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how many sata ports do i need exactly?

Tags:
  • Components
  • Storage
  • Devices
  • SATA
  • Motherboards
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Components
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October 12, 2013 8:40:48 PM

are sata ports only used for storage devices? because if so i plan on building a setup with 3 of them. 1 ssd and 2 hdd's. i understand i would need sata 6gb/s for ssd to get optimal performance but what i dont get is how many sata ports on a motherboard would i need for all 3 of the mentioned devices? would it be just 1 for each?

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a c 107 V Motherboard
October 12, 2013 8:43:15 PM

Need 1 Sata for each hard drive, and one for each optical (example: dvd) drive.
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October 12, 2013 8:47:41 PM

would there be a drawback if i plug the hdd's into the sata 3gb/s ports instead of the sata 6gb/s ones? and what about the optical drives? do i need to plug them into the sata 6gb/s ports or will they do on the sata 3gb/s ports?
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a c 138 G Storage
a c 491 V Motherboard
October 12, 2013 8:49:09 PM

intel z77 chipset has two six gig sata ports standard and 4 3g sata ports. the b77 has only one.the newer z87 1150 mb have 6 intel sata ports and two 3 party 6g sata ports.
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a c 138 G Storage
a c 491 V Motherboard
October 12, 2013 8:50:10 PM

hard drives and cd-rom cant max out sata 3g ports unless it a hybread drive. on my asus sabertooth i have only the ssd on the intel 6g port.
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October 12, 2013 8:52:14 PM

so you're saying hdd's and optical drives will be fine on sata 3g ports?
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a c 138 G Storage
a c 491 V Motherboard
October 12, 2013 8:54:17 PM

yep they cant send more data to the mb then the port can handel it wont slow your pc down if there on the slower ports. but as i said the z77 mb have 2 6g ports if you buy a newer i5 like the 4670k the new z87 mb come with 6 6g ports.
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a b V Motherboard
October 12, 2013 8:59:07 PM

Yes normal Sata II (3gbps) ports are fine for Mechanical HDD's and Optical drives as none of them have any need for Sata III (6gbps) speeds, only SSD's need that much extra bandwidth of the Sata III (6gbps) ports
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October 12, 2013 10:15:08 PM

i see thank you all. one last thing and this might be a little off topic but not too off. what about pci-e? will i only be needing those for gpu's? and will i also be needing just 1 pci-e port for each gpu i have installed?
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a c 138 G Storage
a c 491 V Motherboard
October 12, 2013 10:27:26 PM

if you look at a standard motherboard the video card slot now are colored and have a video latch.
http://www.google.com/imgres?safe=off&sa=X&biw=1344&bih...
as you can see the video slot on this mothrboard is yellow and the second port is black near the bottom of the mb. you need one slot per gpu and the slot closest to the cpu is the main gpu slot.
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October 12, 2013 10:32:27 PM

ok but i've noticed pci-e like sata also come in different types. pci-e 16 and i forgot what the other one was called? im assuming the 16 is faster and acts similar to a sata 6gb/s and of course i would be using the pci-e 16 port to plug in my gpu but what about the other pci slot? the presumably "slower" one? what is it for?
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a b G Storage
a c 107 V Motherboard
October 12, 2013 10:36:03 PM

alexiusyap said:
i see thank you all. one last thing and this might be a little off topic but not too off. what about pci-e? will i only be needing those for gpu's? and will i also be needing just 1 pci-e port for each gpu i have installed?


Yes, one Pci-e port for each graphics card you buy. Some motherboards come with more than one, some don't. There are also PCI ports, not to be confused with pci-e. They are right beside Pci-e ports, and are used for things like sound cards, lan cards etc. However, most motherboards have these incorporated into the board itself, and the pci ports remain unused.

Edit: didn't see your newest post just above. This basically is what I was referring to, the pci slots. The pci-express x16 are the big ones used for graphics cards only.
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October 13, 2013 12:03:45 AM

thank you
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