SATA Devices & cables

bobabry · 20 Mar 2011 at 15:34

Buying new mobo, internal hard drive and optical drive, do any of the devices ship with SATA cables or do I need to add them to my order?

Are all SATA III cables backwards compatible?

Thanks

Bry5

RJC · 20 Mar 2011 at 15:35

The motherboard will come with the cables needed for SATA devices, I assume your not buying from the clearance section.

J.B · 20 Mar 2011 at 15:57

And to answer your second question all SATA kit is backwards compatible

bobabry · 20 Mar 2011 at 16:20

Thanks guys, that leads me on to another question though -

I want to buy the Asus M4A78LT-M, the OCUK specs shows it supports SATA 6GB/s but the ASUS website says 3GB/S and I can spot any revision in the BIOS history.

So if I buy this Mobo and a 6GB/S hard drive and optical drive, could I end up being restricted to 3GB/s because the MOBO doesn't support higher speeds?

RJC · 20 Mar 2011 at 16:26

Seems Ocuk have got the description wrong, Are you looking at a SSD or mechanical hard drive? If the latter then done't worry regards 6gb/s models as they can't saturate 3gb/s speeds let alone 6.

bobabry · 20 Mar 2011 at 16:28

Just mechanical so from what you say I would never have used 6gb anyhow. Thanks

Werewolf · 20 Mar 2011 at 17:44

One minor word of warning, some video cards overhang some SATA slots on some motherboards, so it may be worth getting a couple of right angle SATA cables if you're buying a big video card (nvidia 570 for example).

However as has been said, any motherboard normally comes with at least 2 standard SATA cables

bobabry · 20 Mar 2011 at 17:59

Werewolf said:
One minor word of warning, some video cards overhang some SATA slots on some motherboards, so it may be worth getting a couple of right angle SATA cables if you're buying a big video card (nvidia 570 for example).

Noted - thanks

Surveyor · 20 Mar 2011 at 20:16

Werewolf said:
One minor word of warning, some video cards overhang some SATA slots on some motherboards, so it may be worth getting a couple of right angle SATA cables if you're buying a big video card (nvidia 570 for example).

However as has been said, any motherboard normally comes with at least 2 standard SATA cables

Looking at the picture of that motherboard all the SATA connectors are along the bottom edge so you'll be fine using standard cables as long as you don't buy a massive 3 slot graphics card.

bobabry · 20 Mar 2011 at 20:26

Surveyor said:
Looking at the picture of that motherboard all the SATA connectors are along the bottom edge so you'll be fine using standard cables as long as you don't buy a massive 3 slot graphics card.

Yeah I am only planning to go with a 460 so I don't envisage it being a problem.