Struggling with connections needed on MB

[Belgianblue]

This will most likely sound like a stupid question to most of the experts here, and if so, I apologize for being the incredible newb.

But fact is, i'm having trouble with the number of connections I need on my MB. The way I understand it, HD's and most of the stuff you insert in bays require the same types of connections on the MB. If like me, you like to jam pack your system with, well, everything, that sounds like an awful lot of connections.

I'm looking at 6 HD's (min 2 and max 4 in RAID, 2 DVD -/+ R/RW's, a floppy, a card reader, the front bay of my audigy 2 ZS platinum, A VCD display and a fan controller.

I understand the floppy has its own connector, and the card reader only needs the internal USB. Not sure about the audigy platinum bay and the fan controller.

I was looking at an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum, as it has everything else I need : 2xGbit Lan, 10 USB, 2 Firewire, a PCIe16x and 4 PCI slots (don't need the PCIe 1x and 4x, but they are located above and below the 16x, which makes sure the videocard doesn't block my oh so precious PCI's which I need for my audigy platinum, my E-MU1820 and my TV/FM-card)

Will the board suffice ? And if someone could give me the exact rundown of what exactly I need to connect my 6 HD's, 2 DVD's and the rest, to help me in my quest for MB's, I would be greatly endebted.

Note : I don't really use a floppy drive, but I'm told I need one to install RAID.

 

[fishmahn]

You'll want your 2 dvd's to live on separate IDE channels, so you'll need 2 IDE channels (most if not all A64 boards have that). Your HDDs will need to be SATA in that case, and you'll need enough SATA headers for them - so 6 are required. The MSI gives you 8 so that's covered.

The Audigy shouldn't need anything because it connects to its own card. The fan controller usually doesn't need anything more than power from the power supply, or if it needs more, likely a USB port. However, I've never used a fan controller, so I'm going solely on what I've read.

They're right on the floppy drive if your boot drive will be RAIDed. If not, a floppy isn't required.

Mike.