MSI ready with Bearlake X38 motherboard

[HEXUS]

MSI is putting the final touches to its Bearlake X38 board. It features some interesting extras...

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[waterdrop]

Only two SATA ports?

[shaithis]

Looks like there are connectors on the PCB for 2 extra SATA ports (still seems low though)......Only 2 slots when using DDR2 sucks =/

I hope those are limitations imposed by MSi, rather then being indicative of the X38 chipset.

[James Thorburn]

Looks like there are connectors on the PCB for 2 extra SATA ports (still seems low though)......Only 2 slots when using DDR2 sucks =/

Those look like they are the type which face off the side of the board. There will be two pairs of two SATA ports stacked together I'd imagine.

[StoX]

Those look like they are the type which face off the side of the board. There will be two pairs of two SATA ports stacked together I'd imagine.

That'd make much more sense. Only having the option of two drives would be rubbish!!

[John - MSI]

In fact the board only shows 2 SATA connectors (its still in engineering). These are for the Silicon Image RAID controller.
There will be an additional 4 SATA connectors hoizontally mounted on the side of the board (see space on PCB).
There are also 2 E-Sata ports on the rear.

Total 8 SATA2 ports

[Azza]

@ John.

Are you going to have to take out the graphics card (if you have a full length, GTX/Ultra, GTS, HD2900XT) to put in/take out RAM?

End of the RAM slots look directly inline with the top PCI-E graphics slot.

[John - MSI]

@ John.

Are you going to have to take out the graphics card (if you have a full length, GTX/Ultra, GTS, HD2900XT) to put in/take out RAM?

End of the RAM slots look directly inline with the top PCI-E graphics slot.

Azza,
yep, its a tight squeeze. You can take out without removing, but safest bet is simply to remove. After all you wont be changing it every day.