Asus vs gigabyte motherboard

[vikings09]

I have a phenom II 940 black edition processor and I need help deciding which motherboard I should choose. I found these two on Craigslist. Asus m4a785-m and a Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P. Which motherboard can allow me to utilize 3 500gb hdds and a DVD burner without setting my hard drives in raid mode? This is crucial. I'm not completely stupid when it comes to computers but this is my first custom build. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Once again I don't want my HDD's in raid mode, they have data on them and im too lazy to get an external hdd to save all my stuff just for a raid setup.

 

[clutchc]

Both boards will meet your requirement. I don't understand why you think the boards require the drives be arranged in a RAID array? You can connect as many SATA drives as there are SATA connectors. Just keep RAID disabled in BIOS (the default).

Unless you have a preference for certain other options on the Gigabyte board (such as Xfire), I would recommend the Asus.

 

[vikings09]

Thanks, its just i have an asus mb im running this processor im on, it has 5 sata ports, yet 2 of them can only be used in AHCI or Raid mode, so this is why i ask. BTW this thing is beast. 90 for the processor, 4 gigs of ram and a case. not bad right?

 

[clutchc]

If the Phenom II 940 BE isn't fried from careless OCing, a very good deal, indeed. Btw, which board do you have that limits 2 SATA ports to RAID only?

Here are the manufacturers' pages for the 2 boards in question if you haven't already found them:
Asus: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M4A785M/
Gigabyte: http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3038#ov

You can download the manuals for the boards and see if there are any surprises that would be a deal breaker for you.

 

[vikings09]

Asus m3n78-vm

 

[clutchc]

Asus m3n78-vm

Not to dissuade you from upgrading to a newer board...
But according to page 1-29 of your Asus M3N78-VM manual, http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M3N78VM/#download... you can use SATA 4 and 5 ports in non-RAID simply by selecting AHCI mode instead of the older IDE mode. That would give you 5 usable SATA ports for your discrete drives. In fact, if you are using Win7, I would recommend using ACHI mode for all your SATA ports. Unless your devices are quite old, they should be compatible with ACHI mode in Win7.

 

[carnage0651]

This is correct, and I can confirm it. I almost exclusively buy ASUS motherboards for my customers and I use them myself. All my SATA ports are set up as AHCI.
On some of the original SATA capable boards ASUS P4G8X for example, If you didnt run the ports as AHCI you would have to install the SATA drivers like they were SCSI drivers during the windows install.