Need to upgrade my mother board

[lovingHDTV]

I'm hoping someone has already done this and can give me a suggestion.

 

My unRaid tower is built on the original motherboard and case.  It only has 2 sata ports and I'm using two pci IDE expander cards.  I now need to add a third sata drive and so it looks like I need to do a mother board upgrade.

 

I'd like to be able to keep using my IDE cards, until the drives die, and would prefer being able to keep the memory, cpu etc as I've never had a problem with cpu performance.

 

The mother board is a:

Intel D865GLCLK i865G

 

The CPU:

Intel® Celeron® D 325

 

The memory:

2 GB of DDR400

 

is there any hope finding a mother board with more sata ports, that will work with this CPU and the memory?

 

here's hoping

 

dave

 

[prostuff1]

Your pretty much SOL.

 

The processor is a very old socket and finding a motherboard with more SATA ports and being able to reuse it is unlikely... frankly I would not even bother trying.

 

 

If you can give us a complete breakdown of your server (hard drives and all) we should be able to help suggest replacement parts.

[lovingHDTV]

I was afraid of that  :'(

 

My main concern is that when I loose one of my IDE drives, I can't replace it as I can't find the 320GB IDE drives anymore, and I don't have an open SATA port.  So I need to get this upgraded before the drive fails.

 

I had looked around and didn't find anything that would work.  Here is my current system:

 

Intel D865GLCLK i865G

Intel® Celeron® D 325

2 GB of DDR400

 

IDE cards:

2 - Promise Ultra133 TX2 ATA/133 (only one in use)

 

power supply:

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W

 

drives:

2 - sata (1x1TB and 1x750GB)

5 - ide (320GB)

1 - ide (250GB cache drive)

 

case:

COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UW

 

 

 

[prostuff1]

I was afraid of that  :'(

 

My main concern is that when I loose one of my IDE drives, I can't replace it as I can't find the 320GB IDE drives anymore, and I don't have an open SATA port.  So I need to get this upgraded before the drive fails.

 

I had looked around and didn't find anything that would work.  Here is my current system:

 

Intel D865GLCLK i865G

Intel® Celeron® D 325

2 GB of DDR400

 

IDE cards:

2 - Promise Ultra133 TX2 ATA/133 (only one in use)

 

power supply:

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W

 

drives:

2 - sata (1x1TB and 1x750GB)

5 - ide (320GB)

1 - ide (250GB cache drive)

 

case:

COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UW

Thanks for the breakdown.

 

If it were me I would:

1. Replace motherboard with something AMD that will take a sempron 145 (around $120 for both)

2. get 2GB of RAM for it ($10)

3. replace the 5x320GB IDE drives with a single 2TB SATA ($120)

4. keep the 250GB as cache or use one of the 320GB ones after having replaced it.

5. donate the old parts to good will or use them for a test server.

[lovingHDTV]

Quick question.

 

How about video support?  Can I just slap video card in there or should I focus on a board with on-board video?  I do plug a monitor into the tower every once in a while for debug purposes so I do want video.

 

I have a couple of pciex16 cards I no longer use that I could use, but want to know that it will work.

 

thanks,

dave

[prostuff1]

Quick question.

 

How about video support?  Can I just slap video card in there or should I focus on a board with on-board video?  I do plug a monitor into the tower every once in a while for debug purposes so I do want video.

 

I have a couple of pciex16 cards I no longer use that I could use, but want to know that it will work.

 

thanks,

dave

the x16 cards will work just fine.  A board with onboard video is usually preferred as we want to leave the x16 slots open for SATA cards like the SASLP or IBM M1015.

 

I used to use an old, cheap PCI video card in my server when it was running a gigabyte board that did not have onboard video.

 

 

Do you have any idea on how many drives you might eventually add to the server?

[lovingHDTV]

Not more than 16, as that is how many I can easily fit into my case.

 

Not sure if I should focus on SATA 6GB/s ports or if the 3GB/s ports make sense.  I'd like to have this work for 7-8 years before I upgrade again if possible.  So I'd rather spend the money now to get something that will last.

 

dave

[prostuff1]

Not more than 16, as that is how many I can easily fit into my case.

 

Not sure if I should focus on SATA 6GB/s ports or if the 3GB/s ports make sense.  I'd like to have this work for 7-8 years before I upgrade again if possible.  So I'd rather spend the money now to get something that will last.

 

dave

try to avoid using an x16 video card then.  You will want the the x16 slot for a SATA expansion card (like the SASLP).  As far as SATA 6GB vs SATA 3GB... it does not really make much of a difference for mechanical rotating HDD.  Most all mechanical HDD will not saturate SATA 1.5GB.

[lovingHDTV]

try to avoid using an x16 video card then.  You will want the the x16 slot for a SATA expansion card (like the SASLP).  As far as SATA 6GB vs SATA 3GB... it does not really make much of a difference for mechanical rotating HDD.  Most all mechanical HDD will not saturate SATA 1.5GB.

 

That's good to know, it looks like the SataII extender cards are easier to come by.

 

Here is what I've found:

MSI 880GM-E41 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130295R

 

Don't really like that it is an open box, but I may be able to find it elsewhere new.

 

G.SKILL Value Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-8GBNT  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231422

 

Probably overkill, but it's cheap

 

AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor SDX145HBGMBOX  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103888

 

I don't see that motherboard on the wiki, but the there is a board there with the same chipset.

 

Comments?

dave

[lovingHDTV]

OK the MSI board had the bad Aetheros nic.

 

I found this guy on Ebay:

MB-SMC2SEE SUPERMICRO MBD-C2SEE-O LGA 775 Intel G43 ATX Intel Motherboard

 

Seems like a good candidate?

 

dave

[lovingHDTV]

OK based on the prototype build thread I'm just going to go with what the recommended board there was:

 

ECS A885GM-A2 (V1.1) AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135272

 

It is $44.95 after rebate right now, then I just added 4 GB of memory from the same build thread.

 

Thanks to Raj for the nice work.

dave