August 1, 201114 yr Hey guys! I've been running my server now for nearly 3 months and everythings going swimmingly... Apart from the fact I'm getting close to filling my 6 sata ports my mobo has!! Being the noob I am when it comes to controller cards I have no idea really what I'm looking for, I've read on here the stuff for the recommended 8 port cards such as the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 but I don't think my mobo can support this... (I am using the PCI-E x16 slot for graphics I believe, is there anyway I can get around this?) So I guess I'm wondering, what should I do... I eventually wanna build the server upto 20 HDDs or so, but in the mean time, are there any other cards I can use to add just a couple or a few extra SATA ports? And what are the other PCI points my mobo has good for?? Link to my mobo specs: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5QLE/#specifications Any help with what I should do would be awesome!
August 1, 201114 yr buy a cheap PCI video card (or find one on craigslist) and get rid of the PCI-e card. Then use the slot for the Supermicro SASLP card.
August 2, 201114 yr Author Thanks for the reply!! Yeah I figured that'd be the way to go, so you think if I simply ditch the graphics I can use that slot for the controller card? I wasn't sure if it was graphics only or they were simply universal slots?
August 2, 201114 yr Thanks for the reply!! Yeah I figured that'd be the way to go, so you think if I simply ditch the graphics I can use that slot for the controller card? I wasn't sure if it was graphics only or they were simply universal slots? The spec says they should be universal. Some mobo manufacturers did make the slots on the first motherboard be specifically for graphics cards, but most now are not specific.
August 2, 201114 yr i have a P5b Plus vista edition and also running now a matrox PCI video card in a pci slot and a IBM BR10 in the X16 slot just needed to change the PCI bios settings so it knew there was not a video card in the slot
August 2, 201114 yr If you want to go super low cost and just add a few more drives for the time being, you can fill up those PCIe x1 slots with a couple of SIL3132 cards - monoprice has them for about $10 each: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=2530&seq=1&format=2 The posts above are correct for your long-term path. I picked up a couple of IBM M1015's from ebay for about $75 delivered, but the BR10i's are another option if you don't plan to go with 3TB drives.
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