Sata 3 Raid

I believe that the Marvell 9128 and Intel ICH10R SATA 3 controllers support raid. Look for these controllers on your motherboard of choice.

If your idea of 'futureproofing' is running a slower than ICHxR controller, risking your data on half-baked drivers, from a company with zero lucid support whatsoever, and 'losing' a PCIe lane in the process - have at 'er! Pretty sure that all GB MOBOs that support SATA3, other than the AMD 8xx based ones, will do RAID... Murphy and his immutable LAW have mercy on your soul!

Well what would you recommend bilbat...? I'm not so fond of Gigabyte because both of my old 8800GTs no longer work after (the 1st lasted about 1.5 years, the second at 2 years)

And thanks candian69 I wouldn't have known that without your help.

Now I don't know what motherboard to choose

I think what he is driving at is that perhaps you should buy a RAID card vs relying on the onboard RAID. Although its hard to tell if he is debunking only intel or onboard RAID altogether.

Doing a search on either chipset here on Tom's will provide several articles and motherboards.

Umm, I very much doubt GB makes any video cards - these are all just 'reference' cards, manufactured by ATI and nVidia... Don't know what the situation was when you bought the stuff, as I've only been doing this for, say, eighteen months, but now - GB warrant all their stuff for three years. Another 'telling' point: take a look at this 'top of the line' EVGA SR-2 manual, and this GB UD-9 manual - especially at the BIOS adjustments section! (Though simply comparing the filesizes should be 'telling', itself...)

Another thing is the support aspect; everyone's 'factory support' leaves much to be desired, but for GBs, you have TweakTown, and Tom's GB forum, and, frankly, I'm fairly proud of the GB 'sticky'

Ok well what do you guys think about this motherboard?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

MSI Big Bang-XPower LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

I looked up the controllers so it does seem to support sata 3 raid. This was actually my initial choice then I changed my mind to the Asus P6X58D Premium and now I think the board I linked is better again since it's the same price point.

Also I was under the impression that Gigabyte does manufacturer the video cards..instead of simply rebranding and distributing it. I don't really see why you're defending Gigabyte, they're just some cheap Asian company. Most computer components are made in Asia but the emphasis is on "cheap"

I'm not at all trying to take away from your guide btw, I think community support is great.

Even if I'm wrong this is getting off-topic I just want the best x58 motherboard possible that supports sata 3 and sata 3 in raid

The specs and reviews look really good. I wounldn't think about MSI as a first choice, but that bias is from experiences over a decade old, so I should give them more consideration. I'm impressed with this board.

Motherboard manufacturers dont "make" video processors. Its not a cost effective process. What they do is buy the chips, just like they do for the motherboards and integrate them into their own product boards, which are generally speced out by the GPU manufacturer. This allows them to tweak memory and various other card features. Maybe thats what you guy already meant.

As for "asian", I professionally do not think it is synonymous with cheap. Its way to general a statement, especially since just about everything is fabricated overseas (Phillipenes, Tiawan, Singapore, etc etc). This of course includes MSI. Cheap is in the design, implementation and materials and that is possible anyware. (no I'm not asian).