It's been five years since my last gaming rig build, and I've come across several things that are new to me.
In the middle of my seventh home brew gaming rig.... MSI Gaming Z170A GAMING M5 LGA 1151/i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz LGA/MSI GTX1080, I stopped after the CPU/RAM because a few questions arose…
1. The motherboard that I was replacing is an MSI P67A-GD65 (B3) LGA 1155, which had eight SATA slots, three of which were supposed to be 6 GHz.
The new board has 6x SATA 6Gb/s ports* (4 ports reserved for SATA Express ports) and two slots on the left-hand side of the SATA block which I've never seen before, marked LOTES, 2x SATAe ports (PCIe 3.0 x2) and two internal areas called M2 which Appear to be a stripped down motherboard SSD device mounts...NEW TO ME AS WELL.
I read that if I install both or any of the M2 devices that this will compromise the number of SATA slots that I can use.
A.I have read for years about the promise of SATA express, enhancing thru-put and I wonder whether that will give me more throughput for my SSDs... At the cost of losing even more SATA ports?
B.I have to support 8 SATA devices HDD/SSD/Blu-ray burner. And now I've seem to run out of of SATA slots. Should I return the motherboard or is there an auxiliary daughterboard that will support more and newer SATA/SATA Express connections?
2. I thought the install of my 6700 K, into my MSI MOBO was ok...but quit last night because I was pooped and didn't want to make any mistakes. I had nightmares about having placed the CPU incorrectly...under my Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus.
I couldn't find the decades old triangle key I had used for alignment but I noticed that they WERE notches that LOOKED LIKE the CPU was aligned properly ...did I screw up or did I loose sleep needlessly?
3. My old DDR3 RAM MOBO had a Specific configuration for RAM called "dual channel" - installing the sticks in alternating memory slots and this config was preferred. Is this the case with 1151 Mobos and what is the virtue of dual channel in DDR4 RAM?
Thanks y'all!
Chas
… On his last build...Hello retirement and SSI.... goodbye discretionary funds... So I got to get this one right!
In the middle of my seventh home brew gaming rig.... MSI Gaming Z170A GAMING M5 LGA 1151/i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz LGA/MSI GTX1080, I stopped after the CPU/RAM because a few questions arose…
1. The motherboard that I was replacing is an MSI P67A-GD65 (B3) LGA 1155, which had eight SATA slots, three of which were supposed to be 6 GHz.
The new board has 6x SATA 6Gb/s ports* (4 ports reserved for SATA Express ports) and two slots on the left-hand side of the SATA block which I've never seen before, marked LOTES, 2x SATAe ports (PCIe 3.0 x2) and two internal areas called M2 which Appear to be a stripped down motherboard SSD device mounts...NEW TO ME AS WELL.
I read that if I install both or any of the M2 devices that this will compromise the number of SATA slots that I can use.
A.I have read for years about the promise of SATA express, enhancing thru-put and I wonder whether that will give me more throughput for my SSDs... At the cost of losing even more SATA ports?
B.I have to support 8 SATA devices HDD/SSD/Blu-ray burner. And now I've seem to run out of of SATA slots. Should I return the motherboard or is there an auxiliary daughterboard that will support more and newer SATA/SATA Express connections?
2. I thought the install of my 6700 K, into my MSI MOBO was ok...but quit last night because I was pooped and didn't want to make any mistakes. I had nightmares about having placed the CPU incorrectly...under my Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus.
I couldn't find the decades old triangle key I had used for alignment but I noticed that they WERE notches that LOOKED LIKE the CPU was aligned properly ...did I screw up or did I loose sleep needlessly?
3. My old DDR3 RAM MOBO had a Specific configuration for RAM called "dual channel" - installing the sticks in alternating memory slots and this config was preferred. Is this the case with 1151 Mobos and what is the virtue of dual channel in DDR4 RAM?
Thanks y'all!
Chas
… On his last build...Hello retirement and SSI.... goodbye discretionary funds... So I got to get this one right!
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