8 SATA PORT Micro ATX Options?

[jeremymc7]

Anyone got any good options for STABLE 8 SATA port Micro ATX motherboards? There are loads in the full sized ATX MB but I'm having trouble in the MATX options. Sure you can get a 4 port and then a Promise SATA300 TX4 but that Promise card is about as much as the motherboard itself. The 8 port ATX units are cheaper but I need to keep the project as small as possible and the MATX cases are much smaller.

 

Thoughts?

 

[cool_runner]

the lime tech recommended board has 7 internal and 1 esata, giving you a total of 8. You can easily route the esata into your case.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131085

[jeremymc7]

the lime tech recommended board has 7 internal and 1 esata, giving you a total of 8. You can easily route the esata into your case.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131085

 

EXCELLENT. After hours on NewEgg somehow I missed this one. Thanks.

[BLKMGK]

Just setup one of these last night. Be advised that you will likely have to "force" the USB Flash to FDD in order to get it to boot properly. Leaving it set to Automatic didn't work for me. It took me a good bit of fooling to get this setup but the only issue I had was the boot from USB, once that was done it came right up. All in all this was a pretty impressive MB IMO! I wonder if we could use the Intel AMT stuff for anything useful. Slapping a TPM module on it and doing some crypto would be pretty neat too

 

All in all a pretty nice board. I do wish it had one more PCI slot (it has two) as I might try to max this one out at 16 drives but oh well. Edit: recounting it will indeed hit 16 if I use\reroute the eSATA.

 

P.S. Never did manage to update the BIOS using the internal utility. Will work on that more tonight but as of last night it refused to see my USB key with the new image on it. <shrug>