PC Spec Help

[Darkend]Viper · 17 Mar 2011 at 11:11

Hi all,

Have a C2D 6320 in a intel board, nothing fancy, onboard graphics, land and that, it's micro atx.

Now I use this machine as a storage server, media transcoder for PS3 and also houses my test vmware files for virtual hosts. It's got 4 sata connectors on it and I'd like more. So requirements from new machine are must have 6 or more sata ports, more is better. Can keep current chip but could upgrade.

Rest of spec is 7800gtx graphics, 4gb ddr2 ram, various sata hdds. At work i use a core I7 930 in a Gigabyte X58a-udr3 which has 10 sata ports on board, but seems a bit pricy. Only other upgrade I was thinking of was to a core 2 quad.

Can someone recommend a board, and if necessary chip and ram. Been looking at I3 and I5 but not sure on performance compared to current spec. I'm not bothered about having the fastest, just something that works. Budget is about £350ish, but if less will be used to buy bigger hdds!

Cheers,

Ste

TheGedi · 17 Mar 2011 at 14:27

If all you really want is more Sata ports why not just get a new Sata Card? If the rest of the system does what your after.

mp260767 · 17 Mar 2011 at 14:44

TheGedi said:
If all you really want is more Sata ports why not just get a new Sata Card? If the rest of the system does what your after.

this, if the lack of sata ports is your only issue with your current system.

Alasdairhurst · 17 Mar 2011 at 14:50

if you have a spare PCI-e slot, then this is seems a good card to add:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-000-AS&groupid=701&catid=49&subcat=424
you get usb3 and sata 6 ports (backwards compatiable with usb2 and sata 3)

pv123 · 17 Mar 2011 at 15:55

Alasdairhurst said:
if you have a spare PCI-e slot, then this is seems a good card to add:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-000-AS&groupid=701&catid=49&subcat=424
you get usb3 and sata 6 ports (backwards compatiable with usb2 and sata 3)

Do these perform on par with the board connectors or are they slower?

hybrid572 · 17 Mar 2011 at 15:59

pv123 said:
Do these perform on par with the board connectors or are they slower?

PCI-E 2.0 is considerably faster than USB3.0. I'm not sure about SATA, though.

TheGedi · 17 Mar 2011 at 16:06

hybrid572 said:
PCI-E 2.0 is considerably faster than USB3.0. I'm not sure about SATA, though.

Isn't USB3.0 Faster than eSata which is based around the Sata 3gbps anyway?

pv123 · 17 Mar 2011 at 16:07

hybrid572 said:
PCI-E 2.0 is considerably faster than USB3.0. I'm not sure about SATA, though.

Yeah, wondering about the sata, might actually get one

hybrid572 · 17 Mar 2011 at 16:49

Just checked- PCIe2.0 at x4 has a total aggregate bandwidth of 4.0GBytes/s, which is colossally faster than SATA 6Gbps. Even x1 should be a little faster, I believe. Get the PCI-E card, you won't be disappointed.

[Darkend]Viper · 21 Mar 2011 at 07:48

Unfortunately it doesn't have any spare pci-e slots, but has pci slots! It's an oldish board, with no overclocking features. I've been looking at at the asus p5k/q range, which fit the bill nicely. Thanks for the help.