Need help picking Motherboard

[comptec]

Hello
I am in need of a new motherboard for an existing system that I have.

Specks on existing system.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor HH80562PH0568M
XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard, NVIDIA, Socket 775
Ultra X3 ULT40071 800-Watt Power Supply - ATX, SAT
Corsair 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz (2x2048MB) X2
Evga 9600GS X2
Windows Vista 64

Hard drives:

Maxtor 400Gig 7200 RPM SATA2 X2
Western Digital 1.5 TB 7200 RPM SATA2 X2

Here is what I am looking for.

I am looking for a MB that has 6 SATA ports, and support RAID functions. 2 Pci-e that work at 16X (I would like to run SLI with both cards operating at 16X). I would like to be able to use the hardware that I currently have, of course except for the 680i motherboard. I am not picky about the brand of the MB or brand of the chipset on the MB.

The reason way I need to change the MB is. I am mirroring the 2 1.5 TB hard drives for data storage, and the board I have now will only recognize 1 TB of each drive.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

RC

 

[starams5]

The ASUS P5N-D 750i is a good budget board that should fit everything on your list. The only reason I say "should" is because I don't know the model# of your Corsair ram. You'll have to check it for compatibility.

2 x PCIe 2.0 x16
Single VGA mode: x16
SLI mode: Hardware ready for x16, x16
2 x PCIe x1
2 x PCI 2.2
Scalable Link Interface (SLI™)
Supports two identical

http://www.corsair.com/

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=627&l4=0&model=2033&modelmenu=1

Update: Sorry, it only supports 4 SATA 3Gb/s.

 

[comptec]

Thanks for the informaion, but ASUS P5N-D does not have enough SATA ports. This board only has 4 and I need a board that has 6 SATA ports.

Yea I did not see your update on your post. Thanks again.

 

[starams5]

There are plenty of boards that will fit your configuration. But no way will I vouch for a board I never owned. Good luck and happy hunting.

 

[geofelt]

First, do you really need mirroring?
The value of raid-1 for protecting data is that you can recover from a hard drive failure quickly.
It is for servers that can't afford any down time.
Recovery from a hard drive failure is just moments.
Fortunately hard drives do not fail often.
Mean time to failure is claimed to be on the order of 1,000,000 hours.(100 years)
Raid-1 does not protect you from other types of losses such as viruses,
software errors,raid controller failure, operator error, or fire...etc.
For that, you need EXTERNAL backup.
If you have external backup, and can afford some recovery time, then you don't need raid-1.

You could add a sata/raid card to get more ports. If you otherwise like your motherboard, that is an option.

I would not spend too much money on a 16/16 pci-e option. It makes very little difference in FPS with today's vga cards, and only on the strongest of cards at that. I think the number is 1-2% at best.

 

[comptec]

My Wife is a photographer and she uses my data dives to back up all of her work and personal photos. I am also a full time student that has kept all of my work on my data drives, so I would really like to be able to use RAID 1 on this particular machine.

I have thought of installing a RAID controller card but I keep running into the problem of having a hard time finding a card that is Vista 64 compatible. I have used the Rocket RAID cards before (the 1640). According to the Mfg’s website there are Vista 64 drivers for it. But when I put this particular card into any computer the power supply beeps loudly when you turn it on or when you shut it down.

I have tried to contact the Mfg to see if this is normal for this card (I’m sure it’s not) or if the card is still under warranty. I am finding though that the Mfg can be very difficult to get in touch with. So I am not sure if I want to continue to buy products from this company.

The other issue I am having is that as mentioned above I am married, and the idea of spending $3 or 4 hundred dollars on a RAID card has her on the Warpath.

Would you have a recommendation for a RAID card for me to use?

Thank you for your time.

 

[purist]

The only board I can recommend does not do SLI but you'd probably be better off getting a new single slot upgrade at this stage. It has 6 SATA connections and can do mirroring. Hope this helps. It's $115 with a mail-in rebate.

I'm currently using a Gigabyte EP45 UD3P. I picked it because it got the least negatives on New Egg and seemed to have no BIOS problems at all (my last AMD board still doesn't work).
I'm running a Q6600 with no overclock (though I took it to 3.5Ghz for fun once),
and have a bunch of drives hanging off it. I am running Vista 64 since Christmas with re-boots only for hardware changes.

I don't use the mirroring for safety reasons (don't want to back up viruses automatically). If you want to backup for safety then do it to an external drive that you can un-plug from the cpu when not in use. There's lots out there and there's plenty of software to do overnight archiving. The mirroring does work though and it had no trouble with any of my drives (60GB - 1.5TB).

My system was built to be totally stable, near-silent, data secure and reasonably fast. I have had no crashes, can hardly hear it, have lost no data and have never had to run all the cores to 100% so it seems to do the job. I recommend it most highly.

Other hardware:
Thermalright HR-01 Plus
GV-R485MC-1GH (passive)
Enermax 625W 82+