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SATA extensions

C

carlmart

Gawd
Joined
Sep 17, 2006
Messages
691
My latest mobo, which I will keep until I have the chance to get a Z97, is an Asus H61.

It has only 4 SATA sockets, which is not enough for me. I need at least 6 or 8, which is what the Z97 I will be buying will have.

I have had very bad luck with external drives for my HDDs, and they ended up ruining the drives, probably because of their power supplies. Using external cases, for multiple HDDs, is very expensive, and certainly more than a new mobo.

Anyway, my question is this:

1) Is there a PCI-e to four SATA board you would recommend?

2) How can I do to use the PCI-e socket that is below the Geforce fan, as that GPU takes up the space of two sockets? I have seen cabled adapters, but I'm not sure they can be trusted.
 
1) Is there a PCI-e to four SATA board you would recommend?
Click to expand...

I do not recommend any PCIe SATA controllers. Get a motherboard with enough ports.


If you need 8 additional ports I recommend refirb/used LSI 2008 based SAS cards off eBay but these will run you $100 or so with cables.
 
I do not live in the USA, so buying such things from eBay would be too expensive. Also never buy used/refurbished stuff ever. Locally they would cost a fortune. Not an option for me.

What's the problem with PCIe SATA controllers?
 
I would suggest not buying anything. anything with the amount of ports you want at a reasonable quality will set you back on your road to z97

Tough it out :) or get a esata/usb3 external box or 3.
 
Grab an IBM m1015 off eBay and flash it to it mode.

The advantages to the sas2008 based controllers is that the drivers are supported on just about any os and they aren't typically a bottleneck as long as you have enough pcie lanes.
 
If this is just for a desktop system, you can pick up one of the cheap PCI-e SATA cards with a Marvel controller. If all you're doing to do is hook up a few hard drives for mass storage the performance should be good enough. Just make sure the drives where the performance is important are connected to the motherboard.

As for getting for the PCI-E port under your GPU, you can only use it if you can wedge a cable in there. The shorter PCI-E extenders are fairly reliable, just don't get the cheapest one you can find.
 
You can get a Z97 motherboard for as little as $65 on sale at Newegg, If you are truly looking to upgrade anyway instead of spending $35 on a decent SATA card just upgrade your motherboard (as dresherjm already suggested)
 
Thanks for the tips. I wish I could get a Z97 over here for twice that price. You have to pay 5 to 6 times that money here. And then you have to buy the CPU too, which costs also about 4 times the Newegg price.

Things are tough for computer stuff over here. And the warranties? Usually a few months, and only very recently the manufacturers took over and improved on that.

Yes, of course, the HDDs on the PCIe SATA would be for data only, and ever for critical stuff.

The IBM is out of the question: costs more than a Z97!
 
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