Is anyone using the ASRock M3A780GXH Motherboard?

[BryantD]

I'm perfectly happy with my A8N-SLI Premium but if i was to build a new unRAID server from scratch based on 21 total drives this motherboard looks very promising: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157161

 

It has 7 SATAII ports with built-in Video, Gb Ethernet, 3 PCI-e slots that can accept 3 Adaptec 1430SA cards and 1 PCI-ex1 slot for a SI3132 card giving you and additional 14 SATAII ports for a total of 21 (all on the PCI-e bus). And it is way under a $100 bucks. Pair this with the 65w AMD Athlon II X2 250 Regor the combo price is $166.99. Thankfully DDR3 memory has come down some.

 

What does everyone think?

[RobJ]

It does look like a good board with good specs (very fast FSB), but there are some question marks.

* The Realtek RTL8111DL LAN chipset is probably a new version of the Realtek RTL8111 family, but until someone has tried and confirmed support for it, it has to be a question mark.

* Same story for the AMD SB710 southbridge.  We do have confirmed support for the AMD SB600 and SB700 chipsets, but not yet for the AMD SB710.

* The specs say that it supports 6 SATA II ports and 1 eSATA port.  I could not find any mention of an additional controller that supported that 7th port though.  What I did find was the following line, that appears to indicate that the eSATA port may actually be one of the 6 onboard SATA ports, with perhaps a jumper or BIOS switch to control which connector is in use.

- 1 x eSATAII 3.0 Gb/s connector (shared with 1 SATAII port)

[BryantD]

You are right; it's not clear about that 7th port, so maybe 1 drive has to be on the PCI bus (no real hit in performance there with just 1 drive).

 

Hopefully someone will give it a shot because it does look promising (and inexpensive).

[RobJ]

You are right; it's not clear about that 7th port, so maybe 1 drive has to be on the PCI bus (no real hit in performance there with just 1 drive).

 

Those 6 onboard ports are NOT on the PCI bus.  They should be very fast, with a direct connection usually to the southbridge.  At worst, they may each be using a single PCI Express 2.0 lane, hardly anything to complain about!

[BryantD]

You are right; it's not clear about that 7th port, so maybe 1 drive has to be on the PCI bus (no real hit in performance there with just 1 drive).

 

Those 6 onboard ports are NOT on the PCI bus.  They should be very fast, with a direct connection usually to the southbridge.  At worst, they may each be using a single PCI Express 2.0 lane, hardly anything to complain about!

 

I know the 6 onboard are not on the PCI bus. I was talking about if the 7th port (i.e. the eSATA port) was not usable if the other 6 are used then you would need an SI3114 PCI card to get to 21 drives; thus 1 drive on the PCI bus which would still be very fast.

[RobJ]

I'm sorry, I misunderstood.

[bubbaQ]

I have this mobo.  One of the 6 onboard ports is used, with a cable, as the eSATA port.

 

So you either have 6 onboard and no eSATA, or 5 onboard and 1 eSATA.

 

Good mobo... my only grope is that Speedfan only varies the CPU fan, and not the chassis fan.

[BryantD]

I have this mobo.  One of the 6 onboard ports is used, with a cable, as the eSATA port.

 

So you either have 6 onboard and no eSATA, or 5 onboard and 1 eSATA.

 

Good mobo... my only grope is that Speedfan only varies the CPU fan, and not the chassis fan.

 

It does look like a great choice for unRAID. How long have you used this board?

[bubbaQ]

I don't use it for unraid.

[BryantD]

I don't use it for unraid.

 

Do you think it would make a good unRAID board?

[jbrodriguez]

I don't use it for unraid.

 

bubbaQ, would it be possible for you to test this mobo with unraid ... probably the issue will be the sb710 chipset.