Installing new motherboard - best approaches?

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Justme2

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Jul 10, 2013
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10,510
Hi all,
Wish I could have come up with a better title...

I am about to install a new Asus Z87-Plus MB with an i7-4770 CPU and 16 GB ram into my current desktop case. I mostly do software development and some video editing. I also run a couple of VMs at the same time for testing software in different environments.

My desktop is currently an old Quad core on an Asus P5K MB, using a 250 G SSD as my boot drive and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti video card. I have a bunch of hard drives, some of which are RAID 5 striped into a single volume.

My questions:
Does it make sense to use the MB video or continue using the NVIDIA (or both)? I use at least 2 monitors and am considering adding a 3rd.

Do you know if it makes a difference which SATA port I use on the MB for the SSD drive?

A lot of times, MBs come with options and/or software that can make things better (or worse) that I need to choose to use or not. Do you know of any feature (bios or otherwise) that I may want to modify/install that may make things work better?

Along with the above - what about any software/settings that may look good, but are probably not the best choice to use?

Other than downloading the latest ASUS drivers & bios to a thumb drive so that I can install them before I install Windows, are there any other suggestions before I start the process (assuming I already have all the necessary install codes and a full backup.)

Any suggestions on where to get good information on the RAID 5 software that comes with the MB (besides the docs in the box and ASUS website)?

Any other gotchas you can think about?

Thanks!
 
Solution
T_T
Most motherboards will only allow one source at a time, e.g. integrated video or GPU, so the likely better choice is to opt for the 550.

Yes, there is a difference. With SATA, there is no master/slave relationship. Instead, the BIOS searches for devices starting from SATA0. Once the device type is determined, then the BIOS looks for bootable devices. For example, if you have one SSD and one ODD, it obviously won't matter where you place the ODD, since it will be the only device on the...
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T_T

Splendid
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Most motherboards will only allow one source at a time, e.g. integrated video or GPU, so the likely better choice is to opt for the 550.

Yes, there is a difference. With SATA, there is no master/slave relationship. Instead, the BIOS searches for devices starting from SATA0. Once the device type is determined, then the BIOS looks for bootable devices. For example, if you have one SSD and one ODD, it obviously won't matter where you place the ODD, since it will be the only device on the SATA controller. On the other hand, if you had more than one SATA device to attach, and if one of them is an HDD, then consider placing that one on a higher priority than the ODD.

Generally speaking, if you don't know what the software is, you don't need it. If you're that worried about what to install, start with the essentials, the mobo drivers. You'll know else you need after you've installed your OS.
Unless the BIOS update addresses something specific that you need, or if you've read reliable reports on an unintended fix to a problem with a specific update, you may want to consider opting out of BIOS updates.

There are, quite literally, thousands of posts on RAID, several of them here at Tom's.



 
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Justme2

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Jul 10, 2013
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10,510
Thanks for all your responses, really appreciate it.

>>There are, quite literally, thousands of posts on RAID, several of them here at Tom's. <<

I wasn't as much interested in the discussions on RAID as much as the details of working with the RAID software on the ASUS MB. The last ASUS MB I had only had limited information on the support, so I was hoping for a little more detail for this specific motherboard or the ASUS Raid implementations (although it may be there - I haven't opened the box until I pick up the CPU tomorrow.)
 
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