Recommend me a board

deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
edited March 2006 in Hardware
Righto, I'm having some storage issues and to solve them I need a new motherboard. Currently I have a file server with a socket A motherboard (an ABit one I believe) which has 2 300GB drives in RAID 0 as my main storage area. However that storage is now pretty much full so I need to sort something else out. I was looking at a buffalo terra station, but they only offer a Terabyte of storage and aren't scalable, so I've now decided to go with a highpoint rocketraid 2320 card, which offers 8 SATA 2 channels and a variety of RAID options. So, I'm looking for a motherboard with the following characteristics:

onboard graphics (not really vital, but would save me £20 or so)
a PCI-E X4 slot
must be cheap (hopefully £50 or so)

Also, if anyone has experience with the rocketraid card let me know because I have some questions about it :)

Comments

  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited March 2006
    1. Ask Tex, he know storage.

    Which socket? "A"? (no, I am not Canadian) With a PCI-e slot?
    I am not saying that there is no such thing, but I have never seen one.
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited March 2006
    edcentric wrote:
    1. Ask Tex, he know storage.

    Which socket? "A"? (no, I am not Canadian) With a PCI-e slot?
    I am not saying that there is no such thing, but I have never seen one.

    Ah no, sorry for the ambiguity, I was hoping for socket 754 and a sempron but I'm kinda resigned to the fact that I'm going to have to go 939.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited March 2006
    If you want a PCIe Socket 754 Mobo..

    Epox 8NPA SLi -- Newegg --S754 8x/8x SLI Use one PCIe 16x (8x) slot for cheap Video and the other PCIe 16x (8x) for the Raid Card. Or you can use the 4 SATA ports to set up a 4 Drive Raid setup
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited March 2006
    Well I found This, which looks to have what I want. My only concern is the PCI-express slot. I'm under the impression that the raid card I want, which is PCI-X X4 will work in the PCI-X X16 slot on this board. Anyone know if that's right?
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited March 2006
    //edit let me rephrase this//

    X16 Slot is compatable with X16, X8, X4, X2, and X1 Cards

    X8 Slot is compatable with X8, X4, X2, and X1 Cards

    X4 Slot is compatable with X4, X2, and X1 Cards

    X2 Slot is comatable with X2, and X1 Cards

    X1 Slot is compatable with X1 Cards

    so technicly ANY PCI-E X4 card should work in any X4 and above slot. just read the tech specs of the card. i know Areca raid cards for PCI-E will work in ANY PCI-E slot, even X1, and its an X8 card.


    actually.. i think they are all universial you can plug a X1 card intyo an X16 slot... might wanna do a little mroe research on this
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited March 2006
    That's what I thought, my only worry was that motherboard manufacturers might assume you're only going to want to put a graphics card in a x16 slot and screw something up in the BIOS so you can only use that slot for a graphics card...
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