Proposed build from old parts...

[Hoonigan]

My cousin is wanting to use some of the parts out of my old PC, but there's a few questions I'd like to ask you all before I go ahead and do anything.

I'm looking into getting a new case for myself, so he will be getting my Antec 300 as well..

The proposed build is as follows:

CPU - Q6600
Motherboard - Abit IP-35 Dark Raider
RAM - 4GB OCZ Platinum 800MHz
GPU - Zotac GeForce GTX275
HDD - Maxtor 250GB + Corsair Force 3 or Crucial M4
PSU - BeQuiet 430w Modular
Case - Antec 300

I know that all these parts work work fine together, because I used them myself for a good 3 years.

My first question is, if I bought a separate SATA card, would I be able to use that for the Corsair Force 3, with it being SATA6, along with the onboard SATA controller?

He plans to add more HDDs in the future, so it's necessary that both will work really..

Secondly, which SATA card should I go for? This isn't something I've ever had to do myself, so I know nothing about them at all.

Thanks in advance for any help that you can offer

[Pob255]

Yes you can afaik, it will have to be a pci-e controller card (you cannot get sata 6Gbit/s out of a pci card)
something like this should work http://www.scan.co.uk/products/lycom...e-pcie-20-host although you might have some driver issues with the initial install, windows7 is much better with controllers on the initial install it will depend on what controller is used on that card.

And that's going to be a nice solid gaming pc, not the newest of tech but still plenty for the vast majority of games.

[Hoonigan]

That card you've suggested there seems to be perfect, and a lot cheaper than I expected, but there's one thing that's worrying me slightly.

It's saying that it runs on PCI-E 2.0, the IP35 doesn't have PCI-E 2.0, it's only got 1.0 or 1.1 iirc, so will that be a problem at all? (I may be totally wrong about that, but I know the 16x PCI-E port only has 1.1)

Thanks for your help so far

[kalniel]

That card you've suggested there seems to be perfect, and a lot cheaper than I expected, but there's one thing that's worrying me slightly.

It's saying that it runs on PCI-E 2.0, the IP35 doesn't have PCI-E 2.0, it's only got 1.0 or 1.1 iirc, so will that be a problem at all? (I may be totally wrong about that, but I know the 16x PCI-E port only has 1.1)

Thanks for your help so far

PCIE is fully backwards compatible, in both directions.

[Hoonigan]

PCIE is fully backwards compatible, in both directions.

Sorry, I didn't quite word that correctly to get the response I wanted..

Will PCI-E 1.0 be a bottleneck for a PCI-E 2.0 card? So will it achieve the full SATA 6GB/s spec?

[kalniel]

Sorry, I didn't quite word that correctly to get the response I wanted..

Will PCI-E 1.0 be a bottleneck for a PCI-E 2.0 card? So will it achieve the full SATA 6GB/s spec?

Depends on the number of lanes. A x1 card will only run at 250MB/s in each direction in PCI-E 1.0, while SATA 6Gb/s (not GB) allows for up to about 600MB/s. So yes, a drive transferring faster than 250MB/s might be bottlenecked.

[Hoonigan]

Depends on the number of lanes. A x1 card will only run at 250MB/s in each direction in PCI-E 1.0, while SATA 6Gb/s (not GB) allows for up to about 600MB/s. So yes, a drive transferring faster than 250MB/s might be bottlenecked.

AFAIK, the transfer limit for SATA2 is 280MB/s, so it would seem it'd be better to just plug the SSD into the onboard controller instead of spending more money on a controller card, and extra arsing about to get it to work...

Thanks for the help guys