Mini ITX/DTX with 6 SATA

[bezza2]

Hello!

I'm hoping someone from these forums can help me!

I'm looking to build a 6 disk NAS server based on either Mini-ITX or Mini-DTX. I have to use these size motherboards as that's what the case will support.

It also has to be energy efficient as it will be left on 24x7, so I'm looking at the intel Atom based boards.

Ideally I want 6 onboard SATA II ports, this prevents having to buy an additional PCI card that may not be supported depending on which OS I go with (FreeBSD/Solaris).

As far as I'm aware I can only find two motherboards that will be suitable:

Supermicro X7SPA
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA.cfm
This motherboard is a perfect fit, except for the price! In the UK it's about £150 which is crazy money for this type of board.

ZOTAC NM10-DTX
http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?pag...category_id=95&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1
This motherboard looks good on paper, however 4 of the 6 SATA ports can only be used in a RAID configuration. As I want to use software RAID it makes this motherboard useless.

So are there any bright sparks out there that know of any other motherboards that might be suitable?

Thanks for any advice you can give!

 

[cmndr_andi]

This motherboard does seem to have enough SATA ports (I assume you can make use of the eSATA connection), however you need to put an i3 CPU in it or better - which will use much more power than an atom. However, compared to other desktop CPUs, the power consumption is very reasonable, and compared to atom still not too bad.

 

[axer]

This motherboard is a perfect fit, except for the price! In the UK it's about £150 which is crazy money for this type of board

Its a server grade board from a premium manufacturer though and hence the hefty price tag!