Old PCI-X motherboards

Reezer · 18 Oct 2006 at 20:45

I've just purchased a LSI Raid card without realising the socket on PCI-X and PCI is actually different! The "PCI-X is backwards compattable with PCI" made me think the socket was the same but what it actually appears to mean is PCI cards can fit in PCI-X slots, not vice-versa.

Having discovered this I'm in the market for the cheapest motherboard that has PCI-X slots for the fileserver I was planning to build.

The only PCI-X motherboards I've found so far have been more or less current generation and I really don't want to spend £300 on a new mobo/cpu/ram when something much older would suffice.

I'm looking on google and ebay but so far haven't found anything of much use, does anyone know what type of thing I should be searching for? Are these exclusively server motherboards or something?

Thanks

madman045 · 18 Oct 2006 at 22:36

If you have a socket 478 P4 and you can find one, Gigabyte did a 8KNXP Ultra 64 motherboard with onboard SCSI and two PCI-X slots...

matja · 18 Oct 2006 at 22:54

There's two main types of PCI-X, 3.3v and 5v. Most 5v PCI-X cards will indeed work in a regular PCI slot provided there are no obstructions on the motherboard, albeit at the rather poky rate of 133MB/s - I've ran several Intel PCI-X network cards and Adaptec SCSI controllers in regular PCI slots for years without a problem. 3.3v PCI-X cards definetly will not work in a regular PCI slot, electrically and physically (they are 'keyed' differently to prevent them even being inserted).

If speed isn't too much of an issue, its a 5V card and you want to avoid buying a PCI-X board, it should work fine.

Asus do some nice 'workstation' boards with PCI-X. One oldie but goodie I've used is the Asus NRL-LS533 socket 478 with 5 PCI-X slots and serverworks chipset. I myself bought the Asus P5WDG2-WS Pro for my Core2 E6600 and LSI Logic SCSI RAID combo, which has 2 PCI-X slots and 2 PCI-E, works flawlessly.

Reezer · 18 Oct 2006 at 23:16

The only way this card would fit is if i turned it round 180 degrees which I don't think would be very wise!

The product guide from their website seems to indicate that it is a 3.3V (but I didn't even know pci-x existed before yesterday so i might be wrong

)

I'll have a look for some of the motherboards that have been mentioned, thanks.

I'm keeping my eye on a server motherboard and two test sample xeons that are currently (8 days to run HAH!) only at £8.50 on ebay which might be worth a go. There are a few other motherboards on there too but most are as expensive as a new conroe board.

I noticed that there are a few conroe boards that have PCI-X so I might wait a month or so and buy a new system then. Not quite the same as the cheap 24/7 NAT I had planned...