New Motherboard help - lots of requirements

Hi all,

I have searched and searched over the last week or so for a MB to solve my proble.s

I have an old PC currently built as a Windows Home Server and I am realising that I have limited myself too much by the components I originally built.

So I intend to rebuild it and think ahead and plan a bit more effectively this time.


I have a Rack in my house so it will all be put i a 4U 20 disk enclosure case that Chenbro are releasing, so no issues with space.

First off the must haves:

At least 6 SATA sockets on board.
And chipset support for SATA Port Multipliers. (this is important as the alternative is the go the 3ware multilane controller route which are much pricier)

2 eSata sockets.

And then at least 2 PCI-E x6 sockets and 3 others greater than pci-e x1.

This is for expansion later when I really will need the 3ware cards.

Nice to haves:

Onboard VGA
GBALan

At the moment my short list consists of:

Asus Striker Extreme
Foxconn X38A

Any suggestions appreciated

this is the hard part due to the no. of PCI-E lanes required.
Closest that I can think of is http://www.asus.com.tw/products.as [...] 3=572&l4=0
If you don't mind running AMD then the 790FX chipset based mobos should also be pretty close.

Neither the Striker Extreme or Foxconn X38A meet the requirement but if you are happy with what they offer also check the Abit & MSI X38 mobos.