How to check what version SATA controller your mobo has?

[cthomas1489]

Pretty much as above but the situation is it's an OEM motherboard in a laptop and I really have no documentation on it since it was never advertised. The HDD that was in their was SATA II but it is modern with an Ivy Bridge cpu (also sold with sandy bridge versions).

Is their a way to check from within Windows? Looking at the mobo there are really no labels on there but some part numbers I might be able to look up. I want to know if it can handle SATA III speeds from an SSD although I guess I could just run a speed test once I install it and that'd let me know.

 

[ko888]

It's the motherboard's main chipset that determines the SATA revision level.

The HP ENVY Ultrabook 4-1030us uses the Mobile Intel HM77 Express Chipset.

The specifications for that chipset state:

Provides up to six SATA ports with up to two ports supporting 6 Gb/s transfer rates.

In summary:
Two SATA revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gbit/s) ports
Four SATA revision 2.0 (SATA 3 Gbit/s) ports

It's up to the laptop motherboard manufacturer to decide which SATA revision ports they want to provide for use.

HP never reveals if the motherboard utilizes the two SATA revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gbit/s) ports or just two of the possible four SATA revision 2.0 (SATA 3 Gbit/s) ports.

My suspicion is that the 32GB SSD cache uses a SATA revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gbit/s) port.

Try downloading and running the freeware utility HWiNFO64.