Would you buy a motherboard with no SATA ports?

Quartz · 29 Sep 2021 at 18:28

My latest build (see sig) uses only NVME drives. The SATA ports sit unused. But they still consume valuable motherboard space and valuable chipset PCIe lanes. I could live with SATA ports being relegated to just two or even to an add-in card.

Edit: I’m not suggesting that no motherboard have SATA ports, just asking if one of the manufacturers made one without, would you be interested?

watercooledman · 29 Sep 2021 at 18:33

d_brennen · 29 Sep 2021 at 18:42

Running 8x8TB drives at the moment, so no

EsaT · 29 Sep 2021 at 19:13

Big nope.

Quartz said:
But they still consume valuable motherboard space

And M.2 doesn't take a space of about dozen SATA connectors?

robj20 · 29 Sep 2021 at 19:18

Yes, completely pointless these days for me. Not used a data drive since getting m.2.

Quartz · 29 Sep 2021 at 19:32

EsaT said:
And M.2 doesn't take a space of about dozen SATA connectors?

The PCIe lanes associated with those SATA ports could be used for things like 10Gb ethernet.

Purgatory · 29 Sep 2021 at 19:54

The_Arbiter · 29 Sep 2021 at 19:57

No. Give it a few years still.

Quartz · 29 Sep 2021 at 21:04

The_Arbiter said:
No. Give it a few years still.

I'm not suggesting it should be standard, just if you would buy one were the option available . It took over a decade to get rid of PATA / IDE.

Joxeon · 29 Sep 2021 at 22:00

Not until nvme drives become much cheaper for mass storage and the boards have more M.2 ports.

The_Arbiter · 29 Sep 2021 at 22:51

Quartz said:
I'm not suggesting it should be standard, just if you would buy one were the option available . It took over a decade to get rid of PATA / IDE.

Ah, think you should add that to OP.

Still lightly not for me. On a ITX build definitely, but mini builds are expensive anyway. All cost dependent really in my eyes.

sandys · 29 Sep 2021 at 22:59

Slow spinning drives have no place in my computer so yes I would, I would also be quite happy to loose most of the USB 3.2 ports too, they are a waste of bandwidth that could be better used as mentioned on stuff like 10Gb etc and NVMe/better wired PCIe Slots.

I use SATA SSD/HDDs in my NAS, best place for them, no need for more than 2Gb/s transfers there, limited speed ability even over 20GB LAN..

IceBear · 29 Sep 2021 at 23:03

I could certainly live with fewer SATA ports at the moment.

MagicBoy · 29 Sep 2021 at 23:07

tonys · 30 Sep 2021 at 00:00

I could, as I don't use them on my Gigabyte itx board just 2 M.2's. For other uses I would need probably only 3 or 4 for storage of photos, music and some recorded TV.

Blackjack Davy · 30 Sep 2021 at 00:10

No thats just silly. I can see it becoming a thing in future though unfortunately.

Tejstar · 2 Oct 2021 at 10:16

Joxeon said:
Not until nvme drives become much cheaper for mass storage and the boards have more M.2 ports.

This. I have 3 x 8TB drives in my machine, which now need to be upgraded as I've run out of space. I also use a Blu-ray writer, so definitely would not buy a mobo without SATA.

However, if larger storage with NVME was a similar price to bigger HDD storage drives than I'd probably survive - could always get a USB-driven Blu-ray solution.

Quartz · 2 Oct 2021 at 10:28

To answer my own question, I definitely see motherboards with no SATA ports becoming normal in the corporate space. The fewer the wires the better. It's already normal with laptops.

Oh Ed not again. · 2 Oct 2021 at 10:31

Quartz said:
The PCIe lanes associated with those SATA ports could be used for things like 10Gb ethernet.

Spot on. There's still a place for SATA, but on some ranges I'd happily lose SATA for 10Gbe now nVME is at a decent price point.