Budget motherboard selection help

[dragon123]

I have a selection of several budget motherboards but not sure which one would work best with unraid: I am planning on running an Athlon II X4 640 CPU.

 

ASRock 960GM/U3S3 FX AM3+ AMD 760G SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138345

6 x SATA 6gb/s

LAN Chipset: Realtek 8111E

3 x USB 3.0

4 x USB 2.0

 

BIOSTAR A880GZ AM3+ AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138345

4 x SATA 6Gb/s

LAN Chipset: Realtek 8111E

4 x USB 2.0

1 x HDMI

 

ASRock 880GM-LE FX AM3+ AMD 880G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157292

6 x SATA 3Gb/s

LAN Chipset: Realtek 8111DL

6 x USB 2.0

 

Is USB 3.0 an important feature? (i guess it is if I want to connect external drives only)

Is SATA 6Gb/s an important feature for future hard drives?

 

[Frank1940]

My personal choice of the three would be the ASRock 880GM.  The 6Gb/s speed on the SATA bus is overkill for any modern hard drive. I haven't heard of any developments that will increase hard drive transfer speed in the near future to be able to use a 6Gb/s bus.  The extra SATA ports are are the most important feature on this board.  These Micro ATX boards are always lacking in expansion slots to add in controller boards so the extra ports are even more essential. 

 

On the USB3 front, it could be useful if one wanted to attach a hard drive to the server.  However, I am not even sure if unRAID has USB3 drivers included in the current builds.  Perhaps, someone else could chime in if they have definite knowledge.    By the way, you do realize that you can't add a UBS drive to the array.  All you can do is mount it and transfer files to-and-from the array.