Advice needed for new motherboard

[stuporman]

I have a Asus M4N78 motherboard (with a Phenom ii 955BE) which I bought as a pre-built system. It has five SATA ports, but I've found that two of them can only be used for RAID drives, leaving only three for other peripherals.
I want to have two DVD drives, one main disk plus another back up disks.
I only intend to use one graphics card so no need for more than one PCI-E connector. I would also like to use AMD overdrive so would need a compatable chipset.

Are there any m/bs anyone could recommend to fit this spec?

 

[Emperus]

How much are you willing to spend..?? For about 90$, the Asus M4A87TD/USB3 fits your requirements perfectly..

 

[mosox]

M4N78 SE or M4N78 Pro?

You use DDR2 RAM so you either get a DDR2 mobo or you get new DDR3 RAM as well. You can use an IDE DVD drive.

Some AM2+ mobos that use DDR2:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131618
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130265

 

[adnanaadi]

salam!!!

Dear bro what ever be the motherboard you purchase, you should first check the TDP or Wattage of you motherboard which is 125w see yourself in given link

http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUResult.aspx

it is the power which is required by your processor when it runs at full speed.
so be sure that the motherboard you purchasing must support TDP more than 125w other wise your motherboard's transistor/mofsets will burnout in few months.

 

[adnanaadi]

salam!!!

I had mistaken in above statement. here is here is the correct one
Dear bro what ever be the motherboard you purchase, you should first check the TDP or Wattage of your processor which is 125w see yourself in given link

http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUResult.aspx

it is the power which is required by your processor when it runs at full speed.
so be sure that the motherboard you purchasing must support TDP more than 125w other wise your motherboard's transistor/mofsets will burnout in few months.

 

[stuporman]

This is the one I'm thinking of going for.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...-e-20(x16)-ddr3-1333-1600-1800-sata-3gb-s-atx

Supports up to 140w so should be OK.

Does anyone have any views on whether this is a decent m/b or not?

 

[mosox]

This is the one I'm thinking of going for.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...-e-20(x16)-ddr3-1333-1600-1800-sata-3gb-s-atx

Supports up to 140w so should be OK.

Does anyone have any views on whether this is a decent m/b or not?

Did you read the replies?

 

[adnanaadi]

Asus M4A79XTD EVO AMD 790X AM3 Motherboard
Yes Dear thats looks gr8 mobo to me!!!!!

 

[stuporman]

I'm curious about two of the slots only used as RAID, is that what it says in the manual.?

From the manual you wouldn't have any idea (unless there is something really obvious I've missed?) page 1-23 .

However, having discovered the problem after purchase a check on the ASUS website reveals:

Question " Recently I bought this motherboard to build my new system. When I connect my new SATA hard disk to SATA5 or SATA6 port, the hard drive is not detected in BIOS or Windows. However, when I connect this hard drive to SATA1~SATA3 port, BIOS can detect my hard disk successfully. If I change the SATA Mode option from [SATA Mode] to [AHCI Mode] or [RAID Mode], the hard disk can be detected in BIOS even when I connect the hard drive to SATA5 or SATA6 port. Is this normal?

Answer " Yes, this is normal. Due to chipset limitation, SATA5 and SATA6 ports do not support [SATA Mode]. These two ports support only [RAID Mode] and [AHCI Mode]. If you plan to use your hard drive in [SATA Mode], please avoid using SATA5 and SATA6 ports at locations indicated in the diagram below."

Asus Support http://support.asus.com/faq/asus-fa...B94F-5F63886CED2F&model=M4N78&SLanguage=en-us

Caveat Emptor!