Jump to content

SATA 2/3 Card


d3athsd00r

Recommended Posts

About to pick up a couple samsung 830 128GB drives since the price is in the toilet with the release of the new 840s. However, I'm out of SATA ports on my P45. I have 6 ports on the Intel controller (ICH10R) and 2 on the Gigabyte controller. The Gigabyte controller, unfortunately is dead and is unusable. I wanted to get something like this:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817999022

 

because I have 2 other 2.5" drives just sitting in my case (screwed down but not very well). But as I said, between my 2x2.5" drives, 3x3.5" drives and my DVD drive my Intel controller is full.

 

So, here is the plan. My mother-in-law is paying for all this and my limit is $250-$300.

 

2x Samsung 830 128GB = $180

Bay adapter = $60

 

Total = $230

 

Which leaves $20-$70 for a simple SATA card that I can use to attach all my storage drives to (1x3.5" and the 2x2.5"). Or I can skip the fancy hotswap shenanigans and get something like this:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817997041

 

or:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817995074

 

and increase my SATA card price up to $60-$120.

 

 

 

Can anyone suggest a decent (not going to die on me in the next 2 years) SATA card so I can have all my drives hooked up, and I don't have to start getting external cases for them? I originally wanted a port multiplier but then I discovered Intel doesn't support them (doh!).

Also, can anyone explain how PCI-E lanes work? From what I understand, the P45 only has 16 lanes. Does that mean if I get a PCI-E SATA card, it will pull lanes away from my GTX-460 and reduce its performance? If that is true, then I will probaly do the external-drive thing and call it a day

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

IMHO you'd be far better off moving those SSDs to the Intel controller and putting your regular HDDs and optical drive on a cheap PCIe SATA card. If you try to use your SSDs on a host-based controller card (which all cheap cards are) it's going to be exceedingly slow compared to running on a good controller or SATA/RAID card.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

IMHO you'd be far better off moving those SSDs to the Intel controller and putting your regular HDDs and optical drive on a cheap PCIe SATA card. If you try to use your SSDs on a host-based controller card (which all cheap cards are) it's going to be exceedingly slow compared to running on a good controller or SATA/RAID card.

 

That's what I was planning to do. Can you suggest a cheap-ish SATA card?

And will a PCIe card take away performance from my GPU? That's something I'm still not certain of.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

IMHO you'd be far better off moving those SSDs to the Intel controller and putting your regular HDDs and optical drive on a cheap PCIe SATA card. If you try to use your SSDs on a host-based controller card (which all cheap cards are) it's going to be exceedingly slow compared to running on a good controller or SATA/RAID card.

 

+1 you definitely want to run the ssd's off the intel controller.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To be honest all of them are roughly equal. You're essentially just paying for a bit of steel to hold your drives in place - no real circuitry is needed. Personally I'd just get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817997041& and call it a day. :cheers:

 

EDIT: For a controller card these are fairly decent and get you the connectivity you need without being overly terrible: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132018

 

Or, if you're not as concerned about speed: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124027 Reviews for this one make it sound a bit flaky though...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To be honest all of them are roughly equal. You're essentially just paying for a bit of steel to hold your drives in place - no real circuitry is needed. Personally I'd just get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817997041& and call it a day. :cheers:

 

EDIT: For a controller card these are fairly decent and get you the connectivity you need without being overly terrible: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132018

 

Or, if you're not as concerned about speed: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124027 Reviews for this one make it sound a bit flaky though...

 

Thanks a lot man.

I think I'm going to go with the Rosewill. Nothing else is catching my eye much.

Now I just need to figure out this PICe lane mumbo-jumbo.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You might end up reducing your GTX 460 to 8x mode instead of 16x mode. Honestly I wouldn't worry about it one bit as it won't affect your performance much at all.

 

Hmm, I didn't know that. I was never really up to date on how GPUs measure their performance or what their current throughput is.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The change from 16x PCIe 1.0 to 8x PCIe 1.0 might drop your framerates by a couple percent, at most. With PCIe 2.0 you'll never see the difference especially on a single GPU card. :cheers:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...