What type of X58 Motherboard

[conflipper]

So I am looking for ideas on what type of motherboard I should get. Never bought one before so just curious to see what everyone has to say.


I am going to upgrade current setup, I plan to continue to use same CPU, i7 920. And Same Graphics card. Radeon 4870. I recently had a SSD drive go bad. So this is whats causing this to happen now. I plan to upgrade at a later time to, i7-980. Once I get money saved back up after this upgrade. I realize some people will tell me to upgrade to Sandy Bridge, but right now I dont have the money for a CPU, so I am sticking with the one I have.

Things I plan on buying.

2 SATA3 SSD, (120GB Capacity each) Hooked in with a RAID0
Motherboard
Case


So for the motherboard the things that are most important to me.

SATA3 connection for 6Gb/s
SATA3 in RAID0
Minimum of 6 USB 2 Ports.


That is all I really care about. Performance I dont really need, dont use it for games or anything, mainly use it for Home desktop, video picture and movie editing. Nothing major though.


If anyone has ideas on what type of Motherboard they think would be best, let me know. Would love to get soem inputs here.



Thank You

 

[jaquith]

I'd go for the Gigabyte's with Marvell 918X chipsets: G1 Series or GA-X58A-OC http://www.gigabyte.us/products/list.aspx?s=42&jid=1&p=2&v=1

Marvell 912X craps-out around 380~390MB/s; shared x1 lane PCIe whereas the Marvell 918X is a shared x2 lanes of PCIe and will offer the FULL SATA3 speed.

 

[DXRick]

I have the GA-X58-USB3. It works great and has the options you need.

 

[jaquith]

The GA-X58-USB3 has no SATA3 ports (Marvell); it's all SATA2 ports - http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3571#sp

I have (1) GA-X58A-UD3R with the older Marvell 9128 SATA3 ports, and the newer SSD's (500MB/s+) will be bottlenecked big-time!

 

[DXRick]

The GA-X58-USB3 has no SATA3 ports (Marvell); it's all SATA2 ports - http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3571#sp

I have (1) GA-X58A-UD3R with the older Marvell 9128 SATA3 ports, and the newer SSD's (500MB/s+) will be bottlenecked big-time!

Dang. You're right.
I looked at the same page and saw "6 x SATA 3Gb/s". Confused 3Gb/s with SATA 3. Sorry bout that.

 

[jaquith]

We ALL oopsy, myself included more times than I care or want to count.

I'm biting my tongue over the SB or SB-E...I have a lot of X58's and they run fine, but the SB/SB-E are nice though I 'get' the costs of the CPU's.

 

[conflipper]

Will there be any real need to RAID0 2 SSD in SATA3? I was thinking I might want that initially. But now looking at everything, seems like I might not have a lot of advantage by doing that.

Instead just get a single 250GB SSD or something similar.


A lot of the Gigabyte boards, are only having 4 USB 2, and 2-4 USB 3 ports on back. I can live with this. But would always be nie to have more.

 

[conflipper]

Will SB-E/SB be worth it now though with Ivy Bridge coming out in April?

 

[Chris3455]

Why not go with i7 3960x? Costs same as i7 980x

 

[jaquith]

Regarding RAID 0, the only real issues are:
1. Losing ANY (1) SSD = Poof ALL data gone; so only have OS, Apps, and Working data with a HDD for ALL important data.
2. Loss of TRIM support
3. Advantage is super fast R/W, RAID 0 scales extremely well.

Regarding, IB or IB-E -- who really knows?! I recall all of the Bulldozer and SB-E HYPE which all turned-out to be a disappointment. I built a few SB-E rigs and soon for my replacement 'Everyday' (i7-3930K) and my experiences are NOT an OMG over the my i7-930 or i7-980X for gaming. In fact, I simply decided to keep my older gaming EVGA + i7-980X and simply purchase new GTX 600 series GPUs. The only thing that aggravates me on the current SB-E is Intel deliberately turning-off/disabling the 7th+8th cores which are present on the dye.

IMO the IB problem is the limited PCIe lanes (16) vs SB-E/LGA 2011's (32); this is only an issue for extreme gamer's wanting 4-WAY SLI. The current SB-E and forthcoming IB is PCIe 3.0, but PCIe 3.0 is really only good for add-on chipsets to reduce/eliminate sharing bottlenecks.

It depends entirely on YOUR needs and use.

 

[conflipper]

Why not go with i7 3960x? Costs same as i7 980x

Because right now I don't have the money to get a LGA2011 board, and a new CPU. And everything else. So I'm taking it slow. Upgrading about everything but the CPU right now. And get that in a few months. Otherwise I would love to get it right now.


Will the Marvell 9182 controller be able to handle the 2 SSD at 400mb/s read speed each?

 

[jaquith]

Will the Marvell 9182 controller be able to handle the 2 SSD at 400mb/s read speed each?

Yep, the Marvell 9128 offers ~400~450MB/s in total, and the Marvell 9182 is essentially double that bandwidth.

My ideal set-up is a single 120GB+ SSD and RAID 1 (mirror) X2 HDD(s).

 

[conflipper]

Best answer selected by Conflipper.