata3. My data in both cases is separated to a HDD and notice absolutely no difference in terms of application loading times etc between the two machines. But don't just take my word for it. Read here,
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110.html

Personally I would go with the H77 board, sata 3 is worth it. All of the SSDs on the market fully saturate the speed.

Saturated speed on sustained sequential loading or burst tests, but that only occurs when starting an application which is likely to be pre-cached anyway. Loading/saving large data possibly would see saturated sata2 lines, but only if there was no other data processing going on with the file. But OP is putting only OS and maybe applications on the SSD, then he may or may not notice some small improvement in start up time, but have no benefit after that.